Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 In today's episode, we unpack six local SEO tips that your church needs to know. Search engine optimization has changed dramatically over the last few years. Google has put more attention than ever and to making sure that local results show up more often, and that is great news for churches, but the way you rank at local searches is different from how a church would rank in a general search. Join us as we discuss some of those differences in this conversation, we hope it helps your church reach more people and grow.
Speaker 1 00:00:42 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 you your church see more visitors and grow. Hey guys, welcome to the retreat
Speaker 0 00:01:10 Podcast. Episode number 43. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost
Speaker 2 00:01:18 Ian Hyatt. Hey Thomas man, 43 episodes. We're getting up there
Speaker 0 00:01:21 43 deep and we have a good topic here today. We're going to be talking about six local SEO tips that your church needs to know. I think it should be a good conversation. Um, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about what local SEO is as a whole, and, uh, we'll dig into some of that here, but I think it should be a fun one on probably one of the most important things that churches can do if they are serious about digital marketing, I would say.
Speaker 2 00:01:48 Right? Yeah. And it, SEO has become a hot topic in the last few years in the church world. I remember a time what five plus years ago, you'd say SEO and, uh, you know, be like crickets, what is that? Or pastor or ministry leader of a draw blank and net now pastors are more privy to what it is and why it's important. At least they have a general understanding of what it is.
Speaker 0 00:02:08 Yeah, absolutely. Uh, SEO for our audience that maybe doesn't know, or maybe you're new to this podcast. It stands for search engine optimization. Uh, so setting up your, uh, your website for your church, uh, to make sure that it does well in search engines, it is a really kind of some low hanging fruit for, uh, getting visitors in the door of your church. Because if you take this stuff seriously, uh, and most churches, I would say, don't spend a lot of time on this. And so it's something that if you get this right, I think you can rank. And we find that, um, a lot of people look for churches online. Um, really most people do that. And a lot of times people will find you on search engine. So it's really important. Uh, but we'll just go ahead and dig in. I'll hit number one here.
Speaker 0 00:02:50 Uh, and the first step is, uh, understanding what local SEO is. Uh, so, um, it's to be distinguished from their search optimization, and then there's a local search engine optimization or local SEO. And what this is, is these are the results. When you type a search into Google and I got to use Google most of the time, all those search engine optimization refers to any search engine. Uh, they basically operate on the same set of rules here. So if someone's searching on Bing or Yahoo or duck, duck go, or one of those other ones, there's all kinds of search engines. I started out using Alta Vista when I started searching, uh, way back in the day. And anyway, you can use any search engine, but we'll use Google mostly in this conversation, but local SEO, uh, is different from what we would call like a traditional SEO, which tries to rank individual pages of your website by making good content, local SEO is doing your best to get your church or organization to rank in the first, like what we'd call the Google map pack when someone does a Google search there.
Speaker 0 00:03:58 So if you kind of picture a Google search nowadays, it used to be that you would see, um, just the search results at the top of whatever pages on those websites would make sense for the search. And then Google started having advertising. So the first couple of results would be ads, and then you would see the OnPage results. And now what you see most of the time is you'll see a set of ads. And then you'll see a group of two or three organizations that are local that would meet the requirements of what someone is searching for. So, uh, to our audience, go ahead and type in. If you wanted to try this, uh, uh, churches near me into your search engine and see what comes up, you'll probably see some ads at the top. And then you'll probably see our map with two or three, or maybe sometimes even four listings of local churches.
Speaker 0 00:04:47 And then you'll see a bunch of churches and their home pages, or maybe a directory of churches in your area. That's what we below all of that. But here's what we've learned is that most people, when they're doing a local search, won't even get past the Google map pack section, they'll go for that. And they will use that. So this is what local SEO is. It's our attempt, it's a search engine optimizers attempt to get churches into that map pack. When someone searches for churches or counseling services near me or a youth group near me, or prayer gatherings near me, that it would come up in that map pack there. And there's a lot of strategy to that. So what do you have to add to that again?
Speaker 2 00:05:26 No, it's funny. I actually, after we were kind of brainstorming this podcast and looking through a lot of the information and data, I was like, you know, I've been going to my church forever. I haven't done a churches near me search for a little while. So I did it to just make sure my church came up and in that top three or four there, and we did, thankfully there was actually another, I was actually pleased to see a smaller church than us, a newer church actually come up ahead of us. So they, they got on top of that. So, you know, and so that was a good thing. So no, I think for every pastor and ministry leader, we know we're trying to reach people near us because while we know the pandemic has kind of created online campuses and of course an online live streaming presence, that's all great. And it's great if you're reaching people that are not local still, but at the end of the day, and as churches are opening up more and more now and just, you know, how it's been for a long time now, you want to reach people near you searching for, they can actually make a drive to your church. So that's quite simply why this is important.
