1. It helps prospective visitors to better understand what topics and themes are being taught and how your pastor(s) teaches.
2. It helps members see and/or hear messages when they miss services.
3. It’s great for SEO.

Let’s go into more detail on benefit  number 3…

4 Ways Posting Sermons on Your Website Helps Your Church SEO!

1) Search engines love fresh content.

When you publish a new page to your website each week with that week’s sermon info on it, you are creating at least one fresh, unique piece of content each week.

2) Social shares improve search rankings.

Each sermon is published on its own URL which can then be shared both by the church and by anyone who listens/watches the sermon. The more shares, the better your search rankings.

3) Rank for specific topics and questions.

People use search engines to find answers to all kinds of questions, including spiritual questions.  Some examples include:

• Why does God allow evil?
• What happens after we die?
• Was Jesus a real person?

Every sermon preached at your church answers questions like these which people around the world are searching for. It’s a great opportunity to give people true, biblical answers to these questions, and help these people connect with your church.

4) Improve rankings for local keywords.

Pastors who are strategic about engaging their congregation in ministry opportunities don’t just make announcements, they preach announcements. What I mean is pastors should be strategic about talking about ministry opportunities in their sermons and relate them to the message.

When you do this, you can improve search rankings for things the people in your local community are looking for like “Vacation Bible School in Springfield” or “Easter Sunrise Service in Springfield” or “Celebrate Recovery in Springfield”

Those are some pretty sweet church SEO benefits, right?

But, you might not fully realize these benefits unless you are posting your sermons in the right way.

9 Ways to Maximize the Church SEO Benefits of Your Sermons

To maximize the SEO impact of your sermons, do as many of the following as possible:

1. Post each sermon to its own page/post.  (Don’t put a whole bunch of sermons on one page)
2. Embed video of the message. (Google loves videos)
3. Optimize the video. If the video is posted to YouTube of Facebook, edit the title, description, category, and tags. Include scripture references, topics discussed, and questions addressed.
4. Embed audio of the message
5. Podcast the audio of the messages
6. Include the sermon outline or notes
7. Include all scripture references mentioned in the sermon and link out to where people can read them on a site like BibleGateway.
8. Include recommended action steps. If any of those action steps include going somewhere or doing something with another organization, link out to their website and include their address.
9. Include links to recommended resources

The bottom line is…

Posting sermons to your church website can dramatically increase search rankings and visitors… but only if you optimize them well.

Looking for a great church website builder with a sermon manager?

A lot of the big corporate website builders don’t have sermon managers built into them.

OurChurch.Com’s WP-EZ Church Website Builder uses the built in blogging functionality for its sermon manager. If you want to take your sermons to the next level, organizing and categorizing sermon audio, video, notes and graphics, check out our premium EZ Sermon Manager.

If you’re interested in having us design and build a new website for your church or help with your  church SEO, we’d love to talk more with you.

Complete the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to schedule a free phone consultation.

Comment and discuss

• Are you posting sermons to your church website? If you are, what benefits have you experienced? If not, why not?

Continuing reading Church Website Builder Tips and Tools

The post How Sermons Can Give Your Church Website Better Search Rankings appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

What features do you need in your church website?

To answer that question, we start by thinking about the purpose of the website. What do you want it to accomplish for your church?

Most churches want their websites to:

• Provide information about the church to potential visitors
• Provide information about events, groups, and ministry opportunities to members

But there may also be other things your church wants to accomplish with its website:

• Provide materials for discipleship
• Provide an easy way for members to send their tithes and offerings to the church
• Help people connect with the church via email or social media
• Help people get in touch with staff, ministry leaders or other members
• Help people sign up for events
• Sell books, Christian gifts, or church merch (branded shirts, coffee mugs, etc)

Once you know what you want your church website to do, you can then consider the features and functionality to accomplish these things.

We looked at the features most requested by our Custom Web Design clients, feedback from our WP-EZ Church Website Builder users, and church website trends to put together this list of:

The Top 5 Must-Have Church Website Builder Features

1) Calendar

If you want church members to get more involved and better connected, they need to know when things are happening.  A calendar is essential.  Additionally, not every new person starts by coming to a Sunday service. Sometimes people start by going to a bible study, Celebrate Recovery, or some other event.

While it’s ideal to have a calendar feature provided by the website builder, another option is to integrate a 3rd party calendar like Google Calendar. If your church is already using another calendar system, it may easier to continuing using that. If you do, make sure that calendar can be embedded into a website, and make sure your website builder can embed the calendar.

