Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 If you want your church to be found online, local SEO is the key and who knows local SEO better than Google themselves. In today's episode, we're gonna dig through five tips, right from Google on how your church can improve your local SEO rankings. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the reach, right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me as always as my co-host Ian Hyatt, we're here to help your church see more visitors and grow. Hey guys, welcome to the reach right. Podcast episode number 109. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host
Speaker 3 00:01:07 Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:08 Hey, Ian, man. I'm excited to talk today. We're gonna be talking about, uh, expert tips from Google about how you can boost your local search engine ranks, uh, specifically for churches. That's what we do here at reach ride. Yeah. As we help churches do these things and, uh, we're gonna take it right from the horse's mouth today and give our audience some tips, uh, that they can run with on how we can boost our local search engine rankings there. So should be a good conversation, I think.
Speaker 3 00:01:34 Yeah. Key word local. I'm I'm glad you stressed and emphasized local because, uh, most churches now, though, you know, since the pandemic we're focused on, we can reach, we can expand our reach from beyond local, a lot more online than ever before. Right. But I would say, you know, churches still churches are meeting again, all of that. I don't even need to say that anymore. I don't know why I say it still, but you know, they're meeting again and they still wanna reach people in their local community for not just visiting in person, but just for obvious reasons. Just why a, uh, same reason why a business wants to reach a local business wants to reach someone locally there too, right?
Speaker 0 00:02:12 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get there. There's lots of different, I guess, um, areas you can focus on when it comes to search engine optimization and trying to grow a church, uh, using some of those tools. Yeah. Um, we help churches with the Google grant, which gives $10,000 a month in free advertising. Right? That's a great one to focus on. You could focus on organic search engine results. So that's reaching people all over the country, uh, by creating a lot of great content on your side and really focusing on that and making it keyword focused. But I would say the most important one for churches because by and large churches are still very local organizations, right. That exist and do their best work in a specific community community. It's been that way since the beginning. It still is that way today. I think that local search engine optimization, that's the one to focus on.
Speaker 0 00:03:02 And just to be, uh, crystal clear about what we mean, this is when someone does a search on Google. Yeah. This is usually those top three rankings with a little map pin and it shows them on the map. Uh, so it shows if someone were to search for churches near me or anything plumbers near me or Austin restaurants near me or whatever it would be, it would show what Google thinks are the three best results that the person would be most interested in. And it shows that with a little map in the corner and it shows the pins and it kind of lists those top three or four. Uh, that's what we're talking about is getting on that list of three or four. I think it's so important for churches. Anytime someone is new to an area or looking for a church they're gonna put in a search like that, churches near me, churches in Honolulu, uh, wherever it would be.
Speaker 0 00:03:50 And that's what they're gonna see first in most cases it's gonna be those results there. So if we were to emphasize one form of search engine optimization to focus on, it would definitely be local search. Agreed. Yep. Agreed. Agreed. Sure. Cool. Good. So I guess before we get into those tips from Google, I think it's important that we maybe discuss the primary ranking factors. So what is it that Google, what, what are the, what, what do they use to determine where your church is going to rank on those local searches there? So how do they decide who's on the top spot? Who's uh, not gonna make it onto the map at all. What, what do they use to figure that out? And so, yeah, we've broken it down into three different criteria. Uh, some of them, your church has control over. Um, one of them specifically, you probably have very little control over, uh, I guess some, but there's not a ton of it.
Speaker 0 00:04:41 So let's break those down first though. Um, the first thing to think about is Google is looking for relevance. Yeah. How relevant is your church to the actual words that the person put into the search engine? Yeah. So for most churches that we're gonna be relevant for searches that are things like churches near me or churches in Austin, those kinds of searches, as long as you're using the term church a lot on your website, right. Uh, that's something that Google's gonna say, well, that's probably a church, so it seems pretty relevant to what they're searching. Let's use that. So the, we do have a little bit of control over this. Uh, we can use terms like that word church. Like one of the things I see a lot of churches get into. So I've been a part of a church movement called hope chapel. And so we didn't use the word church a lot.