Speaker 0 00:06:33 This is kind of like the modern day door hanger that you would go around and put on people's doors because it reaches people that are within your area or they're in driving distance from your organization. And this obviously isn't specific to churches. If you put in plumbers near me or pool service people near me or whatever your you're looking for, you're probably familiar with that map pack and trying to get into there. So it is a really, and I think what you said is important is that this is one of those things that small churches can play with the big boys, right? It's something that your size doesn't really matter all that much when it comes to that map pack. Um, it's really more about what your site is doing. You're, you're what you're doing on your site is still important for this, but yeah, there's other things you can do that you would be able to be just as visible as the largest churches in your community, which is really great. I think it's a great way to, uh, even the little guys can, uh, can reach out and reach lots of people that way. So, um, and let's talk about,
Speaker 2 00:07:30 About one of those little things to do is that's a good segue into the second point and it's, that's, you should claim your Google, my business listing. And so many churches don't do this, and it's really just an easy step, but it's going to be hard to come up in that map pack or that top three or four, if you don't do this. And so end, it's a really, just an easy step to take. And again, it Google my business. We know churches are not a business, but yet your organization and this, this kind of validates you obviously as a, as a local organization and valid place. So
Speaker 0 00:08:07 Yeah, so, uh, it's not, it's not fair to say that you will not show up if you don't claim your listing because there's all kinds of very small mom and pop shops. I imagine there's, you know, sewing stores or bonsai farms and all that kind of stuff, but not everybody is computer savvy. And Google takes that into consideration and you can still rank because they actually have algorithms that are finding your organization and they'll put you online. And maybe you've gotten calls before as a church that say, Hey, are you open on this day or Google calls companies to try and gather that information there, but it is also fair to say that your odds of showing up in that map pack, if you don't claim your listing are minuscule. Uh, because there are probably, if you're like in most places, there's many other churches in your community that people could go to Google doesn't weigh your theology or any of those kinds of things, or how great your services are.
Speaker 0 00:09:05 They're just looking for churches that they can refer people to when someone looks for churches near them. So it is so important that you get on there and claim that listing, uh, it's you go to google.com/business, uh, that's where you would do that. If you haven't already signed up, um, you probably will have to you'll find an existing account because they probably have some kind of a listing for you already, but you're just going to verify yourself as the owner. And then I think what's really important as you put as much information as you have into that listing there. So they're going to ask you for a service times, office hour times a website address, social media links, they'll ask you for location, parking, location, direction, information, that's all they ask you for all that information. One of the biggest things you can do is photos, uh, adding photos of your location of your facility.
Speaker 0 00:09:59 Now we're the first to tell churches that you want to use pictures of people wherever you can, but this is one of those few times, or having images of your location, because it's about how to get there. How did that information front and center is going to be really important? So, um, just, it probably will take you about 15 to 20 minutes, uh, but make sure you get that information on there and take the time to do it, and it'll make a huge impact in how many people you can reach. Awesome. Yeah. Good stuff. Cool. Let me get number three. And, uh, I'll give this one a little explanation, but, uh, number three is consistently
Speaker 3 00:10:34 Use your nap, uh, at nap
Speaker 0 00:10:37 When it comes to search engine optimization, talk, it stands for name, address, phone number, name, address, phone number. And so this is when it comes to local search engine optimization. This is the information that these, uh, these sites that help you rank in that map pack. That's the information that it's looking for. And when we say consistently use it, this is something that is missed by so many organizations, is that it's important that you always use your name, address, and phone number in the exact same way. Uh, so, and this seems so arbitrary, but this is just the way that these algorithms work is that, um, you need to use your name the same way all the time. So if your name is, uh, first Baptist church, uh, it's important that you always write yourself as first Baptist church on your website and not say first Baptist church of, um, of Nantucket or
Speaker 3 00:11:38 FBC or FPC
Speaker 0 00:11:40 Nantucket, or first, or just first to Nantucket, or there, there may be all kinds of ways that you say and how you say it. It doesn't really matter. Uh, you can just, if you want to just call yourself first Nantucket, uh, that's fine, but just, it's important that you consistently do that because what these algorithms do is if they see FBC, Nantucket, first Baptist church, and first Nantucket all in the same place, they're going to think of these as three different. Uh attribution's and basically you're, you're sending your, um, your, uh, all your juice to three different directions basically. And so it's really important that you home this information to be the exact same way. This is really important when it comes to addresses and phone numbers too. So with addresses, um, always make sure you write your address the exact same way every time that you do it.
