Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 If you want your church to be found online, you need to get serious about local SEO or search engine optimization. And one of the keys to thriving in local SEO is getting your church listed in local directories. In today's episode, we'll give you all the ins and outs on how your church can do exactly that. We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast.
Speaker 2 00:00:33 You're listening to the reach, right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me as always as my co-host Ian Hyat, we're here to help your church see more visitors and grow, ready
Speaker 3 00:00:53 To get ready to get full gig.
Speaker 2 00:00:59 Well, Hey guys,
Speaker 0 00:01:00 Welcome up for the reach
Speaker 2 00:01:01 Right. Podcast episode number
Speaker 0 00:01:02 108. I am your host Thomas Costello, and with me as always as my co-host Ian Hyat what's up Thomas. Hey, not much, man. Good topic today. We're gonna be talking about how you can use local directories to improve church's SEO. Now we were joking before we started here. Just about how randomly specific yeah. Some of this stuff is that we're doing. And I, I, I, I get that the it's not wasted on me that these topics are very niche. Yeah. But for churches, I think that getting this right is really, it could be the secret sauce that really helps a lot of churches see a lot more visitors. Uh, SEO is something that is so important here in 2022. And we're filming this here. I think it's not going away. Search engine optimization is vital, uh, and getting your church listed in local directories, uh, is one of the most important things that you can do to improve your search engine rankings, especially on local searches.
Speaker 0 00:02:03 Am I right? Yeah, you're right. And it's funny, like you said, this is very specific and niche and we were joking also saying most pastors, you know, and they're not sitting down to do their sermon prep preparation, and Jen, then they just, all of a sudden say, wait a second, I gotta stop and think of local listings before I, uh, begin my, uh, message here. But, uh, no, they are very important. And as you said, the secret sauce and yeah, Google searches, everyone's doing them and they're not going away. And, uh, and so it's very vital. Yeah. So here's the premise is that one of the keys to showing up on Google searches, uh, and to be clear, the part we're talking most about here is what we'd call the map pack of a Google search. So, right. We did a whole episode outline in the anatomy of a Google search at the top of most Google searches.
Speaker 0 00:02:48 There's gonna be ads. Uh, your church can get on there for free if you take advantage of the Google grant. Yeah. Uh, but below that is what's called the Google map pack. And that's usually where you see three listings and a map and whatever Google thinks the three most important churches in this case are in that area. They're the ones that are gonna appear in that map pack. And there's a lot of research that shows those are the most likely ones to be clicked on there. So it is so important if you want your church to be found that you would show up in there. And one of the keys to that is getting your church into local directories. That's one of the things that Google uses to rank. Yeah. Which church they think is most important. Here's one of the biggest myths is that people think that Google just goes with whoever the biggest church is.
Speaker 0 00:03:34 Right, right. They just take, whoever is the largest church. They somehow know. It's like, Google's there taking attendance at your church. I had a church tell me that today. They were like, yeah, these are all large churches in that list. And that's, that's why they're there. Yeah. Oftentimes that is the case. But the reason for that is because large churches naturally have the most people, uh, they're listed in the most directories. They have the most content on their websites. They have the most people reviewing their church, doing reviews, right. People are talking about them more. And Google uses all those as signals to figure out which church or which organization is most important when people put searches for things like churches near me into a Google search there. So one of the key signals though, is how many times is this church listed on other sites on the internet?
Speaker 0 00:04:21 Yeah. And this primary way where you're gonna be listed is on local directories, on different directories, that list different churches or different organizations. And so this is one of the most important things you can do to make sure your church shows up in those searches yeah. Is to get yourself onto local directories. I have that, right? Yeah. You got it. Right. It's funny. Uh, and it is, it, it can be some work and there's a lot of them. And, uh, but, uh, I just was talking about this with a, uh, ministry leader today. And, uh, he was talking about the work that he did. He says, man, I, I got through 10 of those directories and I just felt like pulling my hair out. So <laugh>, but there is some, you gotta count the cost of it. And, uh, and, and we'll talk a little bit more about that, but yeah, it's good.
Speaker 0 00:05:05 Well, we'll get into this. We, we don't do this podcast, uh, specifically to, to sell anything that we do here at reach. Right. But a full disclosure, this is a service that we offer if you, at that place like that pastor where you're pulling your hair out. Because I mean, we have, we have people that do this all the time and are very fast at it, uh, and are able to get these kinds of things listed for you quickly. And we have some software that helps us do it. Yeah. So we don't really need to pull our hair out. Yeah. But it is, uh, something that we encourage churches. I think that it's, you were alluding before that pastors, aren't sitting there doing their sermon prep. Right. We don't want you sitting there doing your sermon prep and saying, oh my goodness. I have to make sure we get listed on this directory.