2) Sermon Manager

Putting audio, video, and/or notes from your sermons online can accomplish several different goals. It helps prospective visitors get a better idea of what to expect, it helps members stay connected when they miss a Sunday, it can help with discipleship, and it can even help with outreach if you encourage people to share sermons or snippets of sermons online.

The best option is to us a website builder that has a sermon manager built into it. However, if your website builder doesn’t have a sermon manager, it’s also possible to use a blogging feature to blog sermon audio, video, and/or notes each week.

3) Online Giving

Most people pay their bills and manage their money online. By facilitating online giving on your website, you can help your members give more consistently.

Online giving is another feature where it is ideal if its integrated into the website builder. However, if you’re already using an online giving system, it may be easier to continue using that system as long as you can embed a “Donate” button into the header of your website and/or a give page.

4) Email Subscription

The number one form of communication for many churches is email. Yes, most churches still do announcements during their gatherings and most hand out a printed bulletin, but many people don’t hear/read these. Plus most people miss one or two Sundays every month. Email is the most reliable way to communicate with people during the week, so providing a way for people to subscribe to receive your emails is important.

While we used to advocate for choosing a website builder with a built-in newsletter feature. Today, 3rd party email service providers like MailChimp provide do a better job of combating spam and managing subscribers. So, we suggest using an email service and then embedding the “Subscribe” and “Archive” features into your website.

5) Social Media Integration

Another good way to help people stay connected with your church is through social media.  Having icons/links to your social channels on your website helps with this. And having social share buttons on pages and posts helps people share things from your church with their friends.

The bottom line is…

Make sure your church website builder has the functionality to connect and communicate effectively with visitors and members.

Build a website with website builder that supports all these features!

If you are searching for the best church website builder, we’re pleased to inform you our WP-EZ Church Website Builder has all these features and more.  Save yourself time and start building your church website now!

Or if you would rather have OurChurch.Com build your website for you, fill out the consultation request form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop).

Comment and Discuss… What are the most important features you want in your church website?

Continuing reading Church Website Builder Tips and Tools

The post Church Website Builder Must-Have Features! appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

There is no standard for capabilities needed to call something “SEO friendly.”

Your search rankings have a huge impact on your church’s ability to connect with people searching online for a church. You can’t afford to just take someone’s “SEO friendly” claim at face value and then find out later – after you’ve built your website – that you can’t fully optimize your website. Your search rankings will suffer as a result!

So, we’ll break it down for you and tell you what to look for.

10 SEO Features to Look for in an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder

1) Page URLs You Can Edit

Some website builders set the URL (web address) of your pages to something obscure like yourdomain.com/page13.htm which is both hard to remember and has no keywords in them.

Having keywords in the URL of your pages like yourdomain.com/clearwater-youth-ministry/ will help your web pages rank better for those keywords.

2) Mobile Friendly

More than half of all website visitors use a phone or tablet. When a person searches Google from a phone or tablet, Google shows “mobile search results,” which are different from the search results it shows computer users. One of the factors that affects mobile search results is whether a site is mobile-friendly or not. So, make sure your church website builder creates mobile-friendly sites.

3) Title Tags You Can Edit

The title tag of a web page is not visible to visitors but is read by search engines and used on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Some web builders let you to set one title tag for the website and then use that one title tag for every page of the site. This is terrible for SEO! Others don’t give you any control over title tags at all, automatically setting them to “[site name] – [page title]” (also not good).

Make sure your church website builder allows you to set each individual page’s title tag.

4) Meta Description Tags You Can Edit

The description tag is another page element that is hidden from visitors but used by search engines and shown on the SERPs. Like the title tag, you want to be able to customize the description tag for each individual page.

5) Image Alt Attributes You Can Edit

When adding an image to a page, there is special attribute called an “Alt” attribute which is used to describe the image for people who are visually impaired. Even though search engines are getting pretty good at recognizing objects in images, they use alt attributes to tell what the images are about and factor them into search rankings.

Some web builders don’t allow you to set the alt tags for your images. Make sure yours does.

6) Proper use of H1 & H2 tags

The HTML H1 tag is supposed to be used for the title of each web page. H2 tags are used for major headings. Search engines consider the words contained in the H1 tag the most important words on the page, and those contained in H2 tags the second most important.

Each web page should have just one H1 tag and 1-3 H2 tags. I’ve seen some web builders create pages that have no H1 or H2 tags on them, while others have too many.

