“You need to make sure your church’s website is known to all the right search engines using all of the right key words. Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t know how to get into these search engines and don’t know what key words are. This isn’t taught in seminary.” — Thomas Dolan, Christianity Today
When we started OurChurch.Com back in 1996, we spent most of our time explaining to church leaders what the Internet is and trying to convince them that a website is an affordable, effective way to communicate both with members and potential visitors to the church.
Thankfully, we’ve come a long way in 11+ years. Today the question for most church leaders is not “Do we need a website?” but rather “How can we make the best use of our website?”
Yet, ask a pastor or even the director of communications at a large church, “Have you ever checked your websites search rankings?” or “Has your church website been optimized for search engines?” and you’re likely to get a blank stare.
If that describes you, don’t be embarrassed. And don’t worry…
Church Marketing Online University is here to serve as an educational resource to pastors and church leaders who see the potential for the Internet to be used for church evangelism, outreach and marketing online but don’t have to time to sort through thousands of secular search marketing websites and try to apply the principles to church ministry.
Our search marketing staff lives on the cutting edge of search engine technology every day. Not only are we constantly reading articles and discussing the latest developments in the ever-changing search marketing industry, but because we are doing search marketing for dozens Christian organizations we are constantly making new observations, testing new technology, and separating the wheat from the chafe. All of our staff are committed Christ-followers, leaders in their churches, and passionate about seeing local churches better use the Internet to reach the people in their communities.
Over the coming weeks and months we will be publishing in-depth articles explaining in plain English how search engines and other Internet technologies work. We’ll address some Internet myths and misunderstandings. And we’ll show you how you can leverage your website to reach more people in your community than you thought possible.
Not all blog articles on Church Marketing Online will be CMO University articles. We’ll also be linking to and commenting on other articles related to online church marketing and posting shorter off-the-cuff type articles. But the CMO University articles will serve as the cornerstone for this site.
We hope you’ll subscribe to the RSS feed or by email. And we hope you’ll enhance the learning environment by posting comments and questions.
