When I talk with people about their goals for their website this year, a lot of people tell me they want more visitors or they want to be on the first page of the search results for a certain keyword.
Seriously?
That’s your goal?
A top 10 search ranking or more website visitors is going to make your year?
Let’s put this into perspective…
Unless your ultimate goal is to be an online celebrity, better search rankings and more website visitors are just a means to an end.
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To clarify, there’s nothing wrong with having goals related to improving search rankings or increasing website traffic. In fact, we at OurChurch.com have goals for these things. But they should be secondary goals.
Your primary (most important) online goals should be directly related to your organization’s overall goals (mission).
To illustrate this, let’s look at a practical example. This example is going to use concepts from the 4 types of goals, so if you’re not familiar with them, I suggest you take a few minutes to read that article now.
Let’s say you’re a part of a church, and one of your church’s objective goals this year is to have more people from your community gather with you for Sunday worship.
To accomplish that objective, you might set 2 project goals:
- Optimize your website for search
- Claim, verify, and optimize your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business listing)
To accomplish that objective, you might also set 2 process goals:
- Email one member of our congregation each week to ask them to post a review to your Google Business Profile
- Post the sermon notes and audio to the website each week.
You might also set some numerical goals like:
- Get into the top 10 in Google for “church in [your city]” by the end of the year
- Increase the number of reviews on our Google My Business listing by 25 this year
- Increase the number of unique visitors to our website by 25% this year
These are all good goals, but none of them tells you whether these projects and processes are helping you meet your church’s objective goal to have more people from your community gather with you for Sunday worship.
The primary goal should be something like: 50 people who found us online visit a Sunday service this year
If you have an issue with churches setting outcome/metrics goals, it doesn’t have to be a specific number, however, it’s still valuable to know how many new people have found your church online so you can see to what extent God is using and blessing those efforts.
To be able to track how many people find your church online and visit on a Sunday, you’ll have to create a system for asking visitors how they heard about your church (connection cards?) which is another project. And you’ll have to implement a tracking process (each week asking visitors to fill out a connection card, collect them, track the results in a spreadsheet).
The same principle applies to other types of organizations…
If your organization is a school, your primary online goal might be something like: 20 new students enrolled in our school after their parents found us online.
If your organization is a business, your primary online goal might be something like: generate $100,000 of revenue from new customers who heard about us through our website
This may seem like a lot of work, but…
If you’re not tracking the offline results of your online marketing, how do you know how effective that online marketing is?
I want to challenge you this year to do that: track the offline results of your online marketing.
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If you’re interested in getting some help with track your offline results and improving your search marketing, we would love to chat with you.
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Post a comment and share…
- Are you tracking the offline results of your online marketing? What are your REAL online goals for this year?
Continue reading… How to set and reach your goals in 2026!
Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com
Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.
An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.
Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication.
