The Top 7 Reasons Your Church Shouldn’t Link Build
There are a lot of churches that don’t do anything to build links for their website. They all have great reasons…or so they think. But I’d suggest that link building is worth doing for every church. So, here are 7 of the top reasons why churches think they shouldn’t be link building and why those reasons may not be accurate.- It’s Too Hard:
One of the biggest reasons that people don’t engage in a link campaign is that they think it will be too hard. Yes, there are some strategies that are more difficult, but there are other strategies that are relatively simple. Asking your members to link to the church site is pretty simple. The same is true with making sure you have a link on your denomination headquarter’s website. There several link building strategies - It takes too much time.
Again, link building can be very time consuming. After all if you are manually searching for websites, finding their contact info, emailing them and calling them, it could take forever. So, if time is a concern, don’t do that kind of link building. Instead find a strategy that doesn’t take much or any additional time. One possibility is to start a member run blog. Do you have members of your church who would like to share their thoughts about God in short articles. Let them blog about it on your church site. They will find it rewarding, their readers will enjoy/learn from it, and good articles will get links. - It’s too expensive.
There are plenty of link building strategies that won’t cost you a dime. You can offer online materials like Bible studies and devotionals. I assume your Pastor gives a sermon each week, post that sermon to a blog or podcast. There are many other link building strategies that don’t cost money and can be done with little time cost. 
We wouldn’t even know where to start.
Sure you do…right here. Go though the CMO University series on link building staring with, “Link Building for Church Marketing“. Comment below if you have any questions 😉- Link building is not very important.
The Internet is a vast opportunity for ministry. In some cases how well you rank for certain keywords can effect people’s lives here on earth and eternally. Link building may be the only way you can rank well for those keywords. That sounds pretty important to me. Still not sure? Here’s an article that I offer up as some food for thought, “The High Stakes of SEO for the Kingdom of God.” - Our website stinks.
That may be, but there is a solution to that. Fix up your website. You don’t have to have the most amazing website in the world, just a decent looking site that has good content as is kept up to date. If this isn’t the case for your site now, I would strongly suggest that having a decent website for your church a necessity these days. - Our Pastor doesn’t know what a Tweet is and certainly doesn’t understand link building.
Well, it’s a good thing that the church isn’t just the Pastor 😉 I’m sure you have plenty of people in your church who can or do understand link building and can help. For some of those people they may want to help the ministry, but currently feel like there isn’t a ministry that suits them. This could be just what they are looking for.
So, yes, it can be hard and time consuming to run an effective link building campaign, but it doesn’t have to be. There are a lot of ways to get links relative easily, inexpensively, and without taking a lot of time. Since link building can really lead to people finding your church’s website and having their lives changed or saved, I think it’s worth doing.
Let’s finish up this series with some final thoughts on link building.
Photos by sheriffmitchell and PhotoJonny
Is your church link building?
If not, what reasons has your church come up with for not link building and do you still think they are valid reasons?
