Google has announced that listings in Google Maps will now include descriptive phrases associated with the listing.

“Google Maps search results in the U.S. and Great Britain will include some of the phrases which are most frequently used to describe those places. These phrases come from sources all across the web, such as reviews, web pages and other online references, and they can help people quickly identify the characteristics that make a particular place unique.” Read more…

Last week I wrote about what factors are most important in local church SEO.  Yesterday, I wrote a related article over at the Christian SEO Guys blog looking at the top 10 things to avoid in local SEO.  These principles absolutely apply to church SEO.

Some of the things mentioned are: Read more…

Local SEO is crucial for churches.  Churches and ministries who aren’t doing SEO are missing out on new visitors and hindering their ministry efforts.  So, what do you need to do to get your church to show up in the local search results? Read more…

I came across an article from Chip Wheeler, “Top Ten Ways to Connect to Your Community“, that I thought had some great concepts.  Chip’s focus is on church planting and most of his 10 ways are primarily off-line in how he talks about them, but many of these ideas can be applied online as well.  Here are some ideas… Read more…

“These people are a bunch of hypocrites.”

“The people are a bunch of stuck-up snobs.”

When talking about listings and reviews for churches the comment always comes out, “We don’t feel comfortable with just anyone being able to post a review.  They might post something negative.”  The fear is that someone who had a bad experience at the church will post some rant about the church on one of these review sites or perhaps someone who doesn’t have any connection to the church at all, but just doesn’t like Christians will post some false story.  It’s an understandable fear, but I think it’s one that we must get over. Read more…

If you could get new people to visit your church with just a few minutes work, would you?  This is the question you can present to your congregation, because each of them can help to bring in new visitors to your church by taking just a few minutes to post a couple positive reviews in your church’s online listings.

Positive online reviews can have a huge impact both on local search rankings and getting people to visit your church.  So, here are…

5 Ways To Get Members To Post Reviews: Read more…

Are you loosing visitors before they even walk through the church doors?  Most churches are and here’s why…

One of the most powerful types marketing messages is a recommendation.  We often think of these recommendati0ns as happening in person, but thanks to reviews, they don’t have to be.  These local review sites like City Search and Yelp, as well as the local listings in Google , Yahoo, and Bing, all give people the ability to rate an organization and leave a review.

A good review takes a listing to a whole new level.  Now you are not just letting people know about your church, you are including a recommendation.  This makes people much more likely to decide to visit.  It also can give people a glimpse into the personality of your church as the reviews talk about the different aspects of your church and its ministries and their effects on people’s lives.  It gives your members the opportunity to tell people about your church.  If you do not have positive reviews on your church’s listings (if you even have listings), then you are loosing visitors before they even step into your church. Read more…

Your church is local, so shouldn’t your listings be local?  All the major search engines now have local listings.  Google has Google Places, Yahoo has Yahoo Maps, and Bing has Bing Local.  In addition, there are a slew of local review sites like CitySearch, Yelp, and Insider Pages as well as several Internet Yellow Pages, like yp.com.  These are all places where people can search for churches in a specific city or geographic location and these are all places where your church should be listed.

So, How Popular Is Local Search?
According to an article from USAToday, “ComScore has Yelp attracting 26.1 million users, followed by YP.com at 24.8 million, Idearc’s Superpages at 17.3 million, Citysearch’s 14.3 million and Yahoo Local’s 13.3 million visitors.” Comscore also indicates that Google got 178 million visitors and Google says that 20% of their traffic is local searches.  So, that puts Google’s local search traffic at 35.6 million visitors.  That’s a lot of search traffic. Read more…

We have updated the CMO University article, “How People Find a New Church“.

Your church probably already has a website.  Are you using the website to bring new visitors to your church?  If you are not being intentional about it, you may be missing out on a lot of visitors.

In this article we look at how local search has replaced many of the old ways people used to look for a new church, like using a phone book.

http://churchmarketingonline.com/2008/04/how-people-find-a-new-church/

Are you tracking your church’s search visibility?

How is your church doing in the search engines?

Photo by IITA Image Library

While the Christian church reaches around the globe and seeks to expand into every nation, city and tribe, the church has always been fundamentally local. The local church knows the people in the town. The local church is best able to meet the needs of their local community. The local church has most of it’s influence in it’s own city. Read more…