7) XML Sitemap

An XLM sitemap is a pages that lists all the pages in a website and is specially formatted for search engines. Search engines use sitemaps to make sure they don’t overlook any pages in a website.

Your church website builder should automatically generate a sitemap for your website.

8) Ability to Insert Verification Code

It’s a good idea to connect your website with the Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. These tools provide lots of insightful data and will notify you if there are problems with your website.

To integrate your website with these tools, Google and Bing require you to verify you are an administrator of your website by inserting hidden code in the header of the website or uploading a special file into your web hosting account.

Make sure your website builder will allow you do to verify your site in one of these two ways.

9) Blog

A blog is something most people wouldn’t consider an “SEO-friendly” requirement. However, blogging is one of the best ways to improve a website’s search rankings because it enables you to help visitors with keyword-targeted content.

We help all of our Progressive SEO Management clients write, optimize, and share blog articles. This is something we could not do if they used a website builder that lacks a blog feature.

10) Social Share Buttons

Like a blog, social share buttons aren’t on most people list of SEO-friendly factors, but social shares do factor into some search ranking ranking algorithms. Plus the more people who share your pages and blog posts, the more likely it is that people will link to your website and blog articles, and links are a big factor in search rankings.

The bottom line is…

Your church website builder should help your church get better search rankings not hinder it.

Get a Church Website Builder built for Church SEO

Because we at OurChurch.com provide SEO for churches, when we developed our WP-EZ Website Builder we made sure to include all 10 of these SEO capabilities, so it would be the best church website builder possible.

Comment and Discuss…

• How important do you think these SEO features are in a church website builder?
• Will you check for these SEO features before building your next church website? Why or why not?

Continuing reading Church Website Builder Tips and Tools

The post 10 SEO Features of an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

A secret straight from renown artist Pablo Picasso?

Before I reveal the secret, let me preface this by saying, the appearance of your church website is NOT the most important aspect of it.

The most important thing is that your website advances the mission of your church – to reach out to people in your community, to help people grow in their relationship with God, and to help people connect with one another.

The appearance of your church website doesn’t really need to be “beautiful” either, but if there are parts of it that are cringe-worthy, they are going to distract people and hinder your ministry.

It’s like music in a worship service. It’s more important to have authentic, heart-felt worship than to be musically “beautiful.” But if the worship leader, worship team, or choir is out of tune, it’s very distracting and hinders people from people able to focus on God and worship Him.

All that said, even if it’s not your primary objective, you can have a beautiful church website with hardly any time, effort or expertise.

The secret to a beautiful church website is…

Copy Others

Pablo Picasso is quoted as saying…

Good artists copy; great artists steal. -Pablo Picasso

Even though I lead a church website design company, I do not have a design bone in my body. My background is engineering. I could not design my way out of a wet paper bag.

But I recognize good design when I see it.

I bet you can too.

This is why we designed the WP-EZ Website Builder with Page Templates.

Page templates are beautifully designed pages that have sample text and images in them. All you have to do is replace the sample text and images with your own text and images, and viola… you have a beautiful church website.

Check out this 3 minute video that shows how Page Templates work in WP-EZ.

Looking for an affordable, easy to use church website builder?

Check out OurChurch.com’s  WP-EZ Website Builder! We give a 30 day money-back guarantee, so you can build your website today with absolutely no risk!

Got a WP-EZ 1.0 website?

Page templates are something we added to WP-EZ 2.0 themes. If you are using a 1.0 theme, I encourage you to switch to a 2.0 theme to get the page templates. To do that, login to MyOCC, and click the “Change Theme” button. For more info, see the WP-EZ 1.0 to 2.0 Migration FAQs.

Comment and Discuss… What are your thoughts on page templates?

Read more Church Website Builder Tips and Tools.

The post Pablo Picasso’s Secret to a Beautiful Church Website appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

Church website themes have changed a lot over the years.

When we developed our first church website builder more than 20 years ago, it was common to have Christian symbols in the header – crosses, doves, bibles, etc.  Every once in a while we still have people contact us and ask us if we have themes like that.  (No, sorry, we don’t.)

When selecting the theme for your church website, it’s important to understand that your goal is to help your website visitors understand who your church is and find the information they are looking for quickly and easily.

With that in mind, here are…

3 Secrets to Selecting the Best Church Website Builder Theme

1) Mobile-friendly

More than half of website visits are made using mobile devices.  Therefore it’s absolutely essential that when you build a church website, the theme is responsive and mobile-friendly.

