Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 In today's episode, we talk through how you can choose the perfect domain name for your church. A good domain name is not something you should be changing every few years. In fact, that should only be changed when absolutely necessary, but choosing the right domain name can be challenging for most church leaders join us as we discuss eight rules of thumb to help you get your domain name, right? We hope this conversation helps your church reach people.
Speaker 1 00:00:31 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:00:39 You're listening to the retried 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 1 00:01:01 <inaudible>.
Speaker 0 00:01:06 Hey guys, welcome to the reach right. Podcast episode number 25. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas. Hey, not too much. You get how you doing, man? Doing well, doing well. Don't complain. Yeah, we're doing our Christmas episode today. Uh, excited. Uh, we're doing it a few days early here, but uh, still in a festive mood, excited, starting to look a lot like Christmas here in Honolulu. Uh, so we're, uh, enjoying it. That's what Christmas looks like is Aloha shirts and Santa's shocking at the beach and that kind of stuff. So it's a good season here in Austin, Texas, but we have one thing in common as it usually kind of warm around Christmas. So we don't have, we don't get the white Christmas here either. So yeah, we'll take it. And it's good.
Speaker 0 00:01:53 So a good topic today, we're going to be talking about how to choose the perfect domain name for your church. And I think this is a question that we get quite a bit in some of our consulting conversations, because that's one of those things that is kind of permanent. Once you've done it. It's not something that you want to be changing all the time. And it's something that I think that a lot of churches kind of wonder about. Uh, and there's a lot riding on it. I think that there's a lot of mistakes that we see and, um, yeah, there's lots of churches with bad domain names and we want to try and spare our audience. Uh, some of those kinds of, uh, those kinds of mistakes cause they actually can cost you visitors. Uh, that's the scary thing about it. So you've seen your fair share of bad church domain names.
Speaker 0 00:02:35 I'm sure. Right. Oh, I see them pretty much daily. And the funny thing is, as long as we've been doing web design and in this industry for over a decade, uh, I would have this sounds kind of mean, but I would have thought that this would have this issue would have improved quite a bit by now, but I still see some real bad ones that there's not been much improvement over the last 10 years. Well, let's try and put people at ease with this and give them some good ideas. We have a total of eight recommendations on how to choose the perfect church domain name. So why don't you kick us off with the first one? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:03:11 First one is a, it's a really good one and it should be probably the first thing you want to think of when you're thinking through this as a ministry leader, pastor, to keep it short, keep it short. I've seen so many long domain names and if you think about it, that's just, it's not a good idea for several reasons. And we'll be unpacking that quite a bit with some of the other ones we're going to be going to the other seven other than this, but yeah, keep it short because think about it, you know, if you want it to be memorable, right? Who's going to remember some long drawn out domain name and um, you know, and when it rolls off the tongue, you want your members to, when they're inviting people to your church, be able to let it something, just, you know, very short roll off their tongue instead of, you know, www dot, um, you know, infinity.com.
Speaker 0 00:04:04 Do you want to avoid those long strung out things? And the challenge is that sometimes churches just have longer names and then sometimes they also like they that's a common name for a church. And so just the name of your church in most cases won't work. So if your church has called life church or new life church or new, anything church, whatever that word after new might be, there are 700 other churches with the exact same name out there. So usually you have to add some other words to it, a city name, some of those kinds of things. And, um, you just start to get into some length. So as a general rule, when we say long and short, what would be ideal is if you could get away with you, you won't get away with one word having a one word church name. It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 0 00:04:52 Two words is pretty rare in 2020 to be able to do something like that. It'd be, uh, it'd be hard to even find a two word name. Uh, and then I think your sweet spot is probably a three word name. So having about that length, if you can keep it around 12 to 15 characters, I think that would be good. That's kind of a good target to shoot for, but yeah, I think having something short, um, as long as you can follow the other rules that we're going to go over here, I think will really be a benefit to people.
