Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 If you're serious about being found online, you need to get serious about Google maps, SEO. And in today's episode, we're gonna talk you through six tips to help you rank. At the very top. 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 is always as my co-host Ian Hyatt, we're here to help your church see more visitors and grow ready
Speaker 2 00:00:46 To ready to get ready to get
Speaker 0 00:00:54 Well, Hey guys, welcome to the reach right. Podcast episode number 114. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always as my co-host
Speaker 3 00:01:03 Ian Hyatt, what's up Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:05 Hey, not much man. Excited to have a good conversation today. You're talking about six Google maps, SEO tips for churches. I think it's gonna be something that's really important. Um, when we talk about Google maps, SEO, I think that's something that, uh, is kind of a untapped resource for a lot of churches. Yeah. Is making sure that when someone looks for churches near me, can my church effectively rank at the top of that? Uh, that's kind of what we're gonna be discussing today. Some ways that you can get your church on the top of that list and really well here's what the game is, is that you're trying to rank on the top. Uh, but not just when people are standing in front of your church, on their phones. Right. But you wanna be reckoning at the top of that when people are a mile away or two miles away or 10 miles away, depending on where you live.
Speaker 0 00:01:52 Yeah. That's really the game as you get all these things. Right. And cuz that term, I guess near me is really subjective, right? Yeah. If you're looking for a church near me in Manhattan, you know, two blocks yeah. Is considered a world away in some cases. Right, right. Whereas if you're talking about, uh, that kind of distance in a rural area, um, you know yeah. Near me might be 20 miles away. So right. Anyway, right. That the name of the game really is trying to show up on as many of those searches as possible in your area. And so today we wanna give our audience a few tips and tricks. We picked up along the way of how you can do that, how you can show up on some of those searches.
Speaker 3 00:02:29 Yeah. It's super important. And I liked that. Uh, we're specifically talking about, um, Google maps, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> because it's, you know, I noticed this a while, but I've been using Google maps for very long time, but yeah. Recently and I, when I say recent, this was probably over a year ago, I started using it more to just do searches. Usually I would just kind of use the Google search bar, but if I already kind of know I'm looking for something near me, if it's lunch or something like that. Right. Uh, and this is even more effective and more of like a shortcut, if you will. And with the updates that Google's made to these maps, it's just really, you could do so much with them. And, and, and it does all coincide with regular Google searches too, but totally, it's a neat, funny,
Speaker 0 00:03:12 I thought you still used map quest Mo mostly no
Speaker 3 00:03:16 Long, you know, we were around you and I both during the times when we were, uh, you would, you would use map quest and then you would print out the directions and have them in your car. Like, you know, four pages of paper would be at the bottom of the floorboard when you're done. So I
Speaker 0 00:03:33 Know gen Zers, you guys will never know what that was like. So it was, uh, there was a time before this where you had to, I totally remember that it would, if you're going a log way, it could be a few pages of directions and you still had to watch all the signs. Nobody was there. And then yeah, we had GPS for a while and then now we all just use our phones, which is great. Uh, so yes, so much easier with that. But yeah, I, I think that I want to address something. So when we talk about Google maps, SEO, really, I mean, it, you could interchange that with local SEO, it's kind of the same thing, right? Because whether you do the search on Google maps or in your Google maps app on the phone or not the anatomy of every search, whenever you put a search into Google at all, the first thing they're gonna show typically is ads.
Speaker 0 00:04:19 And then right below that usually you have, what's called the map pack and that is yeah. Google maps, search results. Uh, so local SEO results basically. And that's what we're talking about today is that that second layer after the ads you have, what Google thinks are the most prominent search results for a local intent search. And by local intent, Google has some ways of figuring out a person's looking for something probably local and not something just like to look about, look up references on this. Then they're gonna try and show local only results in that map pack area. So for instance, Google realizes when most people look for churches, they're probably not looking for the history of where churches came from and what the Bible has to say about churches and a Wikipedia article on what a church is, but they are looking for churches that are local to them there.
