Here on Church Growth Consulting we are always working on ways to help people and churches develop and expand their web ministry. There are three big factors in having your websites and blogs do well on the search engines; time, content, and links. We are always experimenting to see how much we can learn about the interactions between these three components and the different search engines. We have an ongoing experiment tight now which involves seven or eight different websites. Besides all that we are also tinkering with the impact of links from the sidebar of a site and directly from articles on the site. It seems that sites that are linked to from articles get a bigger boost than just being linked to from the sidebar. With that in mind we are going to track eightenn sites that we started on our sister site, Church Webmaster. Here is a list of the sites we will be looking at:
A Google search for each of the sites today produced the following results:
The Cape Coral Florida Churches is currently in position twenty-three. It has never been a page one return. The Clearwater Florida Churches site is at position seven. This site has spent most of its time on page two so this is an improvement. The Florida Keys Churches has been at position one for the last three months and enjoys a steady traffic flow. The Gainesville Florida Churches site has just recently moved to page one and is in position eight. The Lakeland Florida Churches is sitting at position twenty-two. The Ocala Florida Churches is in position three and has been there for several months. It also receives a steady traffic flow. The Fresno California Churches has moved in to position three in the last month. The Fremont California Churches site is in position twelve. The Oceanside California Churches site is in position seven. The Springfield Oregon Churches site is in position three. The Hillsboro Oregon Churches site is in position eight. The Salem Oregon Churches is in position eleven. It was a solid page one return but has started to drift backwards. The Federal Way Washington Churches is doing very well at position two. The Flagstaff Arizona Churches site is in position eight. The Glendale Arizona Churches site is in position fifteen. This is after being a page one return for a long time. The Scottsdale Arizona Churches site has really fallen back, moving from page one to page six in position fifty-four. The Tempe Arizona Churches site is holding on ot position eight. The Gilbert Arizona Churches site has moved back to position 14 from a solid page one return.
We will continue to track the progress of these sites on Church Growth COnsulting as we point some article links at each of them over the next couple of weeks and we will check back in on the progress of the sites then.
I have been continuing the work on our example Church Web Site. To make the process a little more interesting I decided to take the new theme and start a Church Web Site called Florida Keys Vineyard Churches. One of the reasons for doing this is to get a better result for my own church in the search engines. When we started our website years ago I never thought about the importance of how people would find the site. Right now, the only people that ever find our main church website are people who are specifically looking for it. I want to be able to get people to the site who are searching in a more general way. The main site for the church I pastor is www.keysvineyard.com. This describes our church (Vineyard Community Church) somewhat, but never gets returned for a general search of churches in the area. If I knew then what I know now, the website would be more like the one I am starting, Florida Keys Vineyard Churches. This site will show up in searches for:
- Florida Keys Churches
- Churches in the Florida Keys
- Vineyard Churches
- Keys Churches, etc
You get the idea. Rather than change my existing site (there are some major benefits to having an established site), I am adding this site to direct traffic to my main site. I can also use it to act as a website for our video venue that is 30 miles away. It will serve as another example of how to set up a church web site, which is important to us at Church Growth Consulting.
Things to do to Start a Church Web Site
We have already discussed in previous articles the need for a web host and a domain name. I am going to assume you have dome that already. I will also assume you have read the other articles about installing plugins and the process of downloading and uploading files. It took me less than four hours to get the Florida Keys Vineyard Churches site running and looking half way decent. Here is the process.
1. With the theme installed the next thing to do is add some plugins. Plugins make the site look and function better. For this site I downloaded, uploaded and activated the following plugins:
- Akismet (spam blocker already loaded on WordPress)
- All in One SEO (makes your site more visible to the search engines)
- Contact Form 7 (used this for the contact and prayer request page)
- Easy Donation (puts a place for donations in the sidebar)
- Stat Counter (allows you to track how many people visit the site)
- WP-Upgrade (WordPress is always getting better, this plugin makes upgrading easy)
- WP-Backup (e-mails a back up of your site to you everyday, remember Jesus Saves)
- PayPal Donate (I used this on the Donate page)
- Verse of the Day (puts a new bible verse on the site everyday)
- Page Excluder (keeps certain pages off of the home page, it’s about appearance)
- Events Calendar (nice little calendar plugin for the sidebar)
- WordPress Video Plugin (allows you to show video from Youtube, Godtube, Veoh etc.)
2. The next thing you need to do is add some Pages. I added Contact, Prayer Request, Donate, Where We Are, and Media pages.
3. The theme I am using allows for the adding of some images on a timed scroll on the Home page. I used the Paint program to create images that were 530 x 260 pixels and then added them to the site. Creating the images took more than half of the four gours I needed to set up the site. I am using the images to direct traffic to the pages I want visitors to the site to go to. All the information you need to set up a church web site is available on this site, Church Growth Consulting, or on My Newbie Blog, or on the Church Web Site. If you have any questions use the Contact page and I will try and help you. A few hours of work can make all the difference in your Online Ministry.
As part of the overall web ministry package we are putting together here on the Church Growth site , I have been spending some time again working on the Church Web Site we are developing. I have found a nice theme that I think will work really well for most churches. It is a very attractive theme and will hold people’s attention. It’s also free! Here is what the site used to look like:
Here it is with the new “Massive News” theme:
To appreciate the theme you need to go and look at it. It has a scrolling feature which continuously changes the look of the site. We will use this feature to introduce the various parts of the Church Web Site we want people to visit.
The Problem with Many Church Web Sites
I have been visiting a lot of Church Web Sites lately. One of the questions you have to ask when you are thinking about your website is “Why would someone read this site”? I think that for a long time the church has often thought of a website as a place for information. Just put the times of the services, what we believe, when the picnic is, etc. Many sites that I visit haven’t been updated for a long, long time. The Church Web Site needs to looked at as an important part of the overall ministry of the church. It has potential that most churches aren’t even considering.