Speaker 2 00:05:25 Yeah, that's it. You nailed it.
Speaker 0 00:05:27 Cool. Let me get the second one. Uh, number two is make sure to use the word church. I think this is one of the most important things you can do in a domain name. And I know it makes maybe it can make it harder to hit number one, right. To keep it short and include that word church because that's C H U R C a that's six of your 12 to 15 or 16 letters, right? So that's a, that's half of your space basically that you have with that. Uh, so, um, but here there's a reason why we think using the word church is important. Uh it's because it plays a huge part in search engine results. Your domain name, uh, is actually an important part of when people search for terms online. Uh, that's an important part of where you're going to rank on things.
Speaker 0 00:06:09 It's not the only thing. So a lot of times people tried to figure this out, uh, and they would try to game Google and just use the, if you made your domain name, church, church, church.church, you know, it probably wouldn't come up first when people search for churches. So you can't really game the system, but it is a important ranking factor when people are putting in that search term. And so what you're hoping for and the most common searches when people are looking for churches in their area, they'll say churches near me or churches in my city or churches in city name, they'll put that in there. So having church in your domain name is something that really will, it's not everything, but it'll actually help with your church and your search engine rankings on there. So having to add to that,
Speaker 2 00:06:53 No, that's, that's really good. And, and, and so I think it is mostly for SEO. Um, so not much to add, but I think it also kind of, when you use that word too, it'll, it'll help you kind of choosing the other two words because if you know, you got to have that one it'll I think kind of steer you in the direction of, okay, I've got to find two other words that are, you know, as short as possible. So I think it's a good little a benchmark.
Speaker 0 00:07:17 Here's the one thing I'll add too, is that, so the challenge for, if your church has the word church in the name, then it's usually pretty easy. The challenges for churches that they may be have, like the word ministries, or I pastored a church for years called hope chapel. Right. And so how do you, when we use the word chapel in there, uh, how do we squeeze in the word church? You know, how do we get that in? So there's some challenges with that. Um, lots of, I'd say maybe only a third of churches have the word church in their name a lot of time. So I think that it's important to, to, and again, all of these rules, I think it will be hard to find a domain name that hits all eight of these rules where you do it absolutely perfectly, but these are, if everything was equal, this is what we would prefer. And I think finding a way to squeeze church in there will be valuable to people.
Speaker 2 00:08:05 Yeah. And that's a good segue too, to the next one. And that is what you're going to choose at the end of that domain name. So choose.com.org or.church and correct me if I'm wrong. But to your point of if, if church is not in your name, if it's hope chapel, if you can get hope chapel, maybe.church that kind of accomplishes that goal, because then you did get it. and.church is still a new one for a lot of churches. They, I, whenever I recommend that to as many churches as I, I do, when they're, when they ask me this question, they're like, Oh, dot church, huh. It's still kind of a new thing that churches don't realize, but it's very effective. As you know, I'm at a larger church that, uh, here in the greater Austin area that we actually paid. Um, so our, our previous domain name, which we still kept and we'll talk more about, that was celebration church, tx.com.
