The Top 7 Keywords Your Church Needs To Know for SEO

Speaker 0 00:00:00 More and more churches are starting to get serious about search engine optimization. But search engine optimization is a huge field with so many things that you can be doing, but in almost all circumstances, the first thing you should do is figure out what your audience is searching for. We dedicated this whole episode to that with the seven top key words that your church needs to be targeting. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the read-write 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 00:01:01 I'm ready to get <inaudible>. Speaker 0 00:01:06 Hey guys, welcome to the reach right podcast episode number 71. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Dan Hyatt. What's up Thomas. Hey man. Uh, not too much. I'm looking forward to talking today. We'll be talking about these seven key words for churches that want to improve their SEO rank their search engine optimization rank. Uh, I think this is a really good conversation. I think it's something that I get asked quite a bit about what should we do if we're trying to do search engine optimization, because frankly SEO is a huge topic and there are so many different things that can be done when it comes to search engine optimization. It has to do with site speed and it has to do with writing skill and it has to do with this. There's really no shortage. It has to do with the, the, the key word research is we're going to talk about today. Speaker 0 00:01:59 That's probably the first and foremost thing is figuring out what are those things that people are searching for and how do we start to help our church rank for that? How do we start to show up in those searches? So, uh, in this episode today, we're going to be talking about just the seven that you should probably take a look at and make sure your website is optimized for. And the reason why we chose these seven is because these are the ones that people are searching for the most. These are the ones that people are probably looking for. So that's not to say that's the only way to do search engine optimization because just because something is searched for a lot, does it mean that you should try to rank for it? Right. So if like, you know, the term, I'm sure like Bible is searched for all the time, just Bible by itself. Speaker 0 00:02:46 But the fact is, is that's kind of a competitive term. Like Bible gateway probably is going to rank. It's going to be hard to rank above Bible gateway when someone searches for just Bible, right? So you probably shouldn't be targeting just that. So what we're going to be talking about today is some shorter, but some that are more like what we'd call long tail keywords by that it means there's short tail, which means terms like church or Bible or, um, that kind of stuff. And then what a long tail keyword is something that's longer that maybe someone types into a search engine, it happens less frequently, but right where people are competing for it. Right? So an example people use sometimes is, uh, like red high top shoes would be an example of a long tail or red high top shoes, size nine. That's a very long tail keyword that, that doesn't get searched for very much. But it's something that when it does get searched for, you could probably rank for it if you write a post or content specifically about those kinds of things. So we have some that are kind of in that vein today and some that are more broad. And we'll talk about that a little bit today, but anyway, we're going to kind of give our audience the seven that we would start with. Yeah. And, um, yeah, I don't know. What do you have to add to that again? Speaker 3 00:04:06 No, not much. I mean, I, this is something that is very important. We've been talking a lot about SEO lately and I think that as we get into these, it's going to make sense to, uh, anyone watching or listening. Um, because I think that they're going to realize they do similar searches, uh, like this. Um, totally. A lot of these, I think will be kind of a common knowledge. So no, once you kick us off. Speaker 0 00:04:29 Well, yeah, before we jump right in the, let me just say this is that, um, we want to be careful if you're hearing this, don't hear us saying that we should use these terms 12 times in every single paragraph on our site. Right. That's that's not what we're saying. That that's, that's what we call keyword stuffing. Uh, and that's something that will get you that black listed on Google. And they'll say that you guys are trying to gain the system, so we're not going to show you results at all anymore. So don't take any of these and say, you know, Thomas had Ian say, we gotta use this, uh, 45 times on our homepage or else we're not going to rank. That's not what we're saying. You're supposed to do it in moderation. Uh, one of the best ways to do that as a tool called Yoast, if you're using WordPress, it'll help you figure out if you're using it too little, too much or just right. It'll help you figure some of those kinds of things out. But, uh, yeah, I'll go ahead and kick us off Speaker 3 00:05:20 Here. So good that you pointed that out before, kicking it off for sure. Speaker 0 00:05:23 Yeah. I, I think it's just, we don't want to get you blacklisted, if anything, I'd rather you be