Speaker 0 00:05:45 Right. Cause I haven't updated that directory in six weeks. I need to get on there now. Yeah. That's a terrible way for you to spend your time. We think it's usually best for churches to have someone on the outside. Who's good at it. Help them with this. Yeah. If you want some help with that, please reach out to us. We'd be happy to chat with your church more about how we can do that. But if you, we just wanna give you, I guess, a broad overview on some of those things that you can be doing to get yourself into these local directories. Some of the ones you need to be watching out for, and maybe just some ideas on how you can make that happen there. So that's the theme today. Good. Why don't we talk about some of these awesome. Yeah. So we'll just kind of dig in and we'll kind of hopefully point you in the direction of some of the ones that we think you should be considering.
Speaker 0 00:06:25 So yeah, I guess we'll bring it into three categories of three different categories of directories. You need to be looking at as a church there. So the first one are the popular, we're gonna focus on more of our us audience, but these apply to a lot of other countries as well. Uh, but we'll go through some of the popular us ones here. So the ones, these are national directories that you are familiar with. Probably almost all of these, if not all of them. Uh, but they are things that they list different organizations and yeah. Uh, it's not just for churches. Uh, there are things that you could find plumbers listed and electricians yeah. And restaurants and all those things, but churches should be on there as well. So, uh, why don't you give us some of those examples yeah. Of what are some of those popular us directories?
Speaker 0 00:07:09 Yeah. First one, uh, your Google business profile, if you haven't, uh, yeah. Most important, really most important. Yeah. So we, we mentioned that one first and if you have not claimed as a church, your Google business profile, get that done. Uh, that one should be first and foremost, others, Facebook, you know, yellow pages.com Yelp. Uh, and, and I think a lot of people have heard of these apple maps, um, Bing places, four square Yahoo, local super pages, local.com. These are, these are, those are some main ones us directories. Yeah. Yeah. And, and these are, I guess these are kind of our, like top 10, uh, if you were to choose just 10 of them. Yep. These are the ones. If you're gonna try and do it yourself, um, these are the 10 that I would make sure that my listing is on there. And here's something we haven't talked about really yet.
Speaker 0 00:08:00 Ju a lot of times these will naturally just have your listing without you doing anything. Uh, because they're aggregating from other places like, uh, you know, Yelp, they pull from Google, they pull from yellow pages and they build their listings that way. But what you'll find is that when things are automatically aggregated, a lot of times they'll have wrong information or different information or a different way of putting it, which actually can trick Google into thinking that these are multiple organizations and not just one. Yeah. So one of the keys to this is you wanna make sure when you are getting yourself listed in these directories, that you wanna make sure that you are what we call your N a P yeah. Which is an acronym for name, address, phone number. You wanna make sure that that is consistent on all 10 of these different directories here now.
Speaker 0 00:08:46 Yeah. Let me say this. That is just 10. That's not an exhaustive list of all of the different directories you could be on. Yeah. In fact, when we help churches through this process, we find 77 different lists that we found that would be worth a contribution. And so if we help get, uh, stuff out to 77 different directories yeah. That is hair pulling. Uh, I was gonna say, you have no hair, you'd have no hair left. Uh, at the end of that. Exactly. If you had to log into each one of those on a regular basis to update your, uh, your name, address, and phone number, uh, that's something that's a lot of work to do, but that's just an example of, uh, 10 of the ones that if you were to do it yourself, these are the tens we would, then we would probably target.
Speaker 0 00:09:28 So that's good. And again, those are all nationwide ones next. I think we would, uh, you do well to look at some of the local directories. So, uh, directories that are in your local area that are specific to your city, your town, your county, your state, yeah. Things that are, uh, that are not relevant to relevant to me here in Hawaii, but they are relevant to you in Austin, Texas. And so we would use different kinds of things. So what are some examples of different, uh, directories that maybe not all of these would apply to every place, but what are some of the ones that, uh, churches should look at locally there? Would you say? Yeah. Some of the main ones chamber of commerce, first one to, to think of and, and get done. Lo just any local business associations mm-hmm <affirmative> city or town websites, neighborhood websites, local newspapers, or media outlets and local blogs too.
Speaker 0 00:10:19 Yeah, absolutely. Uh, the church, I was pastoring last in Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah. Um, not known as a church friendly city, uh, but we were still able to list ourselves, uh, in the local newspaper there. And, uh, every church that put in, uh, that information, they could get a listing on the local newspaper side and all of those will help to contribute to your overall those indicators that Google's looking for as they're looking for, uh, different churches to be showing when people search for churches near me. So yeah. Uh, yeah, some good ideas in there. So all last one, um, would be, uh, not the nationwide ones. We're all familiar with, not the local ones, but I'd say church specific kinds of directories. Yeah. Uh, church specific ones here. So, um, you have a few, I guess, of those that are yeah. Uh, sites that are dedicated to just listing churches.
Speaker 0 00:11:06 What are some of those where churches should look at? Yeah. And you'll see some of these, if you like Google, uh, churches in a specific city, like if you churches in Austin, this stuff will come up down towards the bottom typically, uh, of that, uh, Google page there, but church angel, uh, church finder.com, church.org, USA, churches. Uh, those are a small handful there that, uh, and I say small handful. That's good for, um, solid ones there. So yeah, that's good. A couple other ones that I would mention, uh, number one is if you are part of a denomination organization or a district within your denomination yeah. All of those kinds of organizations, uh, they would be great places where you should get listed. Uh, so I'm a part of a Foursquare, uh, church. I've been a Foursquare for years and, uh, that's where we would list.