Speaker 2 00:08:58 And basically we purchased here Oh two years ago, celebration.church for $30,000. So yeah, so our church forked over some money for that. There was a lot of, I wasn't on that decision-making team, but I think the, I talked to one of the executive pastors with that and did the idea was we really wanted it for marketing. And, and, and apparently that was a good deal on that one. Um, but hopefully your church doesn't have to spend that. There's still a lot of dot churches available. We had to purchase that from a gentleman who owned it, who was selling it for a lot more than that. So I guess we got a good deal on it, but my goodness app.com and.org to what would you have to say about those? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:09:39 So let me, first of all, uh, chime in. So there was a time I used to pastor a church called journey, the journey church, and, uh, all of those.church domains. They all became available at the exact same moment. And I like waited up in the morning and got on the list. This is back in like 2016 or 17. And I actually had journey.church was our domain name. We had that there and through some kind of a mishaps, we had it for one year, but we were unable because of the way that I registered originally not understanding it, it made a huge mistake and I lost that. So I could have been a, I could have been a.church millionaire. It would've, would've been great. Had I had that. Right. So, but that's neither here nor there the church of 30,000 on it. Right. That would have been nice. So anyway, but, uh, so I think this is really good. And, uh, the, I think.com.org or.church or your preference, we would strongly encourage churches to stay away from dot info's and.dot dot. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:10:37 These chinks that's when we would always laugh. We'd always laugh at as the dotbiz. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:10:43 It just doesn't. Do you any favors to have those kinds of things there? But if I had to rank those in order, I would say.com is still number one. So, uh, uh, dot com and a lot of churches make this mistake. And I think.org would be more valuable. I think the thing is that when people think of how to get to a website, they're still automatically thinking.com. They're not going in their head and saying, well, is this a nonprofit? Or is it a for-profit well, let me try.org. That's just not how it works. So if I had to choose, it'd be.com, then probably.church and then.org would be my third of those options. And then, you know, I think there's some other things that maybe are possible beyond those three that you could consider if they made sense. Sometimes you'll see some of these, uh, shorten domains or these two letter ones.
Speaker 0 00:11:31 A lot of times they will be, you could like complete your, your name. Like one of our favorite online giving providers is tie the dot Lee that able to company is tidally. Uh, so they, they have that domain there. So sometimes you can make it make sense that way. But for the most part, I think if you can get a.com.church or.org, that would be great. Um, a quick note about those prices we were talking about, um, if there that's only for domain names that are owned by somebody, if someone's already registered them. Right. So not all.church domain names are, are $30,000. So if I wanted to get a journey, madison.church, that probably would be just the normal price, right. Dot churches are a little bit more expensive, but none of these are really expensive. So it's, yeah. If you just go to GoDaddy, you'll pay $10 or $12 a year for a.org or.a.com address, if you wanted a premium sub or I guess suffix at the end of your domain, like a.church, I think they're like $50 a year. How much those costs. So not a ton of money, I think, well, worth it to get the right kind of a domain name
Speaker 2 00:12:38 For clarifying that too yet. That was an individual that owned it, not just a regular, a company, domain name company. So, uh, and would you, lastly on this point, would you recommend someone get all three of those if they could, the.com Oregon?
Speaker 0 00:12:52 Yeah, I, I think I would, uh, just because it helps you to, if you have one domain that you're branding, I think that there'll sometimes be some confusion on that. Um, I think with the.oregon.com people might accidentally, if your name is hope chapel, and you've got hope, chapel.org and hope chapel.com, you might accidentally go to the wrong one. It's 10 bucks a year. It's not like it's expensive or something like that. So I think it makes sense just to log in a few of those. Yep. That's exactly right. So let me hit number four. Um, and this is a, uh, a rule that I think, um, kind of seems different from the rest of these, but number four is don't change it. If you have a domain name, uh, I would strongly advise you if you have a domain name that doesn't have to be changed.
Speaker 0 00:13:37 Uh, and usually that's for things like, um, we changed the name of our church. Uh, so we have to change our domain name, those kinds of things, but if you don't have to change it, keep it. And the reason for that is that one of the biggest ranking factors is the age of a domain on search engines. So, uh, if you get a brand new domain that, you know, you buy it today and you launch your website or your put your website on it tomorrow, you're gonna really suffer a lot of ranking penalties because it's a brand new domain and brand new domains are started all the time. And Google has a hard time ranking those. So I would strongly recommend that you not change your domain if at all possible, even if you have a bad name and you break a few of these rules here, if you've had it for 10 or 15 years, and it's just been that the whole time, it might make sense just to keep it. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't go get a different domain on top of that. Like, so you can actually have multiple domains going to the same website in most cases. So like for your church, I'm sure that if you went to celebration church, uh, celebration, tx.com, is that what it was?
