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…

“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…

We’ve looked at what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, setting up your website to make it readable by the search engines and so that it tells the search engines what your website is about by targeting specific keywords. So, what is local SEO? Local SEO is optimization of your website both targeting keywords with local modifiers (ie: churches in Trinity, FL) and with the intent of telling the search engines where your church/business/organization is. As a church with a specific location, local SEO is important for bringing new visitors to your church through your website. Read more…