“Responsive” means the theme responds to the device the viewer is using – phone, tablet, computer- and displays each element of each web page in a way that looks good and functions well.

2) Page templates

Page templates are pre-made pages you can add to your website. The page is all laid out for you, you just have to replace the sample text with your text and the sample images with your images.

Page templates are helpful because instead of creating each page from scratch, you start with a page layout that has already been designed by a website developer. If you use a church-specific website builder, its developers probably understand the needs and goals of churches and their website visitors and designed those page templates to meet those needs and goals.

3) Brand consistency

Branding is communicating the values and culture of your church through the way you talk about and present yourself.

When most people hear “branding” they think logo.  Yes, your logo is an important part of your brand.  But in addition to your logo, the colors, fonts, icons and images you use on your website also communicate your brand.

Colors – The colors used throughout your website should be consistent with the colors in your logo.  If you’re not crazy about your logo colors, learn more about the psychology of color. It might be time for a new logo with new colors that better fit the culture of your church.

Font – As with colors, the font used throughout your website should be consistent with the font used in your logo. The font you use communicates culture – serious, playful, casual, fancy.

And yes, I used the singular form of the word – font, not fonts. Don’t be using different fonts on different pages or multiple fonts on one page. Your website is not hosting a calligraphy festival.

Icons and images – The style, shape, and color of the icons and images used throughout your website also communicate something about your culture.

This is why website designs are called “themes” – because the colors, font, icons and images are all designed to communicate a specific theme.  So, choose a website theme that matches the style of your church – formal, casual, urban, country, artistic, or whatever.

The bottom line is…

The best church website builders have themes that are mobile-friendly, include page templates, and compliment your church’s brand.

Get the best church themes!

OurChurch.Com’s WP-EZ Church Website Builder includes a wide variety of church themes. All our themes are mobile-friendly, come with page templates, accommodate a logo and can be customized to match your logo’s colors.

If you prefer to have us create a custom church website design for your church, we can do that. And if you’re thinking about logo design or branding services, we’d be happy to talk more about that too.

Fill out the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to request a free consultation.

Comment and discuss…

• What do you think is important to look for in a church website theme?
• What questions do you have about church themes?

Continuing reading Church Website Builder Tips and Tools

The post 3 Secrets To The Best Church Website Builder Designs appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

1. Hire a church website developer to build the website for you.
2. Build your website yourself from scratch (installing and configuring all the software yourself)
3. Use a church website builder to build the website yourself.

Let’s look at the pos and cons of each option…

1. Hire a church website developer

The benefits of hiring a church website developer to build a custom-designed website for your church:

• Time savings: It will save you time compared to building a website yourself.
• Completed sooner: Professional website developers usually have a process with timelines and will keep the project on schedule. If you build the website yourself, chances are its one of many responsibilities you have, and it could be delayed if other things get priority.
• Better results: A team of people that build websites for a living will be able to create a better looking, better functioning website than you can on your own.

The only negative to hiring a church website developer is that its the most expensive option.

2. Build the website yourself from scratch

The benefits of building a church website yourself from scratch include:

• Flexibility/Control: You get to choose exactly how the website looks and what functionality you build into to it.
• Cost savings: It’s the least expensive option.

The biggest drawback to building your own site from scratch is that it before it takes a lot of time, effort and research, especially if you’ve never done it before. That’s because it involves the following steps:

• Purchase a church web hosting account (15 minutes)
• Purchase a domain name (15 minutes)
• Install a content management system like WordPress in the hosting account (15-30 minutes)
• Research, purchase, and install a theme (2-4 hours)
• Research and install 20+ plugins (10-20 hours)

And all of this is even before you have created your first web page.  It could take another 1-3 hours per page depending on the content and layout of the pages.

Another drawback to building the website yourself from scratch is that once your website is built, you have to frequently check for updates to keep your website running smoothly and prevent it from getting hacked. If the developers abandon any of the plugins you’re using you have to find new ones and replace them. So, there’s a lot of ongoing maintenance.

3. Use a church website builder to build the website yourself

Using a church website builder is an appealing middle ground between hiring someone to build a site and building the site from scratch.

• Cost:  The monthly cost for hosting and a website builder is usually only slightly more than hosting alone and significantly less than a custom-designed website.
• Time: The time it takes to build a site with a church website builder is in between the previous two options. It’s dramatically less than building a site from scratch, but more than hiring someone else to build it for you.
• Updates: The developers of the website builder will maintain and regularly update the website builder software and keep it secure. But they typically won’t update the text and images on your pages for you unless you pay extra for content updates.
• No technical expertise required: Church website builders don’t require any coding and are usually pretty easy to learn.