Speaker 2 00:14:45 Whatever it was go to that old,
Speaker 0 00:14:48 I bet you will forward to whatever that new domain is. It's still at same place there, right? So you don't ever want to give up those domains because they are something of real value. In fact, in our business where we do a lot of search engine consulting, what are the strategies that search engine people do is that they will look on the market for recently expired domain names. And if there's one that gets a little bit of traffic and it's 10 or 15 years old, they'll snatch it up the $10 a year or whatever it costs to pay for it. It's not that much. And they can start to use that to generate more traffic to other sites and use it that way there. So, yeah, I think don't change it as a important piece of advice for people.
Speaker 2 00:15:25 Yeah. Another thing you made me think of with that as similarly to a logo, right? A logo, you don't want to change that for what are the experts say? And at least you don't ever want to change it if you don't have to. But if you did, you don't want it to be, you don't want to change it for, you know, 10 years plus or so. And the reason why is for marketing and for visibility and for someone remembering it too. I mean, if people are used to going to that, just like they're used to seeing your logo, if you just change your logo up on them, uh, you know, they're going to, Oh, wait, what happened? I thought that church was this, or is it a different church now or what, you know, and same thing say in a similar way, not totally the same, but with your domain name too, you're getting, that's building your brand and it's memorable. And people, if they're used to going to that and used to telling others about it, then that's a good reason to keep it for a while.
Speaker 0 00:16:10 And I think this is exactly why it's important to, to think about these eight things we're talking about today before you do it. Because, you know, ideally this domain name that you choose should be the domain name for your church until either this whole domain name thing that we're doing goes away or, or your church goes away. I mean, you shouldn't ideally you should never change this because it just going to have increasing results as it gets older and older, it's like a fine wine is what a good church domain name is.
Speaker 2 00:16:40 That's good. That's a good example. Good. Well, I'll tackle number five and kick that one off. So include one word from your name. We were talking a little bit about this and the, um, the first couple there, but are using the word church in there, but you should have one word from the name of your church in there for, uh, for identification. And what else do you think? I think for identification, but what is it?
Speaker 0 00:17:03 I think just, I don't know that there's a lot of search engine value in choosing a name from your church. So like right now we're working with a client called a redemption church, right? So what that's redemption Tabernacles. Tabernacle. Yeah. It's just redemption tabernacle or redemption, tabernacle ministries, tabernacle, redemption, Christian tabernacle. So here's what they're faced with is they, they have this, they have some of these rules. They want to have church in the name. Um, and then they probably can't be redemption Christian tabernacle, church.com. You know, that's the law that, that breaks the first rule of keeping it short. So you have to figure out in your name, which is the one word that we want to go with. Right? Cause I want to include church. Like ideally I think the best domain name for would be like a redemption church.com or ademption.church. Something like that.
Speaker 0 00:17:52 Those would be hard to get that they'll probably be able to do include one of those words, but you want to not have all of them. It's a mistake. If you're thinking that the entire name of your church and city or something that's spelled out is the right decision. So our encouragement is to choose the one that matters the most for them. They play on redemption all the time. Great church, uh, out of, uh, tip city, Iowa, I believe is where they are so awesome. A group of people there, but they do a really, a really good job doing, using redemption as their kind of tagline with a lot of things there. So for them, we encourage them to stay with that kind of redemption as being part of their domain name there. So yeah, I think that's the rule is that, try to find that one word within your name that makes the most sense, because we know we can't include all three or four words in a lot of church names.
Speaker 2 00:18:40 Exactly. Nailed it. No, that's good. Nothing to add there on that one. You want to tackle six?
Speaker 0 00:18:44 Yep. We'll do number six is use your city name if you have to. Uh, so, uh, including your city name and I find that most churches, if you're getting a domain name now you'll probably have to use your city name now, some churches. I think it's, if you're really a big region church, like your church has a mega church there in Texas. That's why they use the Texas in there. So the TX in their domain. But I think for the most part, I think your region or the main city that you're in is probably the most important. So, uh, my last church that I pastored was journey church, madison.com. Uh, that was our domain name. And we had journey. That's our key word church that was in there. Madison was in there. So we had those three things. Uh, and I think that's usually the best, um, addition when you have to make your domain name specific.