Speaker 0 00:05:10 And so right. They try to serve the most relevant information. And your goal as a leader of a church is to show up in those churches there. So yeah, here's some things we've picked up along the way of how to help you do those kinds of things. So absolutely step number one. And this is it, it should be a no brainer, but I, I know a lot of churches miss it, as you need to claim your Google business profile listing. If you haven't done that already, pause this podcast, come back to it. Don't close the window. Just pause it and then go over to your Google business profile, just search in Google for your exact name of your church. And almost certainly your Google business profile is going to pop up. Yeah. The only question is whether or not you've claimed this profile and started to get your information into it and those kinds of things you want to make sure that you claim it. And then you also want to optimize your Google business profile there. So maybe you can talk a little bit about what that means to optimize that. Ian, what, when we say optimize your Google business profile, what does that look like for the average church?
Speaker 3 00:06:12 Yeah. First thing that comes to mind for me is be very thorough with everything that they're asking you to do. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, because I've, I it's funny. I was just telling you earlier, before this podcast, there was a local church in my area. Now we, we help churches all around the country. Uh, but there was a local church that, um, I needed to get, the guy was reaching out to us and, and I had his email, but I needed to get his phone number. So I was like, oh, well let me look it up. Look up the church, their profile was incomplete, no phone number, all sorts of stuff was missing. Yeah. And I had a hard time, you know, locating this guy. Why don't they actually even see if we can meet up since they were close down the road? Yeah. Uh, in person.
Speaker 3 00:06:48 So, but you know, so you wanna be thorough. And a lot of that is our second point here, which is using the right key words, uh, in your profile and on your website's landing pages. So, um, so there are specific keyword that, that we know are very important that Google knows people will be using like churches in X, Y, Z city, you know, churches in Austin, Texas churches in Honolulu. Um, and you want to have that in your profile and of course on your website as well. Um, kids programs, youth groups, uh, these are general things that people will be using, but they're very important. Um, so it's really to match what people's intent are when they're, um, searching. So churches with, uh, modern worship or, or, you know, if that's your church, if you have modern worship approach, uh, great music, there's all sorts of different ones, but you want to be thorough with those and use those keyword.
Speaker 0 00:07:44 There's
Speaker 3 00:07:44 A tool for it too, right? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:07:46 Absolutely. There are tools for it. And I would say that the big thing, um, is I see a lot of churches missing the word church and sometimes it's intentional that they think that church sounds too churchy, I guess, or they wanna make sure people know that, you know, we're not just like every other church. And so we'll leave the word church out, we'll call ourselves a community or we'll call ourselves something else or yeah. Uh, or sometimes they have a name where they UN of course, you know, it's a church. Like, so if your first Baptist church, sometimes on your website or your Google profile, you might be tempted to just write first Baptist or
Speaker 3 00:08:21 Something like that or FBC
Speaker 0 00:08:22 Or one of those things. Right. So Google is not good. Uh, it is actually pretty sophisticated, but it is not great at distinguishing, uh, some of those nuances there. So you wanna be abundantly clear. And I think if you're gonna, like, I think the first step in figuring out the right keyword is to make sure you're using the word church on your profile, uh, on your website, in your social media posts, use that word church that helps Google to always remember that you are a church. So this again is especially true. If you are a first Baptist or you are a Calvary chapel or some kind of a other name that doesn't use the term church in your name, the
Speaker 3 00:09:06 Grace fellowship, whatever. Yeah. There's a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:09:08 Absolutely. Yeah. So, um, I pastored for years, a church called the journey community was the name of it. That was our legal name is the journey community. Yeah. Uh, and so, or we had, that was our DBA at least. Yeah. And so I intentionally online, we always used the term journey church, Madison, that three word combination so that we had our city in our name. We had the church, the word church in our name, and we had kind of our, our marker of journey. Those three things were always, but it was always journey church Madison. That's a way that you get those keywords in there. So I understand that if you pastor first Baptist church, every Sunday, you might not say, Hey, welcome to first Baptist church or some other long version of your name. But for online purposes, you want to use that term church, every single chance you get. But then the things you were saying also, Ian, dead on, uh, highlighting some of those other terms like youth ministries and children's ministries and that kind of stuff that people might be searching for. Yeah. Getting those key terms on there as well is really important.
Speaker 3 00:10:08 Absolutely. Yep.