Speaker 0 00:12:30 Don't do your address sometimes with the nine digit zip code, and sometimes with the five digit zip code. If you're on North, <inaudible> always put an <inaudible> or North <inaudible>, however you want to spell it. That's fine. Just make sure you consistently do it the same every single time. Same thing goes for phone numbers. If you use dots between the numbers, great. If you use a parentheses around your area code, great, but just make sure you do it the same way every single time. And that's, what's going to help you with your search engine results. And, uh, I, it seems again like it's kind of a minutiae, but it really is important and it'll help you get results and show up in that pack. There, anything to add on that?
Speaker 2 00:13:11 No, not much. I think just consistency is the key. And I think that's really good segue to the next point, which is to submit your church to listing sites. And so there's tons of hundreds of sites out there that list, this very information that you're talking about out there, like Yelp, yellow pages, all sorts of other ones out there, ones you won't even, you haven't even heard of. And it's really important in this. This might be something that you actually maybe need to hire someone for. I know it's something that we it's a service we've provided for a while now at retried. And the reason why is unless you have time to submit all of your information in a consistent manner, like you were talking about and, and very accurately to about what 115 different sites, right. Then you may want to consider getting some, some extra help with that out there. But this is also very important for how well you rank.
Speaker 0 00:14:09 Yeah. So the way these local map packs in his local search engine systems, the way they work is they usually rank people based on how many of these listing sites, how many of them are linking to this same organization. So if, uh, if you're only listed on three sites out there, maybe it's your Facebook page and your, uh, your, uh, your LinkedIn page and Yelp. Well, that's great, but there's 115 other ones of varying importance that are out there. And so what is important is that you do your best to make sure that that same nap, your name, address, and phone number consistently listed on every single listing site. And you can get your hands on. That's really valuable, but you said it exactly right, is who on earth has time to go and list their things on 115 different sites. And here's the real kicker is that these sites are all user editable.
Speaker 0 00:15:02 So what I've found is that what happens is that it's not just you, that could edit it, but if someone gets onto yellow pages.com and they say, actually, you know what? Um, their service times are actually at 10 30, not at 10 o'clock and they wrongly do that. Then you have to go back in there and manage that and change it back again. And so it's not just a one and done thing. No, that's why it's usually a service. Um, so I, I know that most organizations could, there's all kinds of companies you can use for this. The going rate is usually between, I'd say like 60 or 70 bucks on the low end, all the way up to a hundred, $150 on the high end for a service that lists you at lists, your church or organization on all these listing sites, and then keeps you listed in a consistent way.
Speaker 0 00:15:50 Um, I think it's really money well spent for some of these ones. That's something we offer monthly that's on a monthly basis on a monthly basis. Yeah, exactly. Because again, if your information changes or one person gets onto Yelp and says, um, you know, no, there wasn't parking available that you have to go in there and get back into Yelp. And you'll be CA if you, if you try to manage it yourself, you will constantly be getting notified about changes, approving changes, and it is just a pain in the neck. So I think it's worth it for every church to consider a service like this. It's, uh, I think you will see results in more visitors and it's worth the money monthly, especially if you can find an affordable one, uh, that is a service that we offer, we'll say too. So if someone wants some help, you can get some information on that from us. Uh, but yeah, this is something that is, it is really, really an important thing to do. Um, even finding the organizations to list on that's a pain, but, uh, yeah, I think that getting yourself listed on these sites is really something valuable. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:16:46 I could have a disgruntled member, leave the church and go to sabotage you and put all the improper information about service times and everything else out there. But now hopefully someone wouldn't take the time to do that, but you never know someone could have been going to your church when your service was at 10:00 AM and you changed it six months later or something like that.