Speaker 0 00:05:31 When we described ourselves, we were always hope chapel, uh, a lot of churches that we work with, uh, they don't have the word church in their name. And so they're at a little bit of a disadvantage here, cuz they're naturally gonna use the word church a lot less on their website. So it's important for them. If you want to be relevant, you have to use that term church a lot on your site, but it's beyond just that term church. I would say, I think it also goes into other searches that might be out there. So consider that sometimes people are typing in things like youth ministries near me, right. Or, or marriage counseling near me or some of those kinds of search terms. Well, it would be great if your church could come up on that. And so to kind of meet that relevancy goal, it's important that you have content on your website that is tied to things that people are searching for. Yep. The obvious one again is the term church. Use the word church a lot on your site, but think about other things that people might be searching for. Those are two marriage counseling. Um, people looking for children's ministries or youth ministries or uh, food pantries or whatever your church does. Yeah. Make sure you have
Speaker 3 00:06:37 Relevant content on your
Speaker 0 00:06:38 Sites. Exactly. Great ideas like that. So that's what we talk, we're talking about. When we talk about relevancy, you have some control over that with the content you put on your side.
Speaker 3 00:06:47 Yeah. No that's good. Yeah. Nothing much to add there you hit that. Good. Uh, next one should be a kind of a obvious one is distance. So yeah. Um, you know, should be self-explanatory her, like I said, you know how far away the person is, that's searching from your organization. Of course we know that, you know, there, there are some, uh, I guess some exceptions to this, most people though are not gonna drive over an hour to church or anything like that. They're looking for something relatively close. So obviously if someone's searching in your city, uh, they're not gonna want to see results for I'm in Austin, I'm in the Austin. Well, I'm actually just north of Austin and Georgetown. And then, you know, Austin is probably about, you know, 25, 30 minutes south of me. So, you know, people are gonna be looking for churches in Georgetown here. Not necessarily churches in Austin, maybe some stuff would come up in the north side of Austin. So that's good. So you wanna make sure your, your church is categorized, you know, with, you know, the proper, um, distance, you know, the location. Yeah. Uh, to make sure that, you know, you're using terms, like you just said in the previous example of relevance using the term church, this would be something like using near me or the city name yeah. Uh, to help. So that, it's just, it's more about proximity. Um, so, and distance. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:08:07 This one's kind of hard to, to do much about I, if I'm being honest, like, so, you know, if you wanted to reach people, another city, your best bet would to be, to start another campus in that city. Uh, you can't really trick trick Google because it's, it's, it's good to use locations in your content on your site. So for you, for instance, if I was, uh, helping a church in Georgetown, Texas, I would probably use terms like round rock, Texas and Cedar park, Texas and Austin, Texas. I would try to use those terms on my site, but Google still knows because you have a location in your Google business profile, they know exactly where you're meeting.
Speaker 3 00:08:44 They know you're in Georgetown or not seeing. So
Speaker 0 00:08:46 They're gonna be much less likely to show people in south Austin, uh, where you are there in, in Georgetown, you know, something that's 45 minutes away, um, before Austin traffic <laugh>, it's, uh, it's 45 minutes away there. So, uh, I think that this is one of those ones that I would put the least attention on this ranking factor, uh, because there's really not a lot of control churches have over it other than, you know, a little bit try and again, I think trying to stuff in the words, I think the keyword is don't stuff them in. I think people can usually tell if you're just stuffing in a bunch of keyword or city areas. Yeah. And that's gonna be hurting you in the long run there, so right. Be natural about it and just kind of know that within,
Speaker 3 00:09:27 You know, within the content of your website.
Speaker 0 00:09:29 Yeah. Yeah. Just know that we're best able to reach people that are within about, you know, 10 miles or 20 minutes from our church. Those are the ones that are most likely to be shown and we wanna reach them the most. So kind of focus locally. That's a good habit to get into
Speaker 3 00:09:41 That's good stuff.
