The search engines are constantly changing. New sites area being created and shut down every day. More sites are realizing the value of search engine optimization. New strategies for SEO and link building are developed. Even the search engines themselves change as they try to refine their algorithms to produce the most relevant search results.  So, what do you do? Read more…

In our last article in this series we started looking at website analytics and how you can use analytics to track the traffic on your website.  In addition to tracking things like how many visitors you are getting and from where those visitors are coming, most analytics solutions have a feature for tracking your website conversions, an invaluable piece of information.

Online Goals
Every website has a purpose (or at least it should).  In many cases the webmaster wants the visitors to the site to do something.  This may be wanting people to buy a product, download a document, make a donation, submit a contact form, etc.  These are all goals, goals that can usually be tracked by analytics. Read more…

Throughout this series we have compared SEO to trying to loose weight (the SEO Diet).  When trying to loose weight, most people have several aspects to their strategy. They do cardio workouts, aerobics, and weight lifting as well as eating certain foods at certain times.

Now imagine you are dieting and exercising and someone tells you they can tell you exactly which foods are helping you loose weight and which are hurting your weight loss efforts. They can also tell you which exercises are most effective and which you are wasting effort on, not just because they know what tends to work, but because they can monitor exactly how your individual body is being affected by each food choice or exercise.

In the same way, when trying to get more traffic and more conversions through your website, Read more…

Link building is the exercise of SEO.  With a good link building campaign you can improve the rankings of your website and bring new, more competitive keywords into reach.  Links strengthen your website.  So, it’s important to know how many inbound links you have pointing to your website and what pages / keywords may need some more targeting.

There are two things that you track regarding inbound links. Read more…

Search ranking reports are critical to any SEO campaign.  With search ranking reports you can track the progress of your SEO work and find insights into ways you can increase your search traffic even more.

The primary way most people track the results of search engine optimization is by running search ranking reports. These reports tell you where your website is currently ranking in the major search engines for your targeted keywords. The reports themselves don’t affect your rankings, but they do give you insight into the effect of the work you have done and what areas you may need to improve on.

Let’s say when you first started the optimization process, you decided to target some less competitive keywords because your website was new and you wanted to start getting more website traffic as soon as possible.
As part of your plan, you targeted those keywords with both the on-page optimization as well as Read more…

I was thinking about SEO and the importance of running reports and tracking metrics when it struck me that it’s very similar to trying to loose weight.

Optimization and link building are like diet and exercise.  Through your diet you fine tune the foods that you eat focusing on the healthier foods that help your body to run well.  At the same time, you exercise, building up your bodies strength and ability to perform. Read more…

You’ve performed keyword research. You optimized your website for the search engines. You have even started a link building campaign to gain untold numbers of relevant, inbound links. So, you’re done right? Wrong. It’s time to see the effects of all this work, re-evaluate the optimization, and plan your next move.

Tracking the progress and effects of the SEO work you are doing is critical to the success of your SEO church marketing.  So, what are the important things you need to be tracking and how do you track them?

Read more in our newly updated CMO University article series:

Church SEO Tracking and Reporting Read more…

The purpose of your church’s website is to have an online presence for your ministry. Link building is a way to increase that online presence, to reach more people, and expand your ministry.  If you aren’t pursuing search engine optimization, including a link building strategy, you are not utilizing your church’s website to it’s fullest.  In fact, you may only be use a fraction of it’s potential. Read more…

All links are NOT created equal.  There are many aspects to links that affect the value (or lack there of) of any particular link.  We’ve already talked about link authority and reputation.  In this article we’ll take a look at some other basic facts of link building that you should be aware of as you develop your link building strategy. Read more…