Speaker 0 00:10:09 Cool. Third one, uh, is you want to make sure that your Google ads, one thing you can do is you can use Google ads and specifically the Google ad grant and use location extensions on there in order to kind of boost your local, your local search results. So this is a little bit of a, a nuanced one, and I wanna take a, a step back on this. So, um, for those that don't know, Google gives a grant to churches worth $10,000 every single month we've done. Yeah. Uh, oodles of podcast episodes, right. About how to do this, how to use this one area we haven't talked about when we talk about the Google grant is using it for local searches. Uh, and the reason for that is because technically doing local searches is not part of the Google grant program. So I don't want to overcomplicate the, this particular point or this particular episode, but Google the Google grant, it lets you do searches and put free ads on the Google search network, which is something separate from the local network or the map pack.
Speaker 0 00:11:14 Yeah. So technically it's not eligible for that. However, as people that help churches with this all the time, we have noticed that through over the last few months, you have been able to place ads on local maps. You can take, you can take the Google grant and place ads on local sites basically. So this is something that while it lasts or if Google's gonna change their policy or, uh, if it, it is working right now, it's not necessarily like a, a violation of their terms, right. It's not gonna put you at risk of losing the grant or anything like that. Yeah. What, what might happen is this might get shut down or they might see that this is being allowed and they might, might close down kind of that loophole. But I think for the time being, this is so valuable for churches, get
Speaker 3 00:11:58 It, get it while it lasts.
Speaker 0 00:11:59 Yeah. Get it while it lasts. So you can basically, here's what it is, what it is in a nutshell is that you can place free ads with the Google grant cuz you get $10,000 a month in free ads. You can place ads that don't just show up on searches, but show up on the map, pack and show up in Google maps there. So take advantage of that. Um, if you need some help, give us a ring, we'd be happy to talk you through how to do some of those kinds of things. Our team helps this help searches take advantage of the grant and local search strategies all the time. So drop us line. We'd be happy to help you with some of that. But, um, absolutely. That's good. Take advantage of
Speaker 3 00:12:34 It is it's unique. And like we said, get it well while it lasts. So, but then maybe it'll last a while. We just, we don't know Google makes the rules for these things, right? So next one include videos and photos getting back to your profile, your Google business profile. Uh, this is something that's often, well, most often I would say missed by churches. You know, that, that you want to be thorough with this too. You want good videos, there's photos that are important that Google's looking for. Um, so, uh, and not just a picture of the building that is important because picture of your building identifies your location. Um, so that, and, and it also is helpful for someone to see that when they're looking for it and to spot, spot your building, but there's other things there's interior photos of the church. There's, uh, people, uh, uh, you know, gathering within the church, um, videos within there too, promo videos, uh, brief videos can be in there. I mean, this stuff is, uh, often just not even thought of, um, by churches, but it's very important to have those types of things in their staff photos as well. Um, totally different kinds of photos and videos.
Speaker 0 00:13:42 Yeah. I think that, um, one of the temptations we see churches fall into on this is getting pictures of facilities and of buildings and of parking lots and that kind of stuff. And I get the intent, I get the heart behind that as you want a visitor to see where they're going and what there's to see. And a lot of businesses do that. Yeah, exactly. I get all that, but I will say that in general, we find that because we remember the church is people as much as Google kind of paints it as the church being the building. Um, we remember that the church is people. It is us. Right. And so we want to make sure that we're highlighting photography of people. Usually the term we use here at reach, right. Is you want photos of people caught in the act yeah. Doing the values of your ministry. That's kind
Speaker 3 00:14:29 Of thing. You're looking for candid photos. Yeah. Candid photos. Exactly. We would use that word too. And, and uh, and you know, sometimes if someone's already kind of made their mind up, they, most of the time people are gonna go to your website, 85% of the time, even after they Google you. But if your profile's complete and they click in there and they see photos and they see some of this information, you may have for lack of a better word sold them right then and there too. So this is, uh, helpful for, I've done this with restaurants, you know, where I see the menu. I see photos of the food in there and I, oh yeah, this looks great. Let's go. So totally. Yeah. You want that thorough. You want that stuff on your website, but specifically in your Google, uh, business profile as well. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:15:07 That's it. Well, next one number five is you need to get buckets of reviews. You need lots and lots of reviews. Uh, really the more the merrier when it comes to reviews. And this is something, again that I see so many churches kind of struggle with this idea as like, that just seems weird to review a church. Yeah. Like it's not like it's an Amazon product or movie. Right. I mean, it's like, why would we do reviews? So here's what I encourage pastors to do is think about it. Not as a review, but as a testimony. Yeah. As a story about, Hey, here's what God has done. Or here's what this church has meant to me in my life. Yeah. And that's the kind of thing that we're going for. So chances are your church probably already has a couple of reviews organically. Yeah. Most churches do out there.