Speaker 0 00:09:42 Awesome. Let me talk about the last one. And this is the one we probably have the most control over. We're gonna spend most of our time talking about things to do to improve this. The third one is your prominence. Uh, so Google uses a number of different indicators to figure out how prominent a church is. And this is why in general, um, before anything really happens, the larger churches in an area, Google tends to think that they are the more prominent churches and they're the ones that wind up getting ranked. Now Google has no idea how many people show up on a Sunday, right? They're not there. They don't have attendance takers. They can't tell any of that. So really your actual size doesn't matter, but just larger churches naturally gain a lot of those prominence markers that Google is looking for. Uh, and so those tend to do the best when people do local searches there, but here's the dirty secret is that doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 0 00:10:36 It doesn't have to be that only large churches can rank there. And you can do some things, even as a church of 20 or 30 people that would make your church, have the prominence that Google is looking for and actually tend to help you move up in those rankings. And, um, I've seen many, many times that churches of 20 or 30 people turn into churches of a hundred or 200 people because they use a lot of these tools and tactics to help boost their rankings on there. So I guess we'll spend the rest of our time digging into some of those. So why don't you talk to us a little bit about, and, and here's the key is that we're gonna be focusing on ones that Google themselves say are the biggest prominence keys for growing your local ranking. So Google gives information, they're notoriously kind of, uh, tight lip about exactly how their algorithm works, right? Because when they start telling you exactly what you can do, people find ways to game that and trick the system. So they're pretty tight lip, but they usually give us some really clear direction. And, uh, by and large, that is the stuff that actually works for churches. Uh, so yeah. Um, why don't you kick us off with the first one? What is the first tip that Google gives us?
Speaker 3 00:11:42 Yeah. The first one is to enter complete data into your Google business profile. Okay. So if, if you are not aware of this out there as a pastor or ministry leader, you need to, to claim your Google business profile, it's a free thing to do. It's an easy thing to do. Say it's easy. Mo most churches have done this step. We've seen most churches, they know to claim that Google business profile, but where they fail or fall short is entering in all of your data completely. So there's cuz you know, we all earn a rush and there's a lot of detail within this profile. And the more you focus on that and carry out all that detail that, that Google's looking for the better. So that's gonna be things well, we're gonna get into it, but it's gonna be your name, address, phone number, category hours, and other things there too. But you wanna make sure you're thorough in that.
Speaker 0 00:12:32 Yep. That's exactly right. I think getting, getting it complete is the keyword. So not claiming, but completing every single thing that they, that you can put into your Google business profile. Yeah. Um, you want to enter it? Um, so anything you can have on there to make it fully complete, that'll help your prominence ranking with Google. Uh, so, uh, the next one is it's really important that you verify every location of your church. Uh, so I say every location, so some of our audience are multi-site churches and you wanna make sure that each one has their own location verified. Uh, each one has their own local search because again, they're in different distances from people searching. So if you have a church, uh, campus, that's 20 miles away from your primary campus, they are totally different search entities. Yeah. When it comes to local search, even if you share a website it's important to have their own profiles there.
Speaker 0 00:13:24 But um, when we say verify, there's a whole process that Google goes through that when you get your Google business profile, um, you can do a few things on there, but it's really important that you take the next step and go through their verification process. Yeah. This will help them really know that, okay, you are legit. It's a prominent organization. You've taken the time to do this. The way that you do that is you get on your Google business profile and you request to be verified. They will send you a postcard to your address. You would get a code on that postcard and you would, uh, enter that code onto your Google business profile. Then they'd know that this is a legit place. They receive mail there. Uh, that stuff actually works now. Yeah. Some of our audience, uh, they meet in locations that they are not the only people that meet there.
