Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Every single church leader wants to make sure that their church shows up when people search for them online. And the way most people search online is through local searches. They'll do things like churches near me or churches in Nantucket. Well, today we want to discuss nine reasons why your church isn't showing up in online searches locally. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast.
Speaker 0 00:00:37 You're listening to the retrial 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 is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow,
Speaker 2 00:00:59 Ready to get <inaudible>.
Speaker 0 00:01:04 Hey guys, welcome to the reach right podcast episode number 62. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost
Speaker 4 00:01:12 Ian Hyatt. What's up.
Speaker 0 00:01:14 Oh, not too much, man. Excited for our conversation here today. We're going to be talking about nine reasons why your church doesn't show up in local searches. This is something that we hear from our clients, uh, and people that we work with all the time that, uh, just kind of a pain point, that there's a, they have a website that they've built. They have a whole online presence. They get tons of traffic on social media, but when people search for them in their community, they look for things like churches near me or churches in Dallas or wherever they live, that they don't wind up showing up. And so we want to help, uh, to figure out, uh, some of those reasons why your church may not show up in those places. And, uh, there's a handful of them that we have here today. So, um, I think it should be a good conversation.
Speaker 4 00:01:59 Yeah, it's a big deal. It's a extremely big deal in this day and age where we know everyone is Googling everything from their phones typically, and even from their desktops and laptops or whatever device they're on, they're going to do those exact kinds of searches that you said, you know, churches near me. And I think churches are starting to realize this a little bit more, but it is kind of funny. You know, churches will invest often in getting a great website, but that website, uh, it's just not visible and that's no good. Right? So these two, these things, all of this works together and goes hand in hand. If you, if you have a good website and you want to be visible, you've got to make sure you got to make sure you're visible. And if you want it to be visible.
Speaker 0 00:02:40 Yeah. You know, you and I, uh, and retried as a whole, we're a digital marketing company. So we eat, breathe and sleep this stuff. But I think a lot of churches, I think you're exactly right. They build a great website. Uh, but if you don't pay some attention to doing SEO or at least creating good content, that's SEO friendly. You know, it's, it's hard to say this, but you're just, you're not going to get a lot of people seeing it. I mean, it's, you're, you're building a site for your members and if you don't actually make a point of getting it, uh, uh, the SEO side of things dialed in and there's actually, I think it's important for us to dig into this a little bit before we get into the, uh, the nine reasons here today, there's a few different schools of SEO work for the, our audience that doesn't know SEO.
Speaker 0 00:03:22 We're talking about search engine optimization is what we're talking about with that. Uh, and there's lots of different ways to do that. Um, so I guess I can, you can, we can dig into those a little bit just to give, to be, to bring some clarity to what we're talking about. When we say a local SEO or local search engine optimization. Now, when someone does a search, there's a few different parts to what you'll see, like at the very top of most searches, uh, you'll see the ads. That's what comes up first. So, uh, it's people that paid for it or in churches, a situation. Sometimes they have the Google grant and they're able to be there for free. And so you'll, you'll be able to see ads first. So they'll usually have a little marker on the top that says ad. And then usually right below that you'll see a big map with, uh, between two and five different organizations that are local there.
Speaker 0 00:04:14 That's what we're talking about here today is the local SEO local search. How do you appear in that map pack and how do you, uh, make sure your church shows up when people search for churches near me, and then at the bottom, you'll usually have what you call the organic search section, which is what, uh, people where things rank, uh, based on just the organic keywords on the page. Usually when people are looking for churches in a community, there'll be a few church directory type services there. So you'll have Yelp's list of the top churches in your city, maybe the yellow pages link, some of those kinds of things, TripAdvisor as if people are looking for churches on vacation and that's the interest to go to. So usually that's what shows up there when people search for churches near me in a certain city there. So, um, do I have that right though? Is that kind of a, a good breakdown to help people understand that
Speaker 4 00:05:05 That's good? No, I'm glad you did that Thomas. Cause I think, yeah, if someone's listening to this, it could be kind of confusing without having a visual. Right. But I think everyone, everyone has seen what you're referencing there. Cause I think most people do, uh, when I consult with pastors or even older pastors that maybe are not as tech savvy, if you will, just about every one of them has done some sort of Google search where they know what your, what comes up on that first page. I think that was a helpful description. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:05:33 I think you and I, because we live in this world and so we're probably just more aware. I think, you know, we've watched so many different versions when you and I started doing this, there was one kind of Google search and it was just the organic results. And that was all this stuff is the map pack and the listings and all those things. That's a lot of that stuff is new. And I think because we look at it all the time, we're aware of it, but I think just helping our audience get a trained eye for what you're looking for. And here's what I'll say is that if a church was to choose one discipline of SEO or one thing to focus on between ads and organic search and local search, I think I would choose the local search. I think that's probably the most important thing for churches to do because in most cases, uh, you know, there's a few out there that are not this, but the church is a local expression and a local gathering of people.