Speaker 0 00:19:35 Now my thoughts on this are kind of flexible right now. Cause I think a lot of churches are really getting more and more into the online side of things with the pandemic and everything we've been going through the last nine months. And so that's opened up the horizons. And so perhaps if your vision is to be bigger than your community or your metropolitan area, that you're in a lot of times, it makes sense to go regional or to leave off one of those city names. Because if someone sees something that is for New York, I think that maybe someone in Seattle would not be as interested in a domain name like that. If they see that word in there, or maybe search engines would say, this person is searching in Seattle, let's leave off the New York results there. So, um, so I think that's something if you'd need to, I think that's a good way. Cause I do believe most churches are still going to be called to be a local church to be serving primarily the community where they have their services, where they do service there in the community. So, um, I think it's one of those, if you need to kind of,
Speaker 2 00:20:36 Yeah, I think that's a good point if you need to, but if you need to, one of the other benefits I think quite simply is to, as it sounds, it sounds good. You know, if you have impact church, austin.com or something like that, it sounds better than some of the alternatives that people feel like they have to choose, which I think we're about to cover. So I won't go any further. So there's a couple of others. We're about to say this would be better than, uh, you know, using the city is better than using these next couple.
Speaker 0 00:21:04 Absolutely. So why don't you go for it?
Speaker 2 00:21:06 Yeah. The next is, is avoid abbreviations. Um, and you know, I think, I think why churches use abbreviations in their domain name is just that they're trying to keep it shorter. Right? So their mind in their mind, they're thinking, okay, we're keeping this thing shorter, you know, by abbreviating it. But it, it just doesn't uh, well, there's several reasons, uh, that that's not a good route to go one. I've always seen it. I'll let you cover the others. But I th the first thing that comes to mind that I always seen is it just makes it confusing. Uh, not everyone knows the abbreviation of your city, if that's what you use or, or something like that, or a church abbreviation, it just doesn't, it, it makes the domain name confusing.
Speaker 0 00:21:45 Yeah. So I think that there are some exceptions to this, I think so like, so for your church using TX, instead of spelling out Texas, I think state abbreviations are usually okay. Um, a lot of cities have abbreviation, so I don't think if you pastor, um, you know, impact church in New York city, right. Impact NYC, isn't bad. I don't think. Or LA, if you're in Los Angeles, you know, if there, if that's the common way that people refer to things, even where you are in ATX is Austin, Texas. I think people sometimes think of that. So, but I think outside of that, I would encourage churches to stay away from it. So the most common ones we see are when you have a, um, you know, you have, if you're a UMC church or a, uh, or your F uh, your first Baptist church of South Lake, let's say for instance, you'd be FBC S l.org or something like that. We're just, there's not a specific word in there. Um, I think that that's something that is a little bit challenging. Uh, so I C F UMC. Yep. That's right. So for the first assemblies of God, I was having a hard time. Right.
Speaker 2 00:22:56 You beat me to it. That was the next one I was going to cover up. Yep.
Speaker 0 00:22:59 So I would probably recommend if you're first assembly of God, not using the G acronym there, so you can probably figure out why good recommendation. So, although we have seen that, we have seen that before in some church domain, so we would not to call attention to any of them. Uh, but, uh, that is one that we've seen and probably shouldn't be avoided. That's a good point.
Speaker 2 00:23:21 Good segue to the no, once you tackle the last one.