Speaker 0 00:17:06 Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And that actually, you know, disgruntled old members that leads us to number five, which is ask your members, not disgruntled old members, but ask your members for reviews, ask people for reviews. This seems so crazy. I think to churches is that like who I even thinking that someone is going to read reviews or make a decision on our church based on reviews online, it feels so counterintuitive. But if you take a step back and think about it, reviews, make the world go round. Nowadays, this is something that we all look at. I'm a, I'm a big review guy. I don't know where you stand on, like movie reviews and that kind of stuff. I always look it up. My wife and I have this standing debate we have in our houses. She refuses to listen to movie reviews. And I am a big believer in movie reviews.
Speaker 0 00:17:52 And I, you know that about me. So, but I think you think about the way you act on Amazon, right? When you grind the Amazon, I can remember buying something on there for the first time where I didn't at least take a peek at a couple of reviews and see what people said about it. Right. And people are the same way when it comes to going to churches. I believe they will. If they see reviews, you better believe that they're going to take a look at some of those reviews and see what people say. So I think part of it is just reframing our thinking about these things. I'm thinking about the way we think about it. Maybe if we didn't even call them reviews, I know Yelp is going to call them reviews. But if we think of them as testimonies, which is what they are, it's people telling their story about their encounter. That I think that really goes a long way. So yeah. Maybe you have something to add to that, Ian.
Speaker 2 00:18:39 Oh yeah. That's exactly what I was going to say. You know, if you're that pastor or ministry leader that has, and maybe talking to someone who's new, maybe someone's been coming for only a few weeks, but they're so excited. They've loved the messages, the worship that they'd been impacted at your church. If they're sharing that with you, it's kind of a natural segue to just say, Hey, you know, no biggie, if you don't want to, but if you wouldn't mind giving us a review online, people see that when they're looking for churches and we, we want people to know that, you know, lives are being changed here and, and people are being blessed and so on, and it really doesn't have to be unnatural, but you're right. I think, you know, it's, it's kinda hard for maybe that ministry leader to think of it as is a testimony, but really it is.
Speaker 2 00:19:20 And people do see these and let's face it. You know, not, everyone's always going to be happy with your church and that's fine, right. There's, there's another church out there for them or whatever. But, and I think of this too, as being very important because as we've are all aware, I think every pastor ministry leader, and everyone's aware there's a little bit more apprehension that people have in checking out a church compared to maybe checking out a movie for the first time, like you said, with movie reviews, church is a different thing. There's spirituality involved. There's maybe do I want to go? And these people are going to be weird. So this is very beneficial for people to see these reviews, real people like them saying, Hey, you know, we had a great experience here. It could, it could be that, that last little kind of thing that needed to happen, that the tipping point, if you will, for someone to visit in person.
Speaker 0 00:20:10 Yeah. Let me, let me add too. So kind of, I think you're exactly right about the practical value of reviews. So don't shy away from those, but there is also a lot of SEO value to these reviews too. So I think people will take what you said in there and they'll, they'll take it to heart. But in addition, I think what it does is the more reviews you have on sites out there, the more it says to the Google algorithm, that these guys are a, a worthy organization of being in our map pack, and we should deliver their information to people more when they are searching, because over and over again, people are reviewing this. Now this is a open opportunity. Most churches have, if any, they have a couple of reviews out there on most sites. And so getting these kinds of things out there is really important.
Speaker 0 00:20:56 A couple of disclaimers about this. There are, um, there's a few sites that I would encourage you to ask people to review you on. I think the two most obvious are Google and Facebook. Google is number one because they like their reviews when it comes to the algorithm more than anybody else's. So get people to review you on Google. The nice thing about Google and Facebook is they both encourage organizations to ask for reviews. So there's not any kind of, uh, um, uh, breach of contract or breaking their violate. It's not a violation to ask, you know, everybody in your church to put a review on, on Google reviews about our church here, whereas with something like Yelp, you're actually not supposed to be soliciting reviews in theory. So you shouldn't be asking people to only give you positive reviews on Yelp, right. Um, you know, it's something that I with Yelp, I've seen organizations, I'd say, just be cautious with it, right?