If you’re leaning in the direction of using a church website builder to create your church website, we’ve got some tips for you…

5 Church Website Builder Tips and Tools

1. Use our WP-EZ Website Builder.

If you want a new church website and have the time to do it yourself, our WP-EZ Church Website Builder is easy to use, affordable and designed specifically for churches.  No need to install WordPress, buy a theme, or install dozens of plugins. WP-EZ does all of that for you.

2. Update Your Church Website Theme.

If your website looks a little dated or you just want to change things up, one way to do that is to switch to a new website theme.

If you are using WP-EZ 2.0, switching themes takes just a few clicks.

If you built your website more than 5 years ago with our original WP-EZ Website Builder, we strongly encourage you to switch themes and migrate to WP-EZ 2.0.  Your new website will look and function sooooo much better!

3) Use the Training Center and Video Tutorial Library.

Have you already built your website with our WP-EZ Website Builder and want to make it even better?

You have free access to our WP-EZ Training Center which has a series of courses that combine short videos with action steps that will teach you everything you need to know to build a great website with WP-EZ.

We also have an extensive library of web builder video tutorials in our knowledgebase.

4) Ultimate Guild to Church Website Photos.

The biggest problems we see with church websites has to do with photos – lack of photos, blurry photos, improperly sized photos, and more. Use the Ultimate Guide to Church Website Photos to improve your website.

5) Help Us Help You.

Share your thoughts on church website design in this month’s Listening Post.

Bonus: More church website builder tips!

All month long we’ll be blogging our best church website builder tips and adding links these articles below.
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1. 3 Secrets To The Best Church Website Builder Designs
2. Pablo Picasso’s Secret to a Beautiful Church Website
3. 10 SEO Features of an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder
4. Church Website Builder Must-Have Features!
5. How Sermons Can Give Your Church Website Better Search Rankings

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The bottom line…

Using a church website builder, is a great option for churches that have a limited budget, limited technical experience, and limited time.

1. 3 Secrets To The Best Church Website Builder Designs

When choosing the best church website builder for your church, a big thing to consider is the themes or templates that come with each website builder.

We discuss 3 specific things to look for in a church website theme in 3 Secrets To The Best Church Website Builder Designs 

2. Pablo Picasso’s Secret to a Beautiful Church Website

Would you like to know the secret to a beautiful church website?

A secret straight from renown artist Pablo Picasso?

Once you know that secret, you’ll understand how even if you aren’t super-artistic and don’t have any training or experience building websites, you can still build a beautiful website if you have the right tool.

Continue reading Pablo Picasso’s Secret to a Beautiful Church Website

3. 10 SEO Features of an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder

Just about every church website builder claims to be “SEO friendly” but what does that mean?

There is no standard for capabilities needed to call something “SEO friendly.”

In this article we list 10 specific things to look for in a church website builder that are needed for a well-optimized, top-ranking website.

Continue reading 10 SEO Features of an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder

4. Church Website Builder Must-Have Features!

One factor to consider when selecting a church website builder is the features (or functionality) you want to have in your website.

To determine that, we start by thinking about the purpose of the website. What do you want it to accomplish for your church?

From the many, many conversations we’ve had with church leaders, we’ve been able to determine The Top 5 Must-Have Church Website Builder Features

Continue reading to learn the Church Website Builder Must-Have Features!

5. How Sermons Can Give Your Church Website Better Search Rankings

Posting sermons to your church website can dramatically increase search rankings and visitors… but only if you optimize them well.

In this article, we list 4 Ways Posting Sermons on Your Website Helps Your Church SEO and follow that with 9 Ways to Maximize the Church SEO Benefits of Your Sermons

Continue reading… How Sermons Can Give Your Church Website Better Search Rankings

Comment and discuss… What questions, issues and challenges regarding church web builders do you have? Post a comment so we can help you with them.

The post Church Website Builder Tips and Tools appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

Located in Oak Cliff, Texas, the church has always sought innovative ways to connect with people and build relationships that reflect Christ’s love.

Originally, the church built its own website using OurChurch.com’s DIY website builder WP-EZ. However, they soon realized that to effectively reach younger generations, they needed a more engaging and dynamic website.