Speaker 0 00:06:28 It's very tied to its location. You know, as much as we are digital organizations and we have content online websites are important for that for most churches, we're still a local physical expression that happens on Sunday mornings. And so because of that, it's a, it's a brick and mortar experience. And so that local search is probably the most important area to focus on. So I think if you're going to choose one, which you don't have to, you can choose to focus on all three of these, but if you were to choose one to start with, this is where I would start is really focusing on greeting local SEO, right?
Speaker 4 00:07:01 Yeah. Yeah. That's because you hit it, the nail on the head. I mean, that's step number one with all of these different things for, for that very reason. Yeah. Especially for that. Right.
Speaker 0 00:07:11 Good. Well, so let's kick it off then. I guess I'll get into the first one of, uh, of the nine reasons why your church doesn't show up in local SEO searches. Uh, and the first one is an incomplete Google my business listing. Okay. So let's take a step back. Would we're talking about those local results? So that map pack, what that actually is, that's a link to your Google profile that your church or your business or whatever it is, what it's a link to your Google. It doesn't go to your church's website. It's going to your Google, my business listing. So it takes all the information that shows up in that map pack is getting pulled from whatever your Google my business profile is. And so the, the short history of this Google my business profile, I mean, this used to, this is one of Google's attempts at a social network.
Speaker 0 00:08:00 It was a descendant of remember Google plus would people try to compete with Facebook? And I think there was a minute where I, I jumped on and said, I'm going to be off Facebook. I'm going to move over to Google plus for a while and all kinds of stuff. And that never really turned into anything well, that turned into long, over a long period. It morphed into what is today, Google my business and having a Google. My business profile is really important if you want to show up on those local searches. So that is something that you need to go out there today and create. But what we find is that most churches have that, but the vast majority of churches, they haven't taken the time to actually fill in all the information and optimize and complete your whole Google, my business listing. And so what that's going to ask for, and you can kind of get into some of the details that are in there, but it's going to be things like, uh, you're obviously simple stuff like name, address, and phone number. That kind of stuff is on there, but this, there sounds like that's exactly. Yeah. So business hours, service times, those things, getting all that content in there, your web address, getting that in there, and here's a really big one is photography. You need to have photos of your church, all your Google, my business profile that just adds to, uh, I guess the credibility that Google thinks your church or your organization has and makes you more likely to show up on their, what do you have to add to that again?
Speaker 4 00:09:26 Yeah. I think those are the majority of the different items and yeah, we've seen this all the time that it's just it's income, you know, churches we'll get, it started like a church volunteer, they get it, they get it started, but really, you know, it takes some attention to detail and to go through every one of those items. And that means a big deal. Cause Google, when they see something incomplete well for the church that completed it all, they're going to give that church preference over you. So they're going to rank higher. So it's all of those things you mentioned. And even, even you can go as far as, I think we were talking about this even video, like promos within, within there. And that, that I think most churches definitely don't take the time to do, but that would give them even a little bit more juice and have an edge if they took the time to do that.
Speaker 0 00:10:10 Yeah. So I just think any, any minute you put into that, uh, Google my business profile, you will get a huge return on that in the number of people that are seeing your church in that map pack. And, uh, you know, if you're in a good sized city coming up in that map pack is really a big deal there. So yeah. Uh, one thing that I see a lot of churches miss is the about section. There's a about area. And a lot of times we get like, I want to make sure I write the perfect thing for this here. Make sure it's set. We use all our key words, right? And that's sometimes that leads to some kind of hesitation in doing it. Um, but just getting that done, I can say that. So this is, uh, one of our services that we offer at retreat as a full local search engine optimization service. And we take care of that for churches. And we get a lot of churches come to us and almost all of them, they have a Google by business profile, but only a very small fraction have that set up in the right way. That's fully complete. All their listing is built out and everything there. So yeah, this is one that's actually really simple to do. Uh, and you probably ought to give some attention to this today.
