We have discussed the importance of keyword research when optimizing your church website.  In a previous article, “Keyword Research”, I mentioned two of the top keyword popularity tools, WordTracker and Keyword Discovery.  Both are decent tools, but base their estimates on data from several smaller search engines and both cost a several hundred dollars a year to use.  Now there’s an alternative.

You can now add the Google Adwords Keyword Research tool to your list of keyword popularity tools.  There are two key benefits to the Google Keyword Research Tool. Read more…

We’ve looked at what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, setting up your website to make it readable by the search engines and so that it tells the search engines what your website is about by targeting specific keywords. So, what is local SEO? Local SEO is optimization of your website both targeting keywords with local modifiers (ie: churches in Trinity, FL) and with the intent of telling the search engines where your church/business/organization is. As a church with a specific location, local SEO is important for bringing new visitors to your church through your website. Read more…

As we approach the 4th of July, I was thinking about freedom. Freedom is a great blessing, one that many people do not have. But we can offer freedom? Read more…

You’ve performed keyword research. You optimized your website for the search engines. You have even started a link building campaign to gain untold numbers of relevant, inbound links. So, you’re done right? Wrong. It’s time to see the effects of all this work, re-evaluate the optimization, and plan your next move. Read more…

If optimizing a website is like giving your car a tune up, link building is like putting in a bigger engine. Simply put, there are going to be keywords that are out of your reach if all you do is on-page optimization, especially if your church is in a large city. Link building is needed to bring those keywords into your grasp. Links are like votes for your website. The more votes your website gets, the more important the search engines think your site is. That causes then to move you up in the search results for the keywords you are targeting and can get you ranking well for keywords you can’t currently rank well for. So, what is link building and how do you do it? Read on my friend. Read more…

Are the pages of your website optimized for the search engines? On-page optimization is the essence of search engine optimization and the key to targeting the keywords that can make your website a success. Read more…

Like a foundation for a building, there is one aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that is more important than any other. Without this foundation, you may be wasting all your time and resources. Proper keyword research should be the basis of your optimization.

Why is Keyword Research Critical? Read more…

(This article has been submitted to the 3rd Annual Marketing Pilgrim SEM (Search Engine Marketing) Scholarship Contest.  When you click to “read more” it will take you to the rest of the article on the Marketing Pilgrim site.  Please tell everyone you know who has a website about this article.  Not only could it help us win the contest (the 5 most-read articles make the finals), but we think the parable will give anyone a website a clearer understanding of the 4 keys to maximizing the visitors a website gets from search engines.)

At a small college a group of incoming freshmen marketing majors gathered for their first class. As the wise, old Professor of Search Engine Marketing made his way to the front of the room, one of the students asked him, “Professor, what is SEO?”

The professor looked over the classroom full of young students and replied, “Let me tell you a story…”

There once were 5 families that lived in a rural valley where the soil was rich, the weather was harsh, and the best apples in the whole world grew wild.

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As you start to delve into the world of online marketing, it is important to be able to understand the terminology being used. We always try to limit the “tech talk” when possible and use terms normal folks use; however, there are times when there simply isn’t another word to use. You may also be reading though other resources and run into confusing terminology. So, we have created the Church Marketing Online Search Marketing Glossary.

We encourage you to look over this dictionary of search marketing terms before you begin reading through the rest of the articles. We also encourage you to bookmark this page so you can visit the page if you ever run into a word or acronym you are not familiar with. If it’s search marketing related, you should find it here. If not, post a comment to request a definition.

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Perhaps as you’ve searched around the Internet and Church Marketing Online you’ve seen the term SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is simply setting up your website to best allow search engines to read your website and understand what your website is about. Search engines aren’t very good guessers, so SEO is done to tell the search engines specifically what they need to know or what you want them to know.

The goal of SEO is to increase your website’s rankings in the search engines and bring more visitors to your website. An optimized website can bring 2 times, 3 times, or even 10 times the visitors than an un-optimized website. So, understanding SEO and its importance can make or break a website.

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