not showing up much than being, not showing up at all on your site there. So that's our hope for you? The first one we'll tackle is the, uh, the one that's probably the most famous and most useful is churches near me. That that saying there it's really a important search term, uh, because what it's doing is it's, it has a very clear local intent. Uh, so what a local intent is, is it's Google. And they've come to understand when someone is looking for a general search term, or if they're looking for something that is there locally. Like, so if we use the example, we'll probably use this a bunch, but we'll use the example of plumbers, right? If someone is searching for plumbers and they're in Austin, Texas, they don't really care what plumbing services are available in Seattle or in Boston, because they don't get that. Speaker 0 00:06:23 They're not gonna be able to help them in Austin, Texas. So Google has had to figure that out when people are searching for something that they're probably looking for something local, like plumbers near me, or restaurants near me, or churches near me in this case, then we want to make sure that we're showing organizations that are actually of use to the searcher there. And so the churches near me search term, uh, that is something that's really useful. Uh, so, uh, that's something that we think churches should probably be targeting as the first, uh, mission. Number one, is that churches near me keyword. Speaker 3 00:06:55 Yeah. And let's face it. Most people when they're looking for a church, they're looking for a church near them that they're not going to have to drive over an hour or two. And that's not to say, I know my church has people that drive over an hour to get to it, and that's great, but most people are going to be looking for churches near them and something that's going to be convenient distance wise from where they live. Um, and it's funny, you know, one of my favorite searches is restaurants or lunch near me. So it makes sense for when you, when you think about it, that's what people are doing. They're looking you usually when it's location based, they're looking for something near them. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:07:28 So let me say this too, about this one is that this one is one that's a little bit hard to use on your site, right? Cause like, think of a context where a church would write that exact phrase, churches near me, you're not going to write that on your site. Like you might, you might find some way to get it in there, but like you, I think a better way to do it in Google is smart enough to understand first person, second person, third person. Right. So if you had a sentence on your website, uh, that, uh, it says, are you looking for a church near you this weekend? Uh, like something like that, it will use that as a substitute for churches near me. If you don't have to actually say, and there's not a clear way to do it, there's not an easy way to write that on a, in normal human speak on a, on a church website, is, are you looking for churches near me? That doesn't really make sense that way. Right. So, um, try to use some kind of variation of it, but getting that kind of phrasing in there, churches near, I think it's going to be really valuable. Yeah. Speaker 3 00:08:27 Good stuff. Uh, I'll tackle the next one, which is kind of similar. Uh, and that's it churches in whatever city, like you said, uh, like let's say use Austin, Texas, for example. So people will do this type of search to where they'll say churches in Austin, um, churches in Nantucket. You'd like to use that city name all the time. So, you know, yeah. Basically this one's also very important to have. And I I've seen this on a lot, a lot of churches whenever I go to their website, they do have this up in the URL or the description there. So a lot of churches have wised up to that. The city name being in there. Speaker 0 00:09:04 Yep. No, I think that's exactly right. I think that, um, the, it, I think it's important to target both church and churches. Uh, so Google again is usually smart enough to distinguish, but if you can find a place or two to find, to have churches and a place or to define church, uh, that would be good. Now there are a few exceptions to this. Don't, it's not a hard and fast rule that it should be the city. Uh, like, so sometimes it should be the neighborhood. It, depending on your church, in some cases, it should be, uh, the county that you're in, uh, in some places, uh, it's, it's going to be different everywhere. So for instance, I think if you are a church in Staten island, New York, it probably isn't as valuable for you to put, to target churches in New York or churches in New York city. Speaker 0 00:09:52 You'd be targeting churches at Staten island because people are very rarely going to be taking the ferry across to go to church with you guys there. Right. So it's something that they're going to talk about. And I think this is especially true for a lot of our more rural type clients. Um, I think, and, and people that are in our audience that are in rural communities. I know we consult our clients that way. Um, you know, if you're in a town of a thousand people, the term churches in Braman, Oklahoma, or something like that, that's not going to be searched very often, right. That's