Speaker 4 00:11:12 Absolutely. No, I think that's good. Well, I'll, I'll tackle the second one. Next thing you really want to make sure that you attend to is one of the things that hurts you is not having church reviews. Um, so not having reviews for your church. And so, and this is, I think why a lot of churches miss this is that they feel because they're a church and not a business that maybe this does not matter as much, you know, and how do they get people to give your church a review and then all, and then when a church thinks of all this, all certain sorts of things come to mind like, oh my gosh, is that going to open us up to people saying they hate our church or what there's all sorts of different directions. I think a pastor or ministry leaders mind can, can go in this, but, uh, but it's extremely important to, to have reviews. Yep.
Speaker 0 00:12:02 Uh, when I first we first heard about this idea, I guess it's kind of something that I initially was repulsed by this, right? The idea that I would want people to review the work that God is doing in my community. And it's like, it just seems so, so the opposite of what we should be doing, but I think if we change the terms and don't think of it as reviews, but think of them as testimonies. I think that that makes a really big difference if you think of it that way. And these aren't people saying what they like, and don't like about our, our, our church, it's, it's just people sharing their experience. It's a testimony. It's about, here's where I was. And here's what happened after my experience at this church. And I think that that makes a really big difference, but maybe you can get a little bit into why though. Why do, why do you think church reviews? Why does it matter for local SEO? Well,
Speaker 4 00:12:51 Because that's going to, they're going to be visible. That's one of the things that's going to come up. Uh, and, uh, so here's the good, this is something my church does a very good job of, um, we've, we've referenced my church a lot in our podcast because it is a, it's technically a mega sized church. So, uh, but, but when I say that this is not something that a mega sized church can only do. These are, these are steps that a startup church can do. So this is not unattainable so important for us to mention that. But yeah, the more reviews you have, just the more visible you're going to be out there. People look for reviews when they're researching anything online. You know, I do it for Amazon purchases for restaurants, but Google seat, when they, when Google sees that there's a good amount of reviews out there that they recognize that maybe that's the way to, to kind of put it is that they're going to recognize that, and it's going to help a church rank because it's going to come alongside of everything else that the profile that's online. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:13:52 Yeah. That's exactly right. I think that it's an indicator of prominence for Google. Basically. They can't, they have a hard time, you know, making the algorithm it's really hard for, uh, for an algorithm to figure out how important and how valuable to a community, uh, how important is a ministry or any kind of a organization in any particular area. And so what they use is they use a lot of indicators, but one of the biggest ones is how many reviews are, are, does this particular organization have? And it's not even so much a point of like, whether they're good reviews or bad reviews. I mean, you don't want a thousand bad reviews of your church out there and no good reviews, but you know, it's almost like it's if a church has, um, well, let's just say there's a church out there that has, uh, five reviews.
Speaker 0 00:14:40 Uh, and all of them are glowingly positive, five star reviews. And there's another church that has a hundred reviews and they have seven negative and 93 positive. It's better to be the one with a hundred reviews because it's a signal of prominence and the algorithm doesn't necessarily always take away presence because of bad reviews. So that's okay. But it's just a matter of getting them out there. So ask people, uh, this is the moral of the story is ask people to review your church. If someone shares a testimony with you, it would be appropriate in this day and age to say, you know what? It wouldn't mean a lot to me. I thank you. I'm going to share it with people in our church. If you have a second to write up kind of your experience on, on Google, on Yelp, on wherever you want to write it and just let the world know about what happened there. That would mean a lot to me. Uh, so
Speaker 4 00:15:28 Yeah, basically another way to ask that too, I think is like at the end, if a pastor is wondering out there, how to ask that's one good example, but I think also at the end of your service, Hey, this is as simple as saying, Hey, if this encouraged you, not only do we recommend you get in touch with one of our elders here for prayer or go to our next steps team, uh, where we want to, you know, all of that stuff, right? The assimilation process. But at that part, when you mentioned that saying, Hey, if this service encouraged you, or if the message encouraged you, Hey, give us a shout online, give us a review, you know? And, uh, and that's natural. It's, it's, it's not offensive. Uh, I think it's just a, we want to let the world know, uh, about what God's doing here and other people in our area. So, um, yeah, so it's not, I don't think it's, it's not a hard thing to ask.