Speaker 0 00:14:11 So they meet in schools, they meet in theaters. Uh, there's all kinds of pledges are meeting hotels. Yeah. So to you, you are not off limits. When it comes to Google business profile editing, you can still focus on local search engine optimization. There are a few ways to do that. Um, one, if you can get mail at that location. So let's say you're meeting at a school and you have a really good relationship with the school. We'll talk about that actually in next week's episode about this back to school time, we're gonna be talking about yeah. Uh, building relationships with schools and what churches can do there. So stay tuned for that. But if you have a good relationship at your school, chances are, you probably can, can get a piece of mail handed off to you there. If it comes there, it says, you know, uh, to your church care of the school name, uh, you can get that mail.
Speaker 0 00:14:58 You can get it verified and you can go that route. Yeah. If for some reason you just absolutely can't make that happen. Or the people that you are renting from are just not open to you doing something like that. Yeah. Then you can have to, you have to resort to what's called like a regional or like a service based approach. Uh, so think of it like, um, a plumber, for instance, you don't need to go to the plumber's office before you have him come out and clear a, a clog at your house. He comes to you. So plumbers on Google by business or Google business profile. What they do is they have a, a service area. So they tell Google that, um, we don't have a physical location per se, but we're willing to serve people in this whole area here. Yeah. Now that is not preferable. It would be preferable to have a location on the map, but you can also have this service area, style of business there. That's how you would handle something like that. So, um, all that to say, it's really important that you go through that verification process. If you can, um, you get mail somewhere. So whether you have to do a regional style or a physical location, uh, just get it verified either way.
Speaker 3 00:16:01 No, that's good. Good point. Next one is, keep your hours accurate. Your hours of operation, you know, for a business that's when they're open, when they close for a church, that would be obviously service times. Um, my church recently changed our service times. So, um, you have to keep up with that, you know, you can forget, uh, and this is, seems like a little minuscule thing, but it's a big deal. If, if your service times are not accurate there that they're, or your operating hours as a church or not accurate there, then, uh, then that can really be a, a, a, a diminishing, uh, effect for you. So, yeah. Yep.
Speaker 0 00:16:37 So, uh, I would say for churches, there's a question we get a lot is, well, what should we put in these hours? Do I just put my service times or when people can come to church? Or is it any time that our office is open? If our office is on site? Um, I would say that it's any time that you have people that can walk in the doors or you you'll answer phone calls those kinds of times, that's when you should have those hours. Now you should clearly distinguish on Sundays the exact service times. So when your service starts, when your service ends, but your business hours, you know, nine to five, Monday through Friday, whatever, that would be put those on there as well. Um, yeah, I think that the question of, you know, how does Google kind of know whether or not our service times are accurate or not?
Speaker 0 00:17:21 Well, what it uses is actually, uh, the next one, I'm gonna talk about this in just a second. It's manage and respond to your reviews. That's number four. Yeah. Google says that's really important. So back on, on the service times question, if people wind up showing up and your service times aren't accurate and they start to see, they write in reviews, Hey, I went there and they weren't open or something like that. Yeah. Google's gonna get wind of it and you'll start to get penalties on your local ranking. Yeah. But beyond that, just managing your reviews, uh, and making sure that you respond to reviews that is vitally important in your search engine performance, especially when it comes to local SEO. So this is the case on your Google reviews, as well as any other reviews that you get anywhere else online. We've done a whole podcast episode on how to handle reviews, how to handle negative reviews, because that is going to happen from time to time.