not something that, you know there. Yeah. Maybe it's it's people in your town, what they're definitely looking for churches and Braman, but that's not something out of a thousand people that might get searched, you know, once every two months or something like that. Speaker 0 00:10:35 So I wouldn't target that. Usually in those cases you would go for the county. Uh, you'd go for the area. For instance, at my church, in my community here, I live in a town called Hawaii, Kai, which is in Honolulu, which is on a wahoo. So you could target churches on a wahoo. You could target churches in Honolulu, but if we're looking for that really local intent type person, we would be targeting churches in Hawaii, Kai, which is where we would be looking for these kinds of things here. So that's how we would do something like that. I think just kind of broadening it a little bit beyond city, I think is important. It's good. Cool. Next one. Uh, it's the term evangelical? Um, now that's a loaded term. I know that if you're, I don't know, there's different kinds of people in our audience. Speaker 0 00:11:20 Some are evangelical churches, summer mainline, some are Catholic. We talked to all kinds of different churches out there. Uh, I'd say the lion's share of our clients are evangelical. And that's what we tend to search who we tend to work with. And I know a lot of our audiences too, but, um, you know, it's, it's pretty broad, but what we have found is that evangelical, uh, it is a more searched term when people are looking for churches than other types of, uh, you know, people are searching for that, like evangelical more than Catholic or mainline or some of those kinds of things. So that kind of speaks to something we already know is that in general, mainline churches are struggling for growth more than evangelical churches are. Although across the board, especially with the pandemic, it's been harder, but evangelical is a term. If you're evangelical or evangelical adjacent, I would say, it's a term you may want to use on your website. Speaker 0 00:12:15 And now I know that it's loaded, right? So there's a lot of people that if they see that word evangelical, that's an automatic click off because that means something politically that they don't want to be involved with. And there's those that days that we're not here to make political comments on any of that. We just know that that is a reality and it's something we want to be careful with. But I think at the same time, it is valuable for search engine optimization. So if it's something you can find yourself use, if you could identify that way, if you find it at all valuable to you, we're telling you that it will be valuable, valuable for search engine optimization, if it is a good descriptor of your church. Speaker 3 00:12:52 Yeah, no, that's good. Yep. Well, that's a good transition to the next one. The next one's the denomination name. So, you know, we just mentioned evangelical, but if you are a Methodist church, if you are a Lutheran church, uh, having that key word, uh, within your content is going to be really good, uh, because there will be people that are searching for specific denominations. Um, so, um, so it is also wise to include that. Yup. Speaker 0 00:13:18 I mean, that's one of the great things is being a part of a denomination has its good parts and its bad parts, right? So I'm part of a very small denomination in churches that I've pastored the church. I'm a part of now it's called four square and there's a few thousand churches in the United States and oh, 70 or 80,000 worldwide. So it does have some presence, but it's not something that most people know about. And so for us, you know, we would use that and it would be a good thing for us to use on our website because there are a certain number of people that are familiar with Foursquare churches and they want to find another Foursquare church. And that's one of the benefits of it. One of the bad things about it is that there's people that have had bad experiences at every denomination of church out there, every church out there. Speaker 0 00:14:03 And so there are people when they see Baptist church or Lutheran church or a Catholic church, they immediately think churches, I will not go to, uh, there's people that think that way. So you have to be okay with some of those kinds of things. But I think for the most part, if you are a denominational church and certainly if it's in your name somewhere, if you're a first Baptist church, you should be using the term Baptist church, or if you're first United Methodist, you should be using Methodist church all over on your website to make sure that anybody looking for that kind of church in your community is going to find you. Yeah, it's good stuff. Yep. Cool. Next one is Bible based that term Bible based with, without a hyphen, Google is usually smart enough to get it with or without that there, but we found this to be a term that people are for often. Speaker 0 00:14:52 I think people that are interested in finding a church home, uh, whether they are practice, usually it's going to be someone that has more experience with Trish or they they've, they've given their life. People that don't know Jesus probably aren't looking for Bible-based churches out there. Right. But people that do, they're