Speaker 0 00:16:12 No, no, I don't think so either. So let me get, it kind of leads us to the next one here. Number three is, uh, you're not seeing results in local searches because you're not responding to bad reviews. Yeah. That, that just as important as asking for reviews. And I assume you'll be asking for good reviews. If someone comes and tells you how much they hated you, don't ask them to go do a review. That's not the person you want to ask, but you will get bad reviews. This is part of it is that people will come and say things, uh, I've pastored for long enough to know that not everybody loved everything that I did. Heck I didn't love everything that I did as a pastor. I would do myself bad reviews. Uh, it's some of the messages and some of the things that I've said over the years there, I'm embarrassed by them and wouldn't say them today. And that's just the way life is. And so expect that that's going to happen. The big sin with all of us here. The big mistake you can make is leaving these bad reviews out there to grow on their own, to fester and not responding to them. So, uh, we did a whole podcast episode about how to respond to bad reviews because they're going to happen there. But what do you have to add any strategies for how we should respond to them again?
Speaker 4 00:17:19 Uh, well, hump humbly, yes. Uh, respond humbly, which is what we're called to do too. When we respond to an in-person, uh, uh, issue to writer or negative comment. But, uh, yeah, we had a funny, we had a lot of funny examples in that episode and, um, someone could go check out some of those, but I think just, you know, uh, respond normal in a normal human way. Uh, you know, and if it's a bad review, Hey, sorry, you didn't enjoy, uh, the preaching or whatever. We, we, you know, a lot of people do, but some don't and that's okay, you know, or, uh, you know, in a humble way, don't make it confrontational, uh, that you, cause you don't want to, uh, you don't want to elicit more negative reviews. Yeah. Just like on a reason why sometimes you say only one thing on Facebook and then let it go. Same kind of principle if you will. But, uh, yeah. In a humble way, human normal way, uh, be apologetic in tone, uh, you know, and then move on. So
Speaker 0 00:18:16 Yeah, the challenge for me is my normal human way is to like get up and get confrontational with them. So that's, that's my challenge. If someone says, Hey, you know, I really didn't like the way that this church did. So and so, uh, I would likely respond. I didn't like the way that you sat on your phone, the entire sermon or something like that. That's how I'd be tempted to respond. So don't do that. The idea is that you don't, you want it to have to be a one and done. When someone gives you a response that's negative or a review that's negative. You want to give a, uh, a, if you can apologize, apologize, but not give them a reason to write back and air other grievances or pile on, or have other people that feel the same way to write in and say the same thing. You don't want to have that build on each other. But again, I think responding to it as appropriate, it creates kind of the, the volume and the signals to Google that says this is an administry of prominence again. And there'll be more likely to show up in those searches.
Speaker 4 00:19:16 Good. That's good. Okay. Well, let's change gears a little bit. I'll tackle the next one. Uh, it's a little bit different and I like that we're going to go over this and that's to not having any local directory listings. Um, so if your church doesn't have any local directory listings, what's that? I think this is funny. Whenever I talk to pastors and ministry leaders about this on a daily basis, this, this is one of those things that they're often like, huh? What's that? Uh, but there's about 77 different websites out there, uh, which is a lot, uh, where you want to have, um, certain information. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that down the line here, but, um, but you want to be, uh, you want to have a listing at each one of these, these sites, if you will. Yeah. And that this, this really determines, uh, how well you rank, uh, and how visible you are. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:20:07 Yeah. And these are our like listing sites that talk about local. Um, it's like a directory. So it's think of that. Like the way the yellow pages used to be. Um, like I couldn't believe I got a yellow pages delivered to me just the other day. I didn't know they still did those, but I haven't
Speaker 4 00:20:20 Seen that in a long time. I know I
Speaker 0 00:20:22 Put it directly into my recycle bin and moved on with my day. So I think these are online versions of that, that are directors that I, I think a lot of them are very common ones. We see all the time are things that we remember and they're obviously have different, uh, prominence. So you have directories that, you know, Facebook has a direct, it's a directory of different organizations and the same thing with LinkedIn and Yelp and TripAdvisor and all these ones that we've probably seen before. And then there are dozens and dozens of other ones that aren't as prominent, but still, they still matter. Like they still actually it's, it's the volume of different places where your information is, is given and it's given properly. That adds to what Google starts to determine as a ministry of prominence or something that I should be showing, uh, that it should be showing in its local searches there. So you, I know you look at some of those, there's some funny ones that I've never heard about. They're like, what are some of the ones that you see
Speaker 4 00:21:22 Eight coupons a day eight? Uh, there was another funny one pick me Bose. Uh, but uh, yeah, uh, dicey. I said it wrong. They're so hard. Some of these are hard to remember eight coupons sticks out to me the most because I'm like, it's not seven, but it,
Speaker 0 00:21:39 Every church needs to be listed on eight coupons.com. That's very important. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:21:43 Yeah. So it's, it's really, it makes sense that a lot of people are unaware of these because you know, you would never visit these, um, you know, uh, you know, intentionally often, but they're out there and they're very important.
