Ben Crothers | 14 Nov 2009

I am a

user experience designer/

business consultant

I really enjoy

helping churches online/anything 2.0/painting

Work: PTG Global as a Senior Consultant

Blog: catchmedia.com.au

Twitter: @bencrothers

Search engine optimisation (SEO) =

getting your website higher in organic search

engine results based on its relevance according

to the keywords searched for, and how the

search engine indexes results

Search engine marketing (SEM) =

Paying money on keyword-based campaigns to

get your website higher in paid search engine

results, based on keyword bidding

Three areas to focus on for optimisation:

The code

The content

Link popularity

Why do you want people to come to your

website?

Specific answers help make SEO efficient. e.g.

your church:

Is the best one for a certain range of suburbs

Is well-known for excellent sermons

Is passionate about holding community events

Has great worship music and kids' groups

Recommended to use a content management

system (CMS) for group authoring and

consistency, but bear in mind:

Standards-compliant code?

Access to title tags and meta tags?

Full access to all content throughout?

Allow for keyword-rich website addresses (URLs),

instead of www.church.org.au/?x=7&y=huh?

Recommended: Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress

Check website traffic reports or Google

Analytics

Ask around your congregation

Some words you use may not be what others

on the outside use

Use keyword suggestion tools

Google Adwords Keyword Tool:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Use most (all if you can) keywords on

home page

Use keywords throughout text of each page,

especially in headings, sub-headings and

link text

Be careful of keyword density: 2% to 8%

Keyword Density Check Tool: www.linkvendor.com/seo-

tools/keyword-density.html

<title> tags, e.g.

'Family-friendly church in the inner west –

Drummoyne Presbyterian Church'

Not 'Home'

Meta tags, including description and keywords

Alt attributes in image tags, e.g.

'Church front door': good

'Front door of our church, replaced after a fire in

1948': better

Register other domains that include your

keywords and point them to your main website

e.g. www.drummoynechurch.com

Make URLs to specific pages rich in keywords

e.g. www.drummoyne.org.au/drummoyne-church-

events.html

Google is big enough to find you

Register with other search engines and

directory websites

DMOZ – www.dmoz.org

startlocal – www.startlocal.com.au

TrueLocal – www.truelocal.com.au

Getting other websites to link to yours, to

increase your website's link popularity

Website relevance = number of inbound links

But not all links are equal...

PageRank

= how important Google thinks a page is

compared to all other pages

Number between 1 and 10

Derived from:

Number of inbound links to the page

The PageRank of those pages that link

Relevance of words searched for on those pages

Number of actual visits to that page

How do you get inbound links?

Foster relationships with community websites

Encourage church members to link from blogs,

Facebook and Twitter

Donate content to other websites for links back

Tweet like crazy with diverse hashtags

Leave comments on other blogs (respectfully)

with links back to your website

Tune up your SEO like a car

'Rules of the game' change over time, and your

website's content focus will change over time

Check on which websites are linking to yours

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-popularity-checker.shtml

http://www.google.com/analytics

Paid tracking and reporting service:

Raven SEO Tools

http://raven-seo-tools.com/

Hire someone skilled in web development,

standards-compliance and SEO/M

Once-off SEO assessment and recommendations

Once-off optimisation with guidelines

DIY SEM? Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can

be time-consuming, distracting, and potentially

profitless

Ben Crothers

Blog: catchmedia.com.au

Twitter: @bencrothers

See also:

Google guidelines:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Yahoo! guidelines:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/index.html