usually doing those kinds of searches to find one that actually teaches the Bible, because one of the main reasons why people leave churches is because they have a problem with some kind of theology that they believe doesn't match up with what they read in scripture. And so they're looking for a Bible based church. So it's a very, uh, open someone that's open to looking for a new church to visit is typing in that term Bible based very often. So if you were going to describe your church and you are a Bible, if you're not a Bible based church, then don't use this. But if you are a Bible based church, use that term. When you're talking about your church in a few places on your site, I think it'll help. Yeah, Speaker 3 00:15:46 That's good. And on the flip side, the next one, Christian churches. Um, so that's another thing is that, you know, if you were asked, what kind of church do you go to by someone? You'd probably say I'm a, I'm a part of a Christian Church. You know, I go to a Christian Church, uh, that is something else that someone who is looking specifically that, that they're not Muslim. Uh, they're looking for a Christian Church. They're going to use that term and key word. Speaker 0 00:16:11 Yeah. I think it's funny. Cause I think from a lot of our audience, are we lead churches and we're so, you know, we were so in entrenched in church and ministry work that like when we describe ourselves to our friends, we rarely, unless you're part of the Christian Church denomination, we rarely refer to ourselves as, yeah, we're a Christian Church, you know, it's something that that's just assumed. If you say church, you don't usually need the modifier Christian in front of it. But I think to people that don't know Jesus, especially, or they're newer to this, they're, they're looking for a Christian Church. They're looking at they'll type that kind of a search term in. So it, I think a lot of churches find it odd to put it in their, into their copy in their text and using it as a keyword on their site because that's not in the way that we normally talk. But I think finding a way to get Christian Church in there and a few places, I think that'll definitely be helpful. Speaker 3 00:17:03 That's good. I want you to leave this home. What's the last one, but not least an interesting one, right? Speaker 0 00:17:08 Yeah. The last one I think is interesting because it means different things to different people, but it's spirit filled spirit filled. So there's two kinds of people that type in spirit. It means two different things that I can kind of think of as I think about people that is. But the research shows, this is a very common term for people looking for churches online they'll type in spirit field or spirit-filled churches. So to some people, spirit field is a substitute for the term, Pentecostal, charismatic, speaking in tongues, those kinds of things, maybe snake handling some of those people that are looking for a church where they believe in, uh, that all the gifts that we read about in the Bible are applicable today. And they're going to practice them in that church. They might type in that term spirit filled church to other people. Spirit-filled just means it's not traditional. Speaker 0 00:18:00 It's something where people might clap their hands. When they're singing more expressive, it's more expressive in the style. It really is in the statement of theology. It's more of a statement of style there, but either way, these are people that you may want to connect with. So I think even if you are a Baptist church, for instance, and you wouldn't consider yourself a charismatic or a Pentecostal church, you're a Baptist, but you're the kind of church where people stand and clap their hands during worship. Or you have some lighting that are on the stage when people are, are preaching, that kind of stuff you might want to use. We are say that we are a spirit filled church somewhere on your website. You know, again, make sure it's clear in that what we believe segment about what you believe about your church and what you believe about the, about Jesus. Speaker 0 00:18:45 So it makes sure that's clear, but you spirit field. I think it's a good term because it means a lot of things. And the research seems to show that it's something that's going to be commonly searched by people looking for churches. Yeah, absolutely. We've been seeing that. So yeah, those are good ones partner. Awesome. Yeah. I hope it's been helpful to our audience. If it has been rate, review, subscribe, do all those things. That means a lot to us. It really, I want to share that it really has played a huge part in the growth of this podcast. This channel we're on a bunch of different platforms and it's funny, we're hearing more and more for people that say, Hey, we've been watching this and it got us thinking and we want to talk about this more. We have some questions it's really helped our church. So we love hearing those kinds of stories too. So if this has helped you, please let us know in the comments, shoot us a message, drop us a like share, tell your friends those kinds of things. That just means a lot to us. So thank you guys so much for being a part of our reach, right family. And we'll catch you next week. Speaker 0 00:19:43 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.