Speaker 0 00:23:24 Yeah. So, uh, last one is don't use numbers if at all possible. I don't know. Um, you know, I can't think of a reason why there's ever a good reason to use numbers and less, that's the name of your church? Uh, so there's some, uh, there's some churches, like, I think we have one we're talking to called seven Hills right now. Uh, we have that a 12 stone is another large mega church where they have those, those numbers in their name. I guess you could do it in those cases. But outside of that, um, I've seen some churches try it with their area code, like, so in Hawaii, we're the, we're the famous, uh, we're, we're kind of known as the eight Oh eight state. So everybody in Hawaii knows the, the number's eight Oh eight. That's our area code here in Hawaii. But I just don't think there's a good reason why you should use eight zero eight church.org or whatever it is. Uh, I think that avoiding numbers, if at all possible in your, um, I've seen some that they've even put their addresses in there or their zip codes and things in their domain names. It's just not a good idea. Cause people need to know your zip code in order to search for it, or they need to know your phone area code to look for your church that way. So, um, anything to add on that?
Speaker 2 00:24:34 Yeah. The one I see most commonly is always the number four. And I'll tell you why, because it's hope for you or salvation for you. And, and, and I can see why churches it's kind of, uh, it's it's if you're going to use one, that would be the one that would come to mind first. I think usually, cause you'd say, Oh, is there again thinking, Oh, I'm shortening it. And it just sounds great if they're a hope church or hope for you or
Speaker 0 00:25:00 Number two with that also. So it's grace to you or something like that, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:25:03 That's it. And again, you know, it's a, it's a kind of a noble thought there, but it's still, it just, it's still not going to help you.
Speaker 0 00:25:11 Yeah, no, I know that's a good point. Yeah. That's really good. So, well, good. Well, I hope this has been a helpful conversation for our audience here. Again, I think one of the takeaways I hope you get as if you have a domain name you've been using for 15 years, uh, unless it like has a whole zip code or you change the name of your church in it, in the recent, in recent memory, I would encourage you to probably stay with it as much as it might be bad, or, you know, maybe get a different, another domain name in addition to the one that you're using. But there's great value to these here. But, uh, if this is a, if you're kind of in the market or thinking about doing a new domain name or I don't recommend that you do it every time you do a new website, you should almost always keep your domain name.
Speaker 0 00:25:51 One other little piece of advice here that I'll say that's not in this list is it's really important that the church itself registers the domain name and that you actually have your church name on there. And not someone because I have, we have seen it so many times in our careers, even where someone gets a domain name, uh, and it's just a member of the church and this person went ahead and did something nice for the church and all pay the $10 pastor. Don't worry about it. I'll just go ahead and do it for the church. And then they become disillusioned with the church that I may leave the church and may still own that domain name. And that $10,010 can turn into a lot more. I have literally seen horror stories where there
Speaker 2 00:26:35 Have been porn sites and stuff that
Speaker 0 00:26:37 Are put on church domain names because of disgruntled church members. And that's beyond me, how kinds of things happen. But I absolutely do not compromise on this. Don't just let it go. Uh, make sure your church domain name is owned by the church itself that it's registered there and that you're keeping that current check. That that might be a good reminder for someone out there to check that, to see, Hey, is this registered by some staff member five, five staff members ago in our youth department or something like that? Take a look at that information. Uh, if you just type into it's called a who is lookup. Uh, so if you just type w H O I S into Google, it'll bring up several different options to do a check, to see who is the registered per name on a domain name. Uh, stay on top of that because it's really, uh, you can get us some hot water with those kinds of things.
Speaker 0 00:27:27 So anything else to add as we close out? No, that's it, that's it. You took the words out of my mouth. On the last example I've seen with the porn sites and everything's just terrible. So it is terrible so well on that note of porn sites will say Merry Christmas to everybody. Thank you guys so much for listening. It's a gift to us that you, uh, you take this in a, if you're listening each and every week, uh, a gift you could give to us this year is that if you would rate, review, subscribe, wherever you listen or watch this podcast, it doesn't mean the world to us. Uh, we want to thank you guys for being a part of our retried family, and I wish you a Merry Christmas Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1 00:28:07 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, 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.
