When it comes to church websites, the primary focus is normally how a website looks. It needs to have high-quality photos, look great on all devices, have navigation that is clear, have more media than words, and have a consistent style. While these are all important things to have, if nobody can actually find your website, it all means nothing. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. SEO is the process of improving a website’s visibility. By having the right content, keywords, structure, and technical setup, people will be more likely to find your church’s website—which increases the chances of them showing up at your physical church building.
Just looking at a website, it can be hard to determine if a church has good SEO. To determine if your website is doing well, you will need to do research and monitor it. Below are three examples of church websites that are excelling in SEO:
Liquid Church
Liquid Church excels in many areas when it comes to SEO. They have a beautiful site that is fast and mobile responsive on all devices. They have the correct site structure, use alt text in all of their images, and have clean URLs.
SEO Highlights
- Targeted keywords for Local SEO - Liquid Church has many locations throughout New Jersey and they make sure to use localized keywords in their page titles and meta descriptions. For example: On the homepage, the title is ‘non-denominational church in NJ’. Their meta description also mentions that they’re a church in NJ and highlights each of their 7 locations. It doesn’t stop there. They have a page for each location which optimizes the location even further. On the Mercer County page, they use the title of ‘Church in Princeton, NJ’. Location-based keywords help your page to rank higher when people are searching for churches in that specific area.
- Blogging for increased visibility - A blog sounds very old school. In fact, most churches probably don’t have one, but blogs are still very relevant to the internet. Blogs can drive traffic to your church’s website. Liquid Church has a blog post titled, ‘10 Bible Verses About Pursuing Peace’. That post alone gets about 557 visitors a month on average. They also turn sermons into blog posts, which is an excellent way to repurpose sermons. Liquid Church does a great job of including other resources that they offer to keep people on their site. This opens up the opportunity for users to learn more about their church and potentially attend a service.
Definition Church
Definition Church has a very clean website. They do a great job when it comes to the experience of the user. Everything is simple and organized in a way so users can easily find what they’re looking for.
SEO Highlights
- Clever use of H1 tag - When you go to their homepage, you see the words, “Be with Jesus. Become like Jesus. Do what Jesus did.” When you scroll down a little further, you see the words, “Definition is a non-denominational, contemporary Christian church in Greensboro, NC.” Websites use headings to organize webpages so search engines and visitors can understand what your site is about. The H1 tag (heading) is the most important heading on a webpage. It indicates the main subject of the webpage. You should only have one H1 tag on a webpage. H1 tags are normally the huge text you see when you open a webpage. Knowing all of that information, you would probably say the words, “Be with Jesus. Become like Jesus. Do what Jesus did,” is the H1 tag. But that’s not the case. Their H1 tag is actually the words, “Definition is a non-denominational, contemporary Christian church in Greensboro, NC.” The other phrase is using a regular text tag that looks like an H1 tag. Why does this matter? Well, it tells search engines that this page is about a non-denominational, contemporary Christian church in Greensboro, NC. It includes keywords that can rank higher when people are doing location-based searches. While having the other phrase as their H1 tag isn’t bad, using localized keywords makes it better. So why not put the location-based phrase at the top of the page? That wouldn’t be bad either, but it loses the human touch. “Be with Jesus. Become like Jesus. Do what Jesus did,” is more impactful for visitors than the localized phrase. Doing it this way, Definition Church gets to have the impactful message as well as the location-based H1 tag.
- Optimized Google Business Profile - When it comes to SEO for churches, local SEO is the most important since your church is in a building. One way to greatly improve your local SEO is by optimizing your Google Business Profile. Definition Church has a well-optimized Google Business Profile. They rank at the top of the local pack for keywords like: church Greensboro NC, churches in Greensboro NC, and non-denominational churches in Greensboro NC. They get about 1500 visitors a month off of those 3 searches alone. For their Google Business Profile, they consistently get reviews. They utilize the products section by highlighting all of the important pages like serving, baptism, small groups, etc. They also make the most of the description section by using 724 of the possible 750 characters. Providing as much detail as possible helps Google rank your church higher.
Life Church
Life Church has a very large website. They do a great job of making it simple for users though. They make everything clear and use premium images to deliver Call to actions that make people want to click.
SEO Highlights
- Huge supply of content - Life Church has a lot of content on the internet which means more opportunities to get discovered. They have resources like Bible reading plans, sermon series content, leadership guides, and articles. They also fill their resources with links to other resources on their site. This allows visitors to stay on their site. For example, this article on prayer for anxiety has links to articles about being overwhelmed, depressed, needing healing, etc. Resources can also be used to get visitors name and email. To get access to over 100,000 free resources, you simply need to give Life Church your name and email. The visitor gets the resources and Life Church gets an email, which is extremely valuable for churches.
- Backlinks - At the time of writing this, Life Church has almost 5 million backlinks. What is a backlink? Backlinks are links to your website from other websites. The link right beside this is referring to a blog post from Semrush. Because I referred them, that is considered a backlink for them. Backlinks boost your search rankings. If reputable sites link to your website, it lets search engines know that the content on your website is valuable and trustworthy. 5 million backlinks is more than enough proof that Life Church is trustworthy. All these backlinks happens because of the high-quality content that Life Church consistently puts out.
Church Website Design Services
You can have a church website with good SEO just like these churches. Here at Two Ten Creatives, we specialize it creating church websites. We want to make sure people find your church's website on Google, and turn visitors on the website to members of your church. Book a call today to learn more about our services.
Evan Smith is the owner of Two Ten Creatives, a creative design company specifically for churches. He strategically finds ways to bring more visitors to churches by designing church websites and focusing on local SEO. He is a follower of Jesus, a husband, and a father.