Speaker 0 00:18:12 But especially your Google ones, make sure you respond to every single one. Even if someone just comes in and says great service, or they write and say didn't like it or something like that. Or even if they didn't say anything, they just give a full, a one star review. You still have a chance to respond. So the more review content that's out there that is a huge indicator of prominence. This is one of those things that the large church has an advantage on. It seems right, because they naturally are gonna get more people reviewing them. Uh, but even smaller churches. I think it's important. Google openly says, you can ask for reviews. They don't mind. Yeah. You telling your people give reviews. Uh, so do that ask, uh, ask people, especially people that are gonna say positive things, tell them to review you, but here's, here's people, the other little secret is even bad reviews help. Like, it's not like it's, if you have all one star reviews, it might hurt your prominence a little bit. Yeah. But Google expects, we're gonna get some two stars. We're gonna get some real, gonna be
Speaker 3 00:19:11 Some ones and not everyone's happy. They
Speaker 0 00:19:12 Know they know that. Right. And so that only when it comes to prominence, Google's not trying to only put the best reviewed locations onto their Google maps. They're trying to put the most prominent one on there. The one that seems to get the most attention. So all reviews help, and especially even negative view reviews. If you respond to them and use kind of our formula to not encourage more negativity, but respond right to them, it will help you in the long run.
Speaker 3 00:19:39 No, that's good. And the next one would be last but not. Lisa's add photos to, so photos to your Google business profile photos. I mean, this is sounds funny, but this is what Google's looking for. People are visual and photos. They're gonna help you when people do Google searches to see images of your location, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, um, images of different things, aspects of your church. And they know that Google knows that people are more likely to click on listings with photos. So they're gonna give you precedents as a church, if you have more up to date photos in there. So, and even adding a video, um, yeah. You know, photos, number one, video takes a little bit more work, but you can even add like a video promo. I mean, if, and, and a lot of churches already doing this on their website, so you can, you can almost use a variation or that same video that you come up with for that.
Speaker 0 00:20:32 Yep. I think the thing about these, these photos is Google's looking for photos that are location photos, right. So, right. It's not gonna be the same ones that you have on your website, your website, you're looking more for
Speaker 3 00:20:44 Industry or, yeah. And
Speaker 0 00:20:45 You're looking for
Speaker 3 00:20:47 Personal
Speaker 0 00:20:48 What we say like, and I think this still applies, but the, the rule of thumb is you want to have photos of people caught in the act doing the values of your church. That's the kind of photography you're looking for on your website. It's also the case for your Google business profile, but let's just change it to say, you want to do photos of people caught in the act doing the Val values of your ministry at your church. <laugh> at location. Yeah. Like there, where it's happening. So hugs in the foyer are great. Yeah. Preaching is great. Worship is great. Um, avoid the backs of people's heads, uh, you know, avoid empty pews, that kind of stuff, but it has to be on site. Uh, that's what we're looking for with that.
Speaker 3 00:21:30 Uh, last thing I'll, it makes me chuckle, uh, we just helped a church with this, uh, with SEO, local SEO, when their Google business profile was a picture of the church after it had burned, they had like a, a fire and then the next photo was a graffiti wall. Um, so we, we fixed that for them. So we helped them with that. So, and it's something that you can do on your own too, but, uh,
Speaker 0 00:21:55 Absolutely you can so well, good. I hope this has been helpful to our audience. These, these five things I think will help with your prominence and they'll be the first step in getting you onto those local searches. Uh, it's not all you can do. There are many other steps. And, um, if you're looking for some professional help in this area, you want someone to do more than just this, but tackle, uh, tackle some of the, the heavy lifting parts, like getting more people to getting you into more directories, getting more people to review you. Some of that kind of stuff. That is a service that we provide at re right. Feel free to drop us a line. If you want some more, uh, some more answers or questions on that. If you have anything we can help you with there. Uh, but we hope this has been helpful.
Speaker 0 00:22:34 Even if you're not a customer, we, we want this to be a blessing to churches all over the place. So, uh, if it has been helpful, uh, let us know by dropping a comment down below rate review, subscribe, like do all that kind of stuff, uh, that helps us to get the word out there about this reach, right podcast helps us to help more churches. That's what we're all about here. So thank you so much for the opportunity to help your church. Uh, thank you for being a part of our reach, right family, and we'll catch you next week. Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online and reach, write studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 00:23:29 Gift. Ready to get
Speaker 1 00:23:37 You.
