Link Building for Church Marketing

Link Building for Churches


(Updated 4/20/2011)

If optimizing a website is like giving your car a tune up, link building is like putting in a bigger engine. Simply put, there are going to be keywords that are out of your reach if all you do is on-page optimization, especially if your church is in a large city or having church ministries targeting competitive keywords, like “unplanned pregnancy”, Link building is needed to bring those keywords into your grasp.

Links are like votes for your website. The more votes your website gets, the more important the search engines think your site is. That causes then to move you up in the search results for the keywords you are targeting and can get you ranking well for keywords you can’t currently rank well for. So, what is link building and how do you do it? Read on my friend.

What is Link Building?
Simply put, link building is anything and everything you do to get people to link back to your site. You want someone to put a link on their site that leads to your site. These are known as inbound links. There are many strategies out there for how to link build, but in the end, the goal is the same: get as many links as possible, especially from relevant sites.

How Does Link Building Work?

Link Authority:
As I mentioned above, every link to your site is like a vote or recommendation from another site.  Generally speaking, the more votes the better, but not all links are created equal.  The value of a link is primarily determined by the authority of the page the link is on.  Think of it like a restaurant review.  If I tell you that Sid’s Diner is great, that recommendation has may be nice, but I’m not very important in the restaurant world, so you may not care much what I think.  On the other hand, if Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse or Curtis Stone said Sid’s Diner was great, you’d probably go there tonight.

The search engines treat links in a similar way.  Links from more authoritative pages are given more weight and can give your page more authority.  So, links on pages which themselves have a lot of inbound links are worth more than links from pages with very few inbound links pointing to them.

link reputationLink Reputation:
The second part of the link is the link text.  When you get a link from a site, if that link has link text which includes the keyword you are trying to target, then that link will help with your page’s “reputation” for that keyword.  The more inbound links a page of your site has that have your keyword in the link text, the more likely your page is to rank well for that keyword.  So, it’s better to have links with keyword rich link text, than keywords with your church name or no text at all, i.e. image links.

Tip: If you do want to use image links, be sure to setup an alt tag for the image.  It’s not as effective as link text, but it’s better than nothing.  Better yet, have your graphic and then some text below which are all part of the same link.

When Should Your Church Build Links?
Link building isn’t really an optional part of church marketing.  With more and more competition on the web every day, link building has become an important part of every search engine optimization strategy.  So, when should your church start building links?  Today…and then every day after.  Otherwise you are limiting the effectiveness of your online church marketing.

Now that we’ve established what link building is all about, let’s look at some ways to develop your church’s link building strategy.

Photos by ExeterAnna and krossbow

How important do you think link building is for churches?

About the author

Kurt Steinbrueck

8 Comments

  • Link Building is huge for any website, but especially for churches. Targeting "Your City Churches" or "Your City Church" as a keyword, puts you well above the rest of the churches in the area, when people search on google for a church when they are moving to a new city.

  • I have found that it is really easy to get churches listed on DMOZ and other directories. But more often than not, if you get on a city listing of local churches, the scrapers will pick it up and your site will appear all over the net.

    Make some graphics and link code for your youth to put on their profiles. Make it easy for people to link.

  • Henry, you're right. There are a lot of SEO's out there with a lot of different opinions and methods, but that can be a good thing. Different people and organizations are suited for different methods. I know one guys who calls on the phone organizations to try to get links. I know a lot of other people who would absolutely dread cold-calling companies like that.

    So, look for the solutions that will work best for you and your organization, though always keep an eye out for risky or spammy methods.

  • Link building is important for the website, the links are helping to get more and more traffic for the website and as well as maintain the website rank in search results. The links can be built from the different way link submitting the content article on the guest posting or article submission. You have greater knowledge about the link building, thanks Kurt Steinbrueck for sharing the importance of link building with us.

  • I absolutely saying this look here article, really it is for students development based and knowledgeable points site. I would like to thank you for your site, it is my inspiration thank you keep it up.

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