Speaker 0 00:21:56 Yeah. They're directories. And so what, what does the church do? I mean, obviously, so, you know, spoiler, we have a service that helps churches with this because nobody in their right mind wants to go and create profiles on 77 different obscure directories of their church could have a slightly incrementally, better chance of showing up on this. But yeah, so that, that's what we do. And there are other services that do it as well, but we have a service that provides this. And so I would recommend don't try to do this. Right. I mean, yeah.
Speaker 4 00:22:27 Let someone else do it. I mean, unless you are a very rare church where you have someone with just this insane gifting that has that attention to detail and wants to spend the time to do that
Speaker 0 00:22:38 Profiles. Yeah.
Speaker 4 00:22:39 Maybe, maybe, maybe you have someone well-paid on staff that has the time to do it. Like, as I joke about, you know, our, our church being a mega sized church, but we may have someone that did this. Uh, but, uh, but it's very rare.
Speaker 0 00:22:51 Yeah. But it's still probably worth pay even the larger, your churches. It's worth paying someone to do it for you this year to do it right. And then the problem is, is that, and this is so frustrating to people that try to do it themselves is that you set up your directory, you got your listing all set up, but all of these, they use what's called user generated content. That means if someone on eight coupons get on, gets on there and sees your church, and they have the ability to go in there and suggest an edit and say, actually that church meets at 10 30, not at 10. They can go in there and change your information. They can change your, uh, anything and submit changes. And so you actually have to, not only do you have to set up 77 of these different directories, you actually have to look at them regularly and make sure that your content isn't changing on there, then it has your accurate information. And so don't try and do it yourself, hire someone to do it. If you need some help contact us, we'd be happy to help there's other people out there that do it too. But it's something that I think every church should be looking at. Uh, but yeah, get yourself out there, but have someone do it for you. We have those
Speaker 4 00:23:58 St. Louis gifted people are crazy people here to do it. So, uh, there you go. But, uh, well go ahead.
Speaker 0 00:24:06 Good. All right. So, uh, I think I'm up, uh, that is, uh, the next one is the mistake that you might be making to make you not show up on local searches as you're stuffing keywords into your site. So I used to see this a lot. Uh, I see it less now, but I still do see it. Uh, and I see it. I saw it a lot before, cause it used to work. Uh, so when we talk about stuffing keywords, that's where you have a paragraph or a bunch of text on your homepage or someplace on your site where you just use a bunch of locally driven keywords for no specific reason. It's not even a regular, a normal, everyday conversational language, right? Like, so this is where you see a, at the bottom of a page, it says best church in Dallas, best Dallas churches, churches in Dallas churches in Dallas near me, Dallas area churches.