Speaker 0 00:15:50 But I think it's really important that you be intentional about getting reviews. And I got a couple of guidelines for, for churches about this. So not all reviews and not all review sites are the same. Now they're not all created equal. So for this conversation and I still think the most valuable reviews are ones that are on Google. Uh, so they obviously give precedence to reviews that are taking place on their site, but reviews everywhere, help Google. They look at your reviews on Facebook. They look at your reviews on Yelp. They look at your reviews on trip advisor because I've seen churches on Tripad advisor and other places like that. So there is no wrong place to be getting reviews, but there are wrong ways to get reviews on certain sites. Now here's the good news is that Google is very explicit about this. They say that you can ask for reviews, all you want, you should be soliciting reviews, ask people to give you reviews and kind of build up the content on there.
Speaker 0 00:16:47 Other places like Yelp, they strictly forbid you from soliciting or asking for reviews because they don't want people gaming their system. So just a different approach on this. Yeah. Um, that's not to say that people don't ask for reviews on Yelp because they do. Yeah. It's just, their algorithm tries to limit, uh, people requesting reviews and tries to weed those out. They, they basically say they don't suggest those, but I recommend that every church really focus hard on getting people from within your church to share their reviews, share their testimonies on Google, make sure they put in five stars and give all that kind of feedback on there. Uh, so that'd be the first place. And it's simple as, I mean, I don't even, I think for a lot of churches even saying in announcements, one, one they'll do this every week or anything. Right, right.
Speaker 0 00:17:35 But maybe once a year and say, Hey, you know, one thing that really helps us out a lot to get the word out about the church is if you just kind of mention this on a review on Google, for instance, if you pull up our Google profile or you just search for our church and you give us a five star review, if this church has been a blessing to you, that would mean a lot to us. It would help get our word out about our church and uh, the kind of impact we're having on our community. So something as simple as that would go a long way.
Speaker 3 00:17:59 And I like that you said, think of it as a testimony. You're right. Cuz this can come off as like I could see, you know, a pastor thinking, well, well, you know, I wanna that's awkward or is, should I do that? Like you said, it's not an Amazon product, but I think most con you know, pastors are confident that God's at work, uh, at their church. Why not, uh, show off what God is doing. <laugh> there. And you want people to have the opportunity to, to hear what is unique, what people are celebrating about your church. So you hit the nail in the head, think of it as a testimony. So.
Speaker 0 00:18:30 Awesome.
Speaker 3 00:18:31 Good. Well, I'll lead us home. This one, this last one here. Number six is last, but most certainly not least it's build links and citation. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so not to get two technical here, but links are important on your website links going out, but specifically links coming back to you because what that tells Google is that you're a valid organization. You're being referenced by other organizations out there. And so that's gonna really help, um, high quality websites linking back to yours. So, um, this could be, uh, one that just comes to mind at your denominations website, but it could be something else. It could be, um, a discipleship ministry that, you know, is somehow partnered with your church, that, that they've, you've done some work for you or ministry with you and they link back to you and they're a valid organization. So that'll help for sure.
Speaker 3 00:19:22 And then specifically citations, we'll spend a little bit more time on this because it probably a lot of people say, what is a citation? So what that is is it's your church's name, address, and phone number at the, uh, acronym abbreviation for that's AP, your name, address, and phone number needs to be consistent across dozens of other sites that you some, you know, and some you've never heard of out there and it needs to be consistent, but that's also something that kind of validates you with Google is when your church's name, address and phone number is consistent online.