Speaker 0 00:21:51 You don't want to announce on Sunday and get 20 reviews on the same day, because that's going to say something's going on here. They had one review and now they have 21 reviews a day later. And they're all going to get basically put in a hidden category for reviews there. But if you hear one person at your church say, Hey, I just want to tell you, this has been such an amazing church for me and my family. Here are some of the things that happened. I would feel safe saying, Hey, you know, what might really be cool is if you would put that online and maybe write that into a Yelp review or put it on Google and Facebook too. But if you put it on there, that would be really great in, in, uh, in helping our church. And what that'll do is it'll help you do a better job ranking on Google's map pack. And again, more people showing up there. So,
Speaker 2 00:22:36 Well, I'll hit the last one here, and it's a good transition to this one, too. That's just with these reviews, respond to all of them. Good and bad. We've been talking about the positive ones, but it's very good for you to respond to the bad ones for several different reasons. Because I think that obviously it gives you the opportunity to be humble and say, Hey, sorry, you didn't have a good experience here. We know we're not forever one, blah, blah, blah. But we really hope you find the right kind of church. And when someone sees that, cause people see just like you said on Amazon, that's where I probably look at reviews the most, especially if I'm investing in spending money on something then, and to benefit me, I want to, I really want to see, you know, are these valid reviews and what, what did it do for others like me? And when I see a bad review and this isn't just on Amazon, cause I know a lot of responses don't happen there, but on other sites, you know, basically, you know, when I see someone address a bad review, it actually usually kinda makes the organization that got the bad review, look a little bit better. And sometimes it might reveal that that person, that you, the bad review was maybe a little off. And so it's very telling you can kind of really ascertain a lot by reading responses to bad reviews.
Speaker 0 00:23:55 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think that, um, as a rule of thumb, usually with review sites, you cannot delete reviews, right? Cause they want it to be open and honest. Uh, if, if there is any kind of a loophole that lets you delete it, like it's outside of the terms or conditions, or sometimes people will mention people by name in their review and they'll, they'll make some exceptions and allow you to the leader of you do that. If you can get rid of it and have it not be on there at one star review, please do that. In most cases, you won't be able to do that. So I think having a plan, uh, to usually the way you would respond to a bad review is an apology saying, I'm sorry, that was your experience. I would strongly encourage you to not try to, uh, litigate it or fight it out on the review.
Speaker 0 00:24:47 They're like, so if someone says that church was bogus and they have bad theology and, and they said whatever, I wouldn't, I wouldn't come back with scripture and try and prove your theology there. I wouldn't say instead, Hey, we're sorry. You felt that way. You know, we have a statement of our beliefs. That's here. That talks about who we are as a church there. Uh, you know, we, if you have a other conversation, we'd love to have a talk offline about something like this. If you have deeper questions, so inviting people to have that conversation offline, I think that's also really important. The other thing you don't want to do is you don't want to get into a long back and forth with someone because what that does is if you have one review that was negative and you respond to it and then they respond and then you respond back and then they respond and you respond.
Speaker 0 00:25:34 That's going to put that. Google's going to think, well, this must be a really important review because there's all this conversation and text around it. And then every time someone looks for your church, you'll start to see those reviews popping up there. So I think one response and end it that's the end of it. That's kind of a general rule for that, but I think you said it right, Ian responding to both good and bad reviews. Um, I think if someone says, Hey, I love this church. It did this for my family writing in there. Hey Joe, it has been so great having the Smith family here, you guys have been an important part of our church. And we're just so thankful for you, like having a response on there that again, that helps to raise those comments up there. So it gets your, your positive reviews up closer to the top and a lot of cases. So I think that it's really a good thing to do, um, is responding to reviews. So, um, good stuff. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:26:26 So I think that wraps it up. Hopefully this has been helpful. And, and like you said, this is of this stuff is not everyone thinks it's complex with SEO, right? They make well that that kind of comes to mind. It's super technical and yes, there's some technical pieces, but there's a lot of simple steps that you can take on own and
Speaker 0 00:26:44 Get help with that. Uh, that really are just, uh, it's just an arms reach away. Yep, absolutely. And I think if you do these six things or I guess I understand it and then do the next five that we talked about today, I'm confident churches will see results from this. I'm confident that churches will see more visitors because they will show up on that first listing over and over and over again. And I I've seen this happen at our church when I was pastoring in Madison, Wisconsin. We saw huge growth in this area. And so, yeah, it really is kind of low hanging fruit. It's not a huge time requirement. It might cost you a little bit for that listing idea. Um, it probably is worth the money to spend on something like that. But yeah, I hope it's been helpful to you if it has been guys, uh, we really appreciate, uh, any ratings. If you give us reviews, subscribe, like comment, do all those things online. It means a lot to us. Thank you guys so much for being part of the reach, right family, and we'll catch you next week.
Speaker 1 00:27:38 Yup. 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 <inaudible> 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. <inaudible>.