Instead of opting for a fully custom-built website, they found the perfect balance with Custom WPEZ – a professionally built website on the same platform, offering greater customization and expert design at a fraction of the cost of a fully custom website, while remaining affordable month-to-month.

“We Want People to Belong, Not Just Attend”

Pastor LaCedric Williams shared his heart for ministry and the digital shift the church has embraced:

“The church, the community—Greater Community First Baptist Church here in Dallas, Texas—we are a mid-sized church that desires to reach the community. Our focus is creating a place to belong. We don’t want people to say, ‘I go to this church.’ We want people to say, ‘I belong to this church.’ So, we’re really hyper-focused on connection, community, and building relationships.”

This vision of belonging is what led them to invest in a better online presence—one that speaks to both current members and future generations.

Why Upgrade the Website?

The church had an existing website, but it was limited in functionality and did not fully reflect its mission or brand. Pastor Williams explained:

“We had really a basic web page that told just a little bit of the story, but it really didn’t reflect our brand—what we do and how we do it. It was more of a platform-type website that gave just a little bit of information.

We knew that in order to reach this generation and newer generations, we needed to take some steps to think outside of the box, be creative, and build a better website for young adults and young people to interact with.”

This realization led them to seek the assistance of professionals while still maintaining the flexibility of the WP-EZ platform.

The Decision to Work With OurChurch.com

Pastor Williams shared why they ultimately decided to have OurChurch.com build the site for them:

“DIY is good for the moment. But at some point in time, you have to make the decision to use a professional—someone that does this every day, all the time, and understands the trends. What is going to cause people to click on your website? What is going to cause people to stay on your website? What is going to cause people to interact on that website?

When we use OurChurch.com’s professional website service, it helped us achieve our goals of reaching our youth and young adults. And we’re already seeing results from it.”

A Seamless and Impactful Experience

The process of working with OurChurch.com was smooth and stress-free. The team took the time to understand the church’s vision and execute it effectively.

“The experience was amazing! OurChurch.com made the process very simple. They already had a lot of information on our church from what we had there and through Facebook and YouTube. The things they didn’t have, they asked us through questions that were very simple to answer and helped give direction.

“We always have an idea of what we want things to look like, but they were able to really put into place what my thought was. They were able to draw it out and build it out exactly how I was envisioning it. That speaks to the synergy and the connection that OurChurch.com tries to have with the visionary of the church. They did a great job.”

Advice for Other Churches Considering a Website Upgrade

For churches and ministries that are unsure whether to invest in a professionally built website, Pastor Williams offers this advice:

“You really need to make sure that you place the website as a high priority in your goals for the church. It’s easy to decide, ‘Hey, we’re just going to build it ourselves and get our name out there.’ But when you just throw anything out there, it reflects your brand.

“We always ask God to give us His best. Well, why don’t we give God our best? And that’s not just in how we conduct service, but also in how we reflect Christ. The website is important because not only does it reflect the church—it reflects the God we serve.”

Looking Ahead

Greater Community First Baptist Church has embraced the digital age with a website that truly represents its heart for ministry. Their new Custom WP-EZ site allows them to connect with people in a way they never could before, bringing more engagement and visibility to their mission.

With the right digital tools in place, the church is excited about what the future holds as they continue to create a place where people don’t just attend—they belong.

Check out their new website at GreaterCFBC.org

Do you want a more impactful online presence that simplifies your life?

If you lead a Christian ministry,  business, or church that want to have a greater impact and reach more people online, and you realize that you’re too busy to do it yourself, talk to a member of our team about a custom website design and/or SEO services.

Complete the consultation request form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to schedule a call.

Comment and discuss…

• What most impacted you about Greater Community First Baptist Church’s story?

The post Spotlight: Church Reaching Next Gen Through Digital appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

I hope it was awesome!

I hope your gatherings or services glorified God, people heard the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection, and God revealed himself in powerful ways.

I also hope God has revealed some things through your church’s Easter communications.

Our blogging this month focused on Easter – preparing your church website for Easter, doing church SEO for Easter, preparing to tell stories and follow-up after Easter.

Now that Easter is behind us, what have you learned from your Easter communication? And what changes do you want to make?  To help with this, here are some more specific questions to consider.

Easter Communications Assessment Questions:

• What aspects of your Easter communications worked well? How can you build on them?
• What aspects of your communications didn’t work well? How can you improve on them?
• Have you reviewed your Analytics since Easter?
• Have you reviewed your communication cards?
• Have you debriefed with your team?

3 Easter Communications Revelations

1) Church Website Revelations