Church SEO: 9 SEO Best Practices You Can Do Today

Your church already has a website. However, your members are the only ones who visit it. Your church website is simply not getting the traffic you expect.

This is a common problem that can be fixed with simple church SEO best practices. The Goal: get your church to appear on the first page of results when someone searches for churches in your particular location.

You can easily attract members and potential members to your church’s website with a small amount of SEO work.

9 Church SEO Best Practices

1. Include Location Details

A person searching for a church will enter three elements in a search engine. These are the name of the city/state, the denomination and the word “church”. If your website lists only one city, it won’t rank well in search results. To ensure that it appears on all pages, include the name of the city and any denomination in your header and footer. It is a good idea to include your location in your schema. Your location is one of the key keywords that you should optimize for your site.

2. Use Specific Keywords

First, use keywords naturally on your church website. Keywords and phrases people will use to find your website are best. To get the best results, use keywords in specific areas such as:

• • • Titles of pages
    • Headers
    • Within body text
    • Within meta description
    • Image Alt Tags

3. Add Local Listings and Directories

Your church’s website is not the only place people can find you. You can list your church online, including hours and reviews. These listing sites and directories are a great place for you to list your website so that people can learn more about your church.

While you don’t need to use every site, updating details on some of the top local listing sites helps with your church SEO.

4. Include Image Names & Alt Tags

Images can help your church website with SEO performance but they should not be named “stock-img-82937.jpg”. Name the image with a keyword that is relevant to it. This post might name the image “church SEO best practices.” Google will then crawl the images and improve the post/page ranking.

5. Use Responsive Design

Google prioritizes responsively designed websites in their search results.

A responsive church website design is a great way to improve your church’s SEO. See if your church website meets Google’s requirements here: Google Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

6. Create Content Regularly

If you don’t have a blog on your church website then you are missing out on loads of potential traffic. Every church website should have a blog. Every church serious about SEO should update their blog regularly. Adding new content on a regular basis keeps visitors coming back, which is key to having them go from “church searchers” to church members.

7.  Include Church Service Details

You now know the importance of adding location details for better SEO performance, but that’s not the only information that helps your website. People also want details about your services, even if they are not in your area. Google might also be able to find your worship hours. People are more likely to choose one of the other churches if there are multiple churches in the vicinity that list their hours.

To get the best results, include all church hours in your header and footer. It makes your site easier to find for visitors, and search engines find it more easily.

8. Include Testimonials

Before they attend a church, people want to see what others think. Reviews and testimonials are a great way to find out what others think about a church. These may sound like something only for businesses, but they can be used by churches as well. Ask your members to give testimonials about their experiences. When someone searches for “city/denomination church reviews,” your church will appear in the results.

9. Add a Google Map

Include an embedded Google Map (with a marker of your local church) on your church website contact page.

How to add a Google Map to your church website:

1. Search for your church in Google Maps
2. Click SHARE, copy the code from Embed map
3. Paste the code into your Contact Page on your church CMS (website)

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