Speaker 0 00:24:57 It just says all these keywords that people might search. Uh, and it used to be that the algorithms were not smart enough to figure that out. Uh, and you could do that and you could get anything to rank. You could, you could show up top on this, but now, um, it might work for a minute to do that, but in the end, what that's going to wind up doing is it's going to wind up getting you a blacklist and you'll start to get hits on your Google profile. And it'll start to show your content less because you're just, this is called keyword stuffing. It's what we would call, um, in the search engine industry, there's called a white hat and black hat tactics. So black hat means things that are, you know, kind of outside of the realm of what Google encourages you to do. White hat is right in line with what they ask you to do the right way to do those kinds of things. So this would be what's called black hat, which is using things that they tell you not to do, even though they might work a little bit, they're going to wind up getting you marks and band and get you off of those kinds of things there. So
Speaker 4 00:25:59 Dig yourself out of a hole at that point. And that's, you don't want to have to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:26:03 Yeah. There's not much we can do at that point. There, it's just a matter of waiting time doing it right for a consistent amount of time. And hopefully, um, you know, it seems weird that, you know, we, we appeal to Google on these things, but Google in their good graces might, uh, reinstate some of your, uh, your search engine performance and those things there. So don't make that mistake. Don't stuff, a bunch of keywords in there just because you think you want, uh, all those different variations of it. There are some right. What you should know. Let me say this here, it's important that you use keywords on your site. Uh, so if you are a church in Dallas, you should probably have church in Dallas once, twice, maybe three times on your website, somewhere
Speaker 4 00:26:44 In a natural way. You're saying,
Speaker 0 00:26:45 Right? Yeah, that's exactly right. So don't stuff them in, it has to be a normal, conversational language. So use your keywords. Uh, don't overuse your keywords. One tool I'll mention for this. So on all of our sites where we do a lot of SEO work, we use a tool for, uh, for WordPress, it's called Yoast, Y O a S T is how you spell it. It is hands down the best search engine optimization tool that you can use on any website of any platform. There really, this is one of the reasons why we love WordPress at right is because we have access to a tool like this that really helps with the digital marketing side of things. There are not to my knowledge equivalents in things like Squarespace or Wix or some of those other website providers out there. Uh, so we would really encourage you to look at WordPress. Yoast is the best tool for getting your keywords right. And making sure you've got that stuff dialed in. And if you're stuffing by putting too much of a keyword in there, they'll tell you, they'll let you know that this is not done. Right. So it'll keep you from making that mistake.
Speaker 4 00:27:49 Always good to have some hand holding with this, uh, somewhat technical stuff, but, uh, yeah, Yost is great. We use it. And you made me think of a funny example of why you, don't, why you want to have churches in Dallas written in a natural way. We used to see on a lot of websites, it would say that best churches in Dallas, Dallas church, and all of that, then all of a sudden it's, here's what we believe right underneath. So it just doesn't fit. And you want to give visitors a good impression anyway, so, but, well good. So I'll, I'll tackle the next one, which is kind of circling back around to the point before, when we talked about the local directory listings, this is having inconsistent in AP. What that stands for is your nap. If you will, uh, is name, address, and phone number.
Speaker 4 00:28:34 So on those 77 different websites, we talked about like some of the ones you've heard of, and then some of the funny ones, like eight coupons, your name, address, and phone number needs to be consistent across all of those. Um, and so little detail that someone would maybe not think of, but very important. Uh, for again, Google's looking for consistency and all of these things we've talked about. So with this detail, your name, address, and phone number, same thing has to apply across all these websites. And maybe you can also talk about why is that hard? You know, why is that you would think, right. Some somebody might think, well, that's easy. Okay. We'll just get it, our name, address, and phone number and we're, we'll get it across there. And it's, it's a one and done.
Speaker 0 00:29:17 Yeah. And when we talk about, I guess the reason why it's hard is because when we talk about consistency, we're talking about fanatical consistency. So like, and this is, this seems so strange, but what tends to happen is that, uh, if you have a bunch of people entering your information or you're writing it casually on your own website or any place you're putting your name, address, and phone number. If you're not it the exact same way all the time, it actually makes a difference and it can start to confuse the algorithm into thinking you're multiple different organizations there. So what happens is that some churches will have their address. Uh, and it'll be a, um, let's say it's 1 25 north, uh, highway 35. Sometimes it'll be 1 25 and 35. So there will be an <inaudible> N O R T H 35. It'll be all these different ways.
Speaker 0 00:30:14 And those are all inconsistency. So it's, I don't see a lot of churches putting the wrong phone number or putting the wrong address. It's just that it's delivered in a different way. Sometimes they'll use the five digit zip code. Sometimes I'll use the nine digit zip code. Sometimes they'll use parentheses around their phone number, their area code. Sometimes they'll just have Dasha, sometimes I'll have periods. And so being fanatically consistent about this, uh, is really important. And again, I know this sounds so obscure and strange. This is why we really recommend you use a service to help you with these kinds of things. And don't try to go in and manage this. I can't tell you how often, like this is. I get to see the way our, our people that are really gifted. You're talking about, I see the way that they work with this and every single, like at least monthly, we have, we go into these accounts and there are dozens, in some cases of corrections where the phone number, for some bizarre reason on eight coupons or some other site, it changed from dashes in between the areas, things to periods or periods to dashes or whichever way that it was, or parentheses were added or something like that.