Speaker 0 00:11:55 They have a church finder app on, or I guess a section on the website and on the app where people can put in their information and then all of our content is there on that. Yeah. Um, so that's a really big one. A lot of times, if you're part of a larger denomination, uh, you'll have a district area where it list all the different churches in your district, those are places, all of those count. Now, the larger the website, um, this is what we would call, uh, the domain authority of the linking website. That plays a part. Yeah. So, you know, your local district of 16 different churches, they might not give you a lot of juice getting on there, but it's still worth your time. Yeah. But your denomination, if you're part of the United Methodist church, for instance, getting on that list, it's a very big site.
Speaker 0 00:12:35 The United Methodist church, umc.org. That's a big site with a high domain authority and Google will take that result really seriously. So get on your denomination, your district kind of websites. Um, I would also one that I found that was helpful and a lot of our audience could get on this one too. Uh, the gospel coalition, uh, they have a listing of different gospel focused churches. Uh, so if you meet kind of their requirements theologically and you can kind of ascribe the, you can subscribe to their theological statement, which yeah. I think a lot of evangelical churches can, you can get on that list. It's helpful. I know another one for us. And a lot of local campus ministries have a listing of churches. They recommend to their college students. So for our church, we were on the local campus, or I guess it's called, used to be campus crusade.
Speaker 0 00:13:21 That's called crew now. But we were on the crew listing, uh, of churches in Madison. Uh, and we were one of their recommended churches that people could go to. And all I had to do was submit it and send them email and say, we'd love to be on this list. And they got us on there. So there's lots of local opportunities to do that kind of stuff there. So, um, good stuff. Yeah. Some ideas. So, uh, any tips, I guess kind of, as we close out, uh, this episode here, any tips we could share with people for how to make your listing effective Ian or things that you could do to, to get the most out of one of these listings? Yeah. So now that we know the listings, yeah. It's how to carry that out. So, um, first of all, it's including all your churches, contact information, name, address, phone number, like we mentioned, that's your INAP, make sure you're consistent with all of those.
Speaker 0 00:14:05 You need a description, uh, of your church. Um, you need to choose the right category for your listing. Uh, you need to include photos and videos whenever possible. Um, so it's funny. We helped to I'll pause right there. We helped the church here, uh, a couple of weeks ago, uh, for their Google business profile. There was, um, a picture of, of the church with weeds and when it was overgrown and before the church came in and actually kind of cleaned it up and got everything there was that. And then there was a wall with graffiti. Um, so make sure that you ha uh, include good photos yeah. And, uh, relevant photos and videos whenever possible, and then encourage your members to leave reviews. Um, that's, that's one big thing there too. Um, updates your listing regularly. Like I said, keep it up to date photos, those things there, those will, those will all be good things to help, uh, help you out.
Speaker 0 00:14:58 Yeah. I, I think we've done entire episodes on lots of these things, like how to get reviews or encourage members to leave reviews. We've talked in full episodes about, uh, getting your Google business profile set up properly and about NP and all that stuff. So we have a whole bunch of content on this in our library. If you're looking for tips on local SEO and how to do this better, again, this is something that we eat, breathe and sleep here at reach, right? Yeah. Um, if you are looking for help again, uh, this is something that you may want to take a crack on it. You could do it. There's no cost to do any of this. If you wanna just do it on your own, uh, that is fine. Also at no cost, something that we offer on our website, we'll have a link to this as well.
Speaker 0 00:15:37 Yep. Is we have a totally free, uh, local SEO audit that we do for churches. So, uh, you just put in your church name, it does the rest. It tries to figure out where you are and where you hear on all those local searches. Uh, it is a totally free tool, no obligation take advantage of that. Get that local audit. That'll help you. It actually gives you a list of all the listings out there where you could have an account and it shows, Hey, is your name, address, and phone number all the same on these? And can you do something to change it, it's a good way to get some marching orders. So you know what to do, if you would like some help, we'd be happy to chat with you. Yeah. Uh, and get you some more information on how we can do something like that.
Speaker 0 00:16:15 All that information is on our website. So, um, anything else to add as we close up here today? Ian? No. No, just, uh, you know, if you do this on your own to try not to pull your hair out and, uh, and some churches do, they pull it off and they get some of this done, but, uh, yeah, no, it's very important. And, uh, you know, we're here to help if we can, for sure. So that's it, if this has been helpful to you, it would mean so much to us. If you would rate, review, subscribe, like comment, follow, do all those things. It helps the algorithm to find us and give this to more people. And, uh, we're just hopeful to be able to help more churches like yours. So thank you guys so much for being a part of our reach, right. Family, and we hope to catch you next week. God bless.
Speaker 2 00:16:57 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.
