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
Recommended