Speaker 0 00:31:24 And we have to consistently be changing these things. So totally, uh, again, this is probably more than our audience will ever want to do, but I want to make sure, you know, these are the things that have to be done if you want to make sure you're really ranking well in those local searches there. So really getting your consistency on your name, address, and phone number. It's paramount. That's good, man. Nothing much to add there. All right. Next one is having a slow site might be keeping you from showing up in local searches. This is something that is, uh, I think it's been talked about for years now, but I think people have not really taken it as seriously as we should be. Your site speed is one of the most important factors in how your site will rank out there. So this is why it is so important that you choose a really good host.
Speaker 0 00:32:13 Let me say this. There are dozens of places where you could host your website and you can find hosting out there for like 2 99 a month, or you can go and find these kinds of things. And, uh, I want to just let everybody know that that is, uh, again, I haven't done speed tests on these 2 99 a month hosts, but I know that there is value in a host that you may pay a premium for, but it'll make site load and get up in front of people faster, which it helps the user, but even more, it helps search engines know that this is a site that loads quickly, and we will give it a, we'll give it prominence in local searches and in organic searches there. So getting your site speed, right? I think there's lots of things to do. You probably want to hire someone or have a professional, take a look at your, your, um, some of your things on there, but there are some things that anybody can do, like making sure you use a quality host, uh, making sure you don't have an enormous video or image when you first get on the site there.
Speaker 0 00:33:14 But yeah, it is something that we need to take really seriously.
Speaker 4 00:33:18 Yeah. And you just touched upon the next one. One thing I'll say before we move to the next one is I've seen this so much just churches wanting to, and we get it. You churches, you know, they want a budget. They want to be good stewards, but when you play it too cheap for hosting, you may have a great looking website, uh, but use cheap posting. And you're not going to have, uh, the kind of speed that's going to make your site rank. Well, well then that stinks. If you have a great looking website, that's not visible. So it's, it's worth making sure you have some premium hosting in place for that. So, but yeah, you touched upon the next one, which has having bad images, uh, bad images, uh, on your website and, and what does bad mean? That mean there's a lot of things that come with that and we'll, we'll dig into some of the details, but first of all, you want to have a lot of photography is, is something that's always been important on websites, but even more now, so than ever for marketing reasons and not just, not just marketing reasons, but for SEO reasons.
Speaker 4 00:34:13 So, uh, not only do you want to have a lot of photos that show life happening at the church and people, people who are considering visiting your church, they want to see photos and get a feel for things. So that's all great. We all know that, but what we've seen is that bad images will really hurt you as far as visibility in search engine rankings. Because if that image is like grainy, um, uh, one of the things is not sized properly also. Um, you know, all of that Google sees and notices and if they see great photography, uh, on another site, but poor photography on yours, um, then that hurts you as far as speed and, and all of this stuff that we're talking in and visibility. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:34:56 So in this conversation, we're talking about local search engine optimization, right? And so the primary place where the primary way we can engage people on our Google, my business profile, or in that map pack area. There there's really only two things. We have to engage people because people aren't engaged by phone numbers and addresses and that kind of stuff like, oh, that's a cool phone number or address that doesn't, that doesn't happen. So the name of your church, that's important. So people can be engaged with your church based on your name and, you know, say what you will about church names. Like there's a different kind of person. That's going to be engaged by, um, first Presbyterian church, uh, and celebration church and, um, you know, whatever, uh, whatever desire, whatever it is, there's all kinds. I, I, and I'm not, I'm not here to say no, this isn't to cast judgment on kinds of names for churches.
Speaker 0 00:35:55 You do what you're called to do, but your church name is a spot that people can be engaged. And they'll see that in the Google, my business profile, but really the biggest way you have the biggest opportunity to engage someone is those few pictures that they'll have in your Google, my business profile. So if someone, if the, what we're working with is that people are getting on there, searching for churches near me, they're going to see ads. And then they're going to see a list. And they'll probably only go that far to look at a list of churches. And they'll sometimes have photos from that church on there. Yeah. And if you can't use good quality photos, they're like, you're going to miss engaging those people that are looking just there. They're not getting on your website. And a lot of cases, they're only seeing information about you through that, Google my business profile.