Speaker 0 00:19:58 So you're saying like on, on like directory sites basically, right on other places like
Speaker 3 00:20:03 Right. Yelp, Yelp was one of, we were just talking about, um, uh, but even Uber, uh, you know, and, uh, Uber eats and, and these, and there's ones, there's ones you and I, we do this, of course that our, our team does this here at reach. Right. And so we know we laughed at some of the names of these, like what was it, pick me bows and, uh, uh, eight coupons, uh, I mean, what is eight coupons, but Google's looking for that name, address, and phone number there. So yeah. Directory websites.
Speaker 0 00:20:32 Yeah. I think that, um, so this is a service we, we help churches with. And so with our service, I think we have like 70, 80 different directories that we submit, make accounts for help churches get listed on those. And so this is just one of those things that Google their job is to try to assess which results are the most important or prominent in a certain area. Remember in any town. I mean, there's dozens of churches in most places that want that Google is trying to figure out which one of these dozen churches or 50 churches, or if you're in a big Metro area, which one of these thousand churches should I put at the top of the list for this person here. And so they have all these different ranking factors that come into it. And one of the primary ways that they assess the prominence or the importance of any organization, not just a ministry, is they look at how many links they have coming in from other places, how many other people online are saying things or talking about or referring to this particular church here.
Speaker 0 00:21:37 And so they use that as I would argue, probably their primary ranking metric. And I think if you said last, but certainly not least, I think it's almost last, but most important, uh, in this case here that how many links you have coming in, how many citations you have coming in. I mean, this isn't gonna fix everything you need to do the other stuff we talked about, but if you don't do this, you really, you have no hope of showing up in these things. If you're not listed anywhere, Google's gonna assume that you're some kind of a brand new church that nobody's ever heard of and right. It's not gonna wind up ranking you. So this is really one of the most important things you can do is work on, uh, the easy thing is getting all those, um, those citations from directories out there, there are services, uh, we offer a service that helps churches, uh, do those kinds of things there.
Speaker 0 00:22:23 So, uh, that's something that you can do. You can set it up yourself, the hard work that takes time is building relationship with other people in your community and yeah. Having your local, um, homeless mission linked to your church as one of their partners and having other churches say that you've been valuable to them and having people within your church, uh, link to you on their personal or business websites or yeah, that kind of stuff takes time. And it's a lifelong kind of mission for every church there. But all of these things together are what's gonna help your church show up in that map pack. And when people search on Google map. So, uh, anything else to add as we close up, Ian?
Speaker 3 00:23:00 No, just say that, you know, even though this takes a little bit of work, it, it, it can be done and it's most certainly worth it. And, and, uh, and this stuff takes time too. Uh, so like you just said, as far as building those relationships, getting people, uh, referencing you and everything, Rome wasn't built in a day, as the saying goes and just like, uh, your church wasn't, uh, uh, built in a day <laugh>, you know, so yeah, that's, it takes time, takes work, but most certainly worth it,
Speaker 0 00:23:27 You know, it's awesome. Just today, we got a, uh, a testimonial that, uh, someone from our Google, uh, local search team, uh, she sent it over to me. They took a picture of a visitor card of someone that just got connected. And it said, we found you on Google. Uh, and the, the, they were so stoked. This church, it's a small church. That's just kind of getting going there. But just the impact that this made that people are, are finding churches and they're being introduced to the gospel from local searches. I mean, that's, that's why we do what we do, obviously you and I, and that's why we do this podcast. Absolutely. Why we, why we exist as a company is to help, uh, churches to fulfill that mission. But yeah, it really is something that is pretty, pretty powerful when we hear back those kinds of things.
Speaker 0 00:24:12 So, uh, we wanna thank you guys for being a part of our retrain family. We love hearing back from you as well. So if you have seen results from, uh, your local search or your Google grant or any of those things, we'd love to know in the comments, or if you have any questions on maybe how to dial in your Google business profile or any kind of, there's a lot of things that are kind of, you can go either way on it. Any questions on that, ask us anything we're happy to help with any of those kinds of things. You can drop us a line on just about any platform where you're watching or listening to this. We do check the comments, we do respond to them. Uh, so please do that. And if this has meant something to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review, subscribe, do all those kinds of things. We want to thank you so much for being a part of the reach, right family, and we hope to catch you next week.
Speaker 1 00:24:56 See ya.
Speaker 0 00:24:59 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 at 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 for wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 00:25:26 Get ready to get
Speaker 1 00:25:34 You.
