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Jul 25
2009
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Tips For Driving Traffic to Your Church Website Part 1Posted by exiadmin in Untagged |
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You have a website…great! Every church or ministry knows the importance of having a website. Now that you’re headed in the right direction , just sit back, relax, and watch your website traffic grow! Well…not really!
The most common mistake that website owners ever commit is to expect that traffic will automatically flow once you’re up and running on the web. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
With millions of websites out there, the number one challenge a webmaster faces is getting hits and tons of them. After all, what good is your website if nobody finds the “goodies” you have to offer?
In this blog, we will tackle some of the practical ways you can drive traffic to your website.
The most common mistake that website owners ever commit is to expect that traffic will automatically flow once you’re up and running on the web. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
With millions of websites out there, the number one challenge a webmaster faces is getting hits and tons of them. After all, what good is your website if nobody finds the “goodies” you have to offer?
In this blog, we will tackle some of the practical ways you can drive traffic to your website.
1. Make your potential visitors find you.
Who is your target audience? Who are you trying to reach? One hundred percent of the time, a church website’s goal is to be an information portal for both current members and potential visitors which could mean families or couples that just relocated in the area, or individuals that have never been to church and are looking for a church that they can relate to and will feel welcomed at.
Whoever your audience is, you must let them find you. If a newly-relocated family is looking for a church in the area using Google, will your website come up? Most Google users will type using general keyword phrases and not the name of your church, assuming they do not know you or have heard of you. Typical key phrase formula that users use are: local city + denomination (if looking for a particular denomination) + the word ‘church.’ For example: Houston united methodist church.
When I typed in “Houston united methodist church” in Google, I got 713,000 results! See screenshot below.
Probably by now, you're whoa! Try typing in a key phrase that you believe users might use to find you. Can they find you on the first 3 pages of search results?
According to studies conducted by Cornell University, web researchers have short attention spans (unless they’re like me that will go to up to page 5 of search results!) and will only click on the first three results on the first page.
That is why it is extremely important to get your website search engine optimized, most especially for Google. This is an important source of traffic
Realistically, it is not easy to get top 3 rankings, especially if your keyword is highly competitive. However, there are a couple of ways around it:
1. Getting Listed in Google Local
Getting listed in Google Local is free and can get you on the local results if a user types in the city where you are located (i.e. Pearland church).
Visit https://www.google.com/local/add/login to get your church listing added.
2. Using Google Adwords
Adwords is Google’s Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising . These are the search results
that you see at the top before the organic results) and on the right hand side that is usually indicated by “Sponsored Links.”
To get in the Sponsored Links, you must set up a Google Adwords account and assign a certain budget per month. Whether you are doing manual bidding or automatic, you will be charged a certain amount (not to exceed your maximum cost per click or CPC) per user clicks.
I recommend using Adwords just as a temporary advertising campaign. Since you are paying per click, it can get costly in the long run.
To learn more about AdWords, visit adwords.google.com.
To be continued…
Who is your target audience? Who are you trying to reach? One hundred percent of the time, a church website’s goal is to be an information portal for both current members and potential visitors which could mean families or couples that just relocated in the area, or individuals that have never been to church and are looking for a church that they can relate to and will feel welcomed at.
Whoever your audience is, you must let them find you. If a newly-relocated family is looking for a church in the area using Google, will your website come up? Most Google users will type using general keyword phrases and not the name of your church, assuming they do not know you or have heard of you. Typical key phrase formula that users use are: local city + denomination (if looking for a particular denomination) + the word ‘church.’ For example: Houston united methodist church.
When I typed in “Houston united methodist church” in Google, I got 713,000 results! See screenshot below.
Probably by now, you're whoa! Try typing in a key phrase that you believe users might use to find you. Can they find you on the first 3 pages of search results?
According to studies conducted by Cornell University, web researchers have short attention spans (unless they’re like me that will go to up to page 5 of search results!) and will only click on the first three results on the first page.
That is why it is extremely important to get your website search engine optimized, most especially for Google. This is an important source of traffic
Realistically, it is not easy to get top 3 rankings, especially if your keyword is highly competitive. However, there are a couple of ways around it:
1. Getting Listed in Google Local
Getting listed in Google Local is free and can get you on the local results if a user types in the city where you are located (i.e. Pearland church).
Visit https://www.google.com/local/add/login to get your church listing added.
2. Using Google Adwords
Adwords is Google’s Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising . These are the search results
that you see at the top before the organic results) and on the right hand side that is usually indicated by “Sponsored Links.”
To get in the Sponsored Links, you must set up a Google Adwords account and assign a certain budget per month. Whether you are doing manual bidding or automatic, you will be charged a certain amount (not to exceed your maximum cost per click or CPC) per user clicks.
I recommend using Adwords just as a temporary advertising campaign. Since you are paying per click, it can get costly in the long run.
To learn more about AdWords, visit adwords.google.com.
To be continued…