The Internet is an amazing place. You need to think of it that way. It’s a worldwide place and in order to utilize the Internet for the Kingdom of God people have to be able to find you. You might have the best site on the Internet but if they can’t find you…no one will know. At Church Growth | Software and Consulting we want to help you utilize the Internet to its fullest potential. We will guide you in starting your own personal blog, starting a church web site if you need one, and getting your church as the one people find when they are searching in your area. We will write at length in the future about starting your own web ministry blog and church web site in the future. Before we do I encourage you to direct your immediate questions to an article at MyNewbieBlog.com about “How to Create a Blog“. This article will help you get a domain name and a web host. Even though this option will cost you somewhere between $90 and $100 a year it will be well worth it because it allows you the most flexibility with your own sites. If that is not possible you can read an article on MyNewbieBlog.com about starting a free blog. There are some limits to what you can do when you use the free blog sites. An immediate advantage to having a domain name and web host (I use GoodNewsDomains.com for both of these services) is that when you sign up you can start as many as 25 different blogs for that initial fee you paid. So for that $90 – $100 a year you can have not just one but up to 25 blogs/websites. If you wonder how this is possible you can read an article about MYSQL on MyNewbieBLog.com called “Adding Additional Blogs for Free“. This site is part of a network of sites I started. The main page of this site is called Internet Pastor Online. The domain for the main site is www.internetpastoronline.com. I paid approximately $100 a year for the domain name and web hosting at GoodNewsDomain.com. I have also started this site, Church Growth | Software and Consulting, it’s actual URL is http://churchgrowthsoftwareconsulting.internetpastoronline.com. That would be virtually impossible for anyone to remember or type in. That isn’t important though. Most people will find this site by doing a search for “Church Growth Software” or Church Growth Consulting“. I also bought a domain name for $10 which is www.churchgrowthblog.com that points to this site. Two other sites are in this Internet Pastor Online network right now. One of them is Web Ministry or http://webministry.internetpastoronline.com (we will use this site to demonstrate how to start your own personal web ministry blog). The other one is Church Web Site or http://churchwebsite.internetpastoronline.com (which we will use to demonstrate how to start a web site for your church). If I ever need to I will purchase easier domain names for those sites but I think they will get plenty of traffic just by people searching for them.
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.
