The 10 Commandments of Church Website Search Engine Optimization

2005 March 21
by MeanDean

One thing you’ll notice in many of my critiques is advice on how to improve a church website’s search engine visibility. While the following list is by no means a magic enumeration that if followed will guarantee you a great Google rank - not doing them is sure to put your website on the bottom of the heap.

When possible, I’ve provided hyperlinks to posts and article on this and/or other sites that will help you figure out how to keep from backsliding into the abyss of search engine invisibility.

  1. You shall have no text other than your church’s name, denomination, city and state correctly spelled in between the <title> tags of your church’s home page.
  2. You shall not make for your self webpage description and keywords meta tags that contain key words that are not related to your church’s ministries, purpose and personality.
  3. You shall have no text other than your church’s name, denomination, city and state correctly spelled in between the <h1> tag in the header of your church’s home page - even if you are using some form of CSS text/image replacement.
  4. Remember to keep your page content compelling, relevant and up-to-date.
  5. Honor your reciprocal links, even if you do it on a page other than your home page.
  6. You shall not create crufty URIs.
  7. You shall not word-stuff.
  8. You shall not forget to include content in the title arguments of your hyperlinks and the alt arguments of your image tags.
  9. You shall not kill well indexed pages.
  10. You shall not covet your neighbors search engine placement; you shall not covet their meta tags; you shall not covet their title tags; you shall not covet their heading tags nor their content.

I promise to bring down from the mountain a much heftier article in the near future (most of it is already written), but its late and I’ve got some other mad-scientist fun to finish before the evening it out.

As with all lists, none of the above is written in stone … that said, if you’ve got an item or a related link to add … leave a comment.

categorized under → Theology

14 Comments leave one →
2005 March 21
Mickey permalink

How exactly do you suggest we use #1? In our case, should it be “Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church - Marietta, GA” or “Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church - Marietta, Georgia”.

Basically, should we spell out the state name or abbreviate it?

2005 March 21
Strategic Digital Outreach permalink

Dean Peters on Search Engine Optimization For Churches

Dean Peters, of Heal Your Church Website, has some great things to say about how churches should optimize their websites to be easily found in search engines. The only thing I might take issue with in his list is his advice to include the church&#82…

Trackback
2005 March 21
Strategic Digital Outreach permalink

Dean Peters on Search Engine Optimization For Churches

Dean Peters, of Heal Your Church Website, has some great things to say about how churches should optimize their websites to be easily found in search engines. The only thing I might take issue with in his list is his advice to include the church&#82…

Trackback
2005 March 21
GodsArmor.com permalink

The 10 Commandments of Church Website Search Engine Optimization

Heal Your Church Website has a great article on the top 10 things you should do so that your church’s website has better search engine placement. Read on for more information. Heal Your Church Web Site: The 10 Commandements of…

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2005 March 21
Tom permalink

Thou shouldst spell check, headlines, at least.
(”Commandment” shall have but one ‘e’.)

*mean dean note* thanks Tom for yanking the plank outta my eye. I did spell check the post, but guess the check didn’t include the title … foo!

2005 March 21
42 permalink

Heal Your Church Web Site: The 10 Commandements of Church Website Search Engine Optimization

This is good: Heal Your Church Web Site: The 10 Commandements of Church Website Search Engine Optimization but I would add one more

Trackback
2005 March 21
Dave Warnock permalink

It is a pity trackbacks are so invisible. Anyway good article. I have added an 11th commandment about domain names in my own post (see the trackback).

Dave

2005 March 21
42 permalink

Heal Your Church Web Site: The 10 Commandments of Church Website Search Engine Optimization

This is good: Heal Your Church Web Site: The 10 Commandments of Church Website Search Engine Optimization but I would add one more

Trackback
2005 March 22
mike bertelsen permalink

Excellent article which offers direction for good church websites.

2005 March 26
Franklin permalink

If this were done by anyone in the news media, they would be attacted by the christian community for cheaping and making light of the Ten Commandments.
Why should non-christians respect the Ten Commandments when it appears christians don’t respect them?

2005 March 27
Mean Dean permalink

Franklin, thanks for the misraelite viewpoint but if this is actually the case then what you’re telling me is that the 10 Commandments are so fragile that a little humor erodes the authority which the deuteronomic enumerations convey … hmmm.

I guess different strokes for different folks - but as for me, I think it is clear that the latter does little to make fun of the former - and I know for a fact has caused some of the agnostic persuasion to actually look them up.

As for not showing the original respect - don’t you think it’d be more in keeping with Jesus’ and Paul’s ministry to get to know me a bit better before declaring me to have no respect for them?

Or are you secretly spying on me? Hmmm … excuse me while I check under the bed for unemployed KBG agents as well.

2005 March 27
Ian permalink

Hi All,

I just put together a pretty thorough article on this topic. If you’re interested it’s available over at:

http://www.userscape.com/blog/2005/03/24/search-engine-optimization/

2005 April 5
Jeff Wilkinson permalink

8b: Thou shalt not make the title of every page be just your church name so that all bookmarks and search engine results have useless titles.

2005 April 22
Ben Fulton permalink

Some additional how-not-tos at my site.

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