SEO Tactics

[Stuart]

OK, so here's an area I just haven't got into yet.

Because the Church has now got it's own website for the business it runs we now need to consider SEO. Currently by doing nothing we are on page 5 of a Google UK search - though interestingly on page 1 a directory listing referring to us exists!

So what tactics / methods / etc does one use to up their SEO visibility?

Stuart

p.s. for those interested, the site is: GatesofPraise Bookshop

[Stuart]

I'm guessing there aren't enough folks here who are in to SEO then - so here's some of what I've found out ...

- Common Sense SEO has an easy intro.

- Validate your semantic code

- Make sure each page has unique meta tags, keywords (surprisingly these do still help though loads of people say they wont!)

- Unique Page titles and making sure important keywords are in the title

- Optimising content with rich keywords – ideally putting keywords in header tags, hyperlinks

- Optimising images – making sure images are labelled with keywords as well!

- SEO/human friendly URLs

- Site Map – in particular think about getting a Google Map

- Remove javascript menus and alike so spiders can easily navigate through your site

- Flash (though it can be accessible) is still providing to play up with SEO – trying to make sure the majority of content is text-based is far better

and finally....

- There are loads of ummmsss and arrhhhhsss

[GregSimmons]

In our church's case (Rawlinson Road Baptist - http://www.rrbc.org), the ChMS we're using has a built in SEO page for the administrator. The site gives you help and instructions on how to tweak these settings to best represent your site's content.

I guess my one word of advice is that you have to REGULARLY update your SEO data as the content of your site changes and as your ministries develop.

BTW, the ChMS we're using is Lifewaylink. It's very basic and easy to use for non-coders like me. But, I do wish it had support for newer page layouts such as CSS, etc.

[paschott]

I'll have to admit that it hasn't been a huge concern for me. People looking for our church typically either look for it by name or by region/city. We don't get a lot of traffic from off-site and our CMS does some pretty decent SEO out of the box. Probably not the greatest in the world, but it suffices and we still get hits on some of our guest speaker sermons so it must be working.

[Stuart]

In looking for something else I've just come across this page on SEO

http://www.instantshift.com/2009/02/14/ ... h-engines/

Lots of good stuff and plenty of pretty pictures (wheee)!

[TimGolden]

well you've hit one of my 'hot topics'.. i've been a SEO guru for many years, ran my own SEO company for a while back in 1998-2003 and it was a competitive market back then too.. there are soooo many new 'rules' to follow and guidelines to learn from.. the best advice i can give you is that you really need to ask yourself if it's worth your time/effort? what is the goal you are trying to reach? do you really want/need all these visitors to your site and why? what are you going to do with them once they are there; you have something to sell them? once you know the "what" you want to do with all these new visitors and have tangible measuring matrix in place then spend time on your content; since relative and targeted text is what's most important.... we found that after a long hours of research on what we 'could' target that it wasn't the best use of time/resources..

if you are serious about getting more qualified traffic to your then site ping me my contact info is below..i'll show you some tricks of the trade and where to start..

Tim

[josh.willits]

Tim has great advice. I'm not an SEO guy, but I have a friend who has helped me out. The biggest thing you have to figure out is what is the point? SEO is so specific now that you really have to dial in a specific goal for your site, and then tap someone like Tim who can help you accomplish that goal.

[Stuart]

Tim (and Josh) thanks for the replies.

For some reason the subscription to thread service doesn't appear to be working so I hadn't realised you'd replied. In terms of SEO the noise has died down as a search on the major terms now brings us up on page one of a Google UK serach so the Church is happy with that.

To be honest, I don't think they much care about the website and they just saw it as something that needed to be done. Aside from that they don't do much with it and I'm disappointed though not surprised by that.

But, I will remember your offer Tim and should they change their minds I'll be back.

[paschott]

Stuart, you may want to subscribe to the whole forum. I've been getting the new posts that way. For minor tweaks, you may want to set up something like Google's Analytics for the website. It lets people see lots of neat stats about the site and its usage and can provide some basic insights as to what people are looking for on the site (church name, service times, pastor bio, etc).

[Stuart]

Stuart, you may want to subscribe to the whole forum. I've been getting the new posts that way. For minor tweaks, you may want to set up something like Google's Analytics for the website. It lets people see lots of neat stats about the site and its usage and can provide some basic insights as to what people are looking for on the site (church name, service times, pastor bio, etc).

I'll try the whole forum sub and see if that works instead

We do have analytics up and running - though at present they aren't pushing the whole process. I sometimes feel like it was me that forced them down this route and now they've abandoned it as soon as it was created. That's not true, but I do get that impression - especially when the banners never change, etc ....!