• Cape Coral Florida Churches
• Clearwater Florida Churches
• Florida Keys Churches
• Gainesville Florida Churches
• Lakeland Florida Churches
• Ocala Florida Churches
• Fresno California Churches
• Fremont California Churches
• Oceanside California Churches
• Springfield Oregon Churches
• Hillsboro Oregon Churches
• Salem Oregon Churches
• Federal Way Washington Churches
• Flagstaff Arizona Churches
• Glendale Arizona Churches
• Scottsdale Arizona Churches
• Tempe Arizona Churches
• Gilbert Arizona Churches

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.

• 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.

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.

The Church Growth Software side has great potential. I have several sites that I use for Online Ministry. It is a blessing to me that people from all over the world visit these sites and open up avenues for ministry that go far beyond my own church walls.

My main Online Ministry Site is called Internet Pastor Online. People come to the site everyday by doing keyword searches for “Internet Pastor” or “Pastor Online” or “Online Pastor”. They come to the site for prayer and for advice. They watch and listen to Bible Studies. It has already more than exceeded my expectations.

In this series of articles I am going to talk about putting together a complete online ministry. I am going to document the process from beginning to end. It will incorporate not only the church web site and Pastor’s blog we have been talking about, but add ministry areas for online missions and evangelism as well. I hope you will enjoy the process.

• Starting a Church Web Site – Part 1
• Starting a Church Web Site – Part 2
• Starting a Church Web Site – Part 3
• Starting a Church Web Site – Part 4
• Starting a Church Web Site – Part 5

You can also visit the actual Church Web Site to read the articles that are written there and see the site at work, or visit Florida Keys Vineyard Churches which also uses the same theme.

The Church Web Site

In order to demonstrate what it takes to start a church web site we have created an actual web site called Church Web Site. By reading the articles here on Church Growth | Software and Consulting and on Church Web Site you should have plenty of information to get an attractive, fully functional web site up and running in a very short time. This site will include a Church Blog, a Prayer Requests page, a page for Audio Sermons, a page for Video Sermons, a Donate page, a Calendar page and more.

It went from being in the fourth position to not showing up anywhere in the search. You might ask what happened? Good question. This often happens to brand new sites. Most people on the Internet refer to this as the Google sandbox. The term refers to all the new sites being stuck in a sandbox and not being allowed to play with the older sites. Google denies that there is such a thing as a sandbox. They say it is all in the algorithms they use. I think there is a sandbox. I understand the reasoning. If you have a site up that you have worked on for a long time it could be very annoying to have someone come in and by using some SEO tricks get ranked better than your site. A lot of people put up spam sites that are just about making money and this practice by Google of sandboxing does help keep the integrity of the search. I wasn’t sure that it would happen to this site because the keyword “Florida Keys Churches” isn’t all that popular but it happened. I have had it happen before with another site. The sandbox can last anywhere from 3 months to a year. Then the site should come out and be pretty quickly restored to where it should be. Not every site ends up in the sandbox. I think that allows Google to have some deniability about the whole thing. So what do you do? You finish getting your site ready and then you wait. I still need to write a couple of posts for the site. I am going to change the theme to something a little more tropical. Then I am going to wait on Google.

What to do While we Wait

While I wait I am going to do some other things. I am going to start a handful of sites like “Florida Keys Churches” for some other cities around Florida. I want to see what it takes to outrank some of the directories that show up in the searches. I also want to see if all of them or just some of them get sandboxed. I will use my free MYSQL databases to start these sites so it wont cost me anything except a little time. As far as Church Growth | Software and Consulting, I am going to demonstrate how to start a blog and begin working on how to start a church web site as well. Stay tuned!

Getting Noticed on the Internet

The reality of getting noticed on the Internet is that people have to find you when they search. People “Google” everything nowadays. What turns up when people search is where they go. For example, at our church we have a great web site that is put together by a great webmaster. The only drawback to our current site is that people only find it when they are looking just for it or already know the URL (web address). What I am going to do is a start a simple blog site that people can find and then point them to my conventional site. I might be able to accomplish this by using Google Adwords but that could get expensive. So I started a site a few days ago called “Florida Keys Churches“.

I am utilizing a free MYSQL (read Adding Additional Blogs for Free if you don’t know what a MYSQL is). I did purchase a domain name for $9.49 at GoodNewsDomains.com which I pointed at the site. The domain name is www.floridakeyschurches.com. So for $9.49 a year I have a blog/web site running. I plan on getting this site up to the top of the Google results when people search for “Florida Keys Churches”. Once I get the site ranked I will put a link to our church which will accomplish my goal.

So How Do I Get my Site Noticed?

We are starting from absolute zero here. It will take time and effort to get the site where it needs to be. I did some searches today to see what I am up against. My Google search for “Florida Keys Churches” brought up these results:

I looked to see what the top two results are all about. The top response is a directory.

A little research tells me some important information about the page:

The home page of this page has a PageRank of 4 and has 2,490 links. That is important information. We need to get our site ranked above that site. We have a little lee way because we are going to be very specific with our keyword “Florida Keys Churches”, but it is going to take some work to get the top spot. Let’s look at number two:

Another generic directory. Let’s get a little more information about this site:

This home page for this site has a PageRank of 2 and 861 links.

First Things First

Right now Google doesn’t even realize that “Florida Keys Churches” exists. I know because I did a search for the site by typing in it’s exact URL (web address) in the Google search bar. Here is what the results were:

Talk about starting from no where! Here is what I am going to do. Over then next couple of weeks I am going to write about 5 posts of about 300 words and put them on “Florida Keys Churches“. I am also going to get 5 church type blogs to link to my site. In the meantime I will keep checking to see when Google finds the site. This can take a day or a month. Once they find the site we will see where it ranks and then we will do what we have to to move it up. While we wait we will start working on our personal web ministry blogs and our church web site. If you don’t want to miss what happens sign up for the free RSS feed or email subscription.