Speaker 0 00:36:44 So this is your, um, you know how we say things like you have a few minutes to engage. People decide whether they're going to come back to your church in the first few seconds of driving in or walking in. They already have decided whether they're coming back or not just impressions. Yes. It's this first impression idea. And the exact same thing happens on a search. If someone searches and they see pictures of people that are engaged and look like them, the phrase we use at retreat, as we want photography of people caught in the act doing the values of your church. That's the kind of thing we're looking for there. If we can engage with them with that, then the odds of them connecting with you and, uh, and therefore Google showing your stuff even more often, it just kind of grows from there. So making sure we use good photography and your Google, my business profile, it is really important.
Speaker 0 00:37:33 Yeah. Awesome, man. Why don't you bring us home with the last one? Last, last one is having a high bounce rate. Having a high bounce rate bounce rate is what's gonna keep people from finding you in local searches. Uh, what is a bounce rate? A bounce rate is it measures the percentage of people that get onto your church website, uh, and then immediately click off and go to some other site. They leave your site entirely. So someone gets onto your home page or they get onto a sermon page, or however they find you. They look at that usually for a few seconds, and then they're not on your website anymore. And what this is telling Google is it's saying this person went onto this website. And the last time we showed someone this content, they weren't very interested in it because they only stayed on for eight seconds.
Speaker 0 00:38:23 And then they clicked off and got off of the page. Had they been interested and stayed on for nine minutes and went to seven different pages? Then we like what it does, is it that it tells the algorithm let's show that content more. Yeah. Let's show the content where people stay on for five seconds. Let's show that less. So it's making this determination. Now. It doesn't really know. Maybe they got the answer to their question in seven seconds and clicked off. They just wanted to see what time services were and you had it front and center and they clicked off and that's okay. But if you have a bounce rate, that 80% of people don't go pass your first page and click off. Uh, and, uh, then they're going to, Google is going to start to say, you know what? This is probably not good content. This is probably not something we should show organically. And we probably shouldn't even show it in our local results because people are bouncing off of this site over and over again. So did I say that well, do you think, or is that clear?
Speaker 4 00:39:19 And, and, and, and, you know, it made me think of, okay, well, someone might be asking, okay, well, how do we not have a high bounce rate? Well, there's a lot of answers to that. And that, that might be a whole podcast episode in itself. But, uh, at the same time, it just, it shows you the importance of having, you said, good content and right away, when they come to your home page, um, you better have good on-ramp on ramps and ways for them to link off to other pages that there that are of interest, uh, and that engage them. So I think step number one, just to mention it again, like we said, there's, there's a whole lot of things you can do to help your bounce rate, uh, improve. Um, but step number one is have a really good home page with content. People are interested in and for ways for them to get to that content quickly. So I think that's important because we've gone to, we've seen so many church websites that just, you know, they have a horrible home page and there's no, uh, engaging content or links to other important pages. And then people leave right away. So, yeah,
Speaker 0 00:40:21 I think the mistake churches make is they use their homepage. It really, their site as an information dump and they just give people information, but we don't ask people to do anything. And this wouldn't be a retried podcast if we didn't talk about the key word of call to action, right? That's it. So if we, if you have a, on every page of your website, uh, you need to ask yourself, what do I want someone to do as a result of being on this page? And if you can't answer that question, you probably don't need to have that page on your website. There, if there's nothing for them to do that, don't have it, right. You don't need that page if you don't have a response for them. So every page, the way you reduce your bounce rate is you ask them to do something that's also on your website to take another step, to get onto this part of your site.
Speaker 0 00:41:07 And then they're not bouncing and you have a better engagement rate on those kinds of things there. So, uh, yeah. So do all these things guys. And I think you will see an improvement. There is no, no question about it. This is something that, again, like we said before, this is a service that, that Ian and I, you know, we, we do this all the time. We know the service, we have a team of people that are handling this for churches out there all the time there. So we know our stuff with this area. This is not to say that you can't do it. There are definitely steps here that anybody can take, anything will help with this, but we know that this method, this absolutely works. Uh, now Google always changes and the results change with this kind of stuff. So this may not work five years from now.
Speaker 0 00:41:49 So if you're listening to this, uh, in 2026, you know, uh, look for something more up to date because these things change all the time. But as of today, this definitely does work. It's worth the investment. Uh, and this is how people are finding churches. So, uh, if this has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us. If you would let us know in the comments, if you have any questions about this, how you can make this stuff happen, shoot us a message in the comments. We answer every single one of those. We want to engage with our audience there. So thank you guys for parting being a part of our reach, right family there a lot, like subscribe, let other people know about this. And we thank you guys for being part of the family. We'll catch you guys next week, 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 right 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.
