In part 3 of our series, the Ultimate Guide to Church SEO, we discussed the 3 Ways to Improve Church Search Engine Results. One of those three ways is by improving your position in the organic search results.
Google’s search algorithm looks at more than 200 different factors to produce its search results. A person could spend years analyzing and optimizing all those factors, so in this article we’re going to focus on the factors that are most important so you can make the best use of your time.
Before we get to the specific ranking factors, it’s important to understand the general concept of how Google ranks websites for each search query (or keyword).
Relevance x Authority = Search Ranking
All 200+ search ranking factors can be put into one of two categories – relevance or authority.
Relevance
Relevance is how closely related a web page is to the search query. Search engines look at the text, headings and other elements on a web page to determine what that page is about, and how closely related it is to a search query.
Authority
Authority is how reliable, reputable and important a web page is. Search engines look at which other sites are linking to or mentioning a website, the quality level of the content on the website, and the reputation of the person writing the content.
If a web page’s content is not related to a particular keyword, no matter how high its authority, Google is not going to show it in the search results.
If a web page is closely related to a certain keyword but has low authority, Google will display it in the search results after web pages that are also relevant to the keyword but have more authority.
Therefore, for a web page to rank well in the search results for a keyword it must be very relevant and have more authority than other relevant web pages.
Church Keywords to Target
Before you can optimize any web page, you have to know what keyword(s) you want to make the page more relevant for. We call these your target keywords.
For Christian businesses and ministries, to determine which keywords to target, it’s important to do keyword research to compare how often various keywords are searched for and how hard it is to rank for each keyword being considered.
Initially, churches can usually skip this step, because there are 4 keywords that are far more popular than any other:
- Churches in [your city]
- [your city] churches
- [your city] church
If there are cities with the same name in other states, then your top keyword might be “churches in [your city, your state]” or “churches in [your city, state abbreviation].”
If your church includes people from multiple cities you can also try to target “churches in [adjacent city].” When we work with churches, we usually don’t target more than 2 adjacent cities because in our experience, it is difficult to fit all those keywords into the various parts of the web page that can be optimized.
Some churches also choose target keywords related to their denomination or style of church like “Baptist church in [your city]” or “multicultural church in [your city],” but a lot fewer people search for these keywords.
“Church near me”
Note that today, many people also search for “church near me” and “churches near me” but this is a unique case which search engines handle differently. We do not recommend targeting “for me” keywords by adding “for me” to on-page content.
We talk more about improving rankings for “for me” keywords in our article about Local SEO.
Expanding Your Targeted Keywords
While we recommend initially targeting keywords specifically related to “church,” it’s also a great strategy to target keywords related to services, events, and ministries your church offers that people in your community may be searching for, things like “food pantry,” “recovery ministry,” and “activities for seniors.”
This is a more advanced aspect of church SEO which we’ll address in a future article.
Church SEO to Improve Relevance
Once you know what keywords you want to target, the next step is to try to use these keywords into the parts of the web page that can be optimized. We refer to this step as “on-page optimization.”
We recommend optimizing the following page elements:
- Title tag – This title is hidden from visitors but read by search engines and usually used as the name of the organization in search results.
- Meta description tag – This description is hidden from visitors but read by search engines and usually used as the description in the search results.
- H1 tag – The largest heading on the page
- H2 tag – The second largest heading on the page
- Text – Regular text on the page can be modified to include targeted keywords several times, but it’s important to remember that your primary audience is still human readers. Don’t make sound awkward for the sake of SEO. And don’t overdo it.
- Image alt and title attributes – Images can be given alt and title attributes that are read by screen readers for the visually impaired and search engines.
- Header/footer – One of the easiest and most important things you can do to improve relevance is to include the name of your church and its address in the header or footer of your website so it appears on every page of your website.
Church SEO to Improve Authority
Improving the authority of a website is much more difficult and time consuming than improving its relevance. For this reason, we always improve a website’s relevance first before we start working to improve its authority.
Here are some things that can be done to improve a website’s authority.
SSL certificate
An SSL certificate encrypts data sent to and from a website. Google gives websites with an SSL certificate a small rankings boost.
Links
When one website links to another website, Google sees that as an endorsement of the linked-to site. Generally speaking the more sites that link to your website the better your search rankings.
However, the authority of sites linking to your site also matters. A link on high-authority site like your local newspaper is going to help your website’s authority much more than a link from a low-authority personal blog, but both are helpful.
Local/directory listings
Getting your church listed in directories like YellowPages and church-related directories, is an easy way to get links to your website on high-authority sites. We’ll discuss link building and directory listings in more detail later in this series.
Quality content (aka E.E.A.T)
A website with a lot of well written articles is more of an authority than a website with 7 pages that talk about the church and what it does. This is one of the reasons blogging and posting sermon notes both help improve search rankings.
In recent years, Google has been emphasizing E.E.A.T., which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google sees a page as having more authority when the author shares unique stories and insight that come from personal experiences because these are things that are hard to for AI to fake and their uniqueness stands out from all the AI slop being published today.
Social media
While sharing links in social media does not directly help improve authority and search rankings, the more people who are aware of your website, content and events, the more people will post links to your website and mention it, and that does have an impact.
With this guidance you should be able to optimize your church website and improve its organic search rankings. After all…
If your church wants to reach people online, those people need to be able to find your church website.
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Effective, Time-Saving Church SEO
OurChurch.com has helped hundreds of churches optimize their websites, connect with more people online, and reach people in their community.
If you want to save time and effort and make sure it’s done well, consider letting our church SEO team at OurChurch.com take care of this for you. We’d love to talk with you about your church and its outreach goals!
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- What comments and questions do you have about improving your church’s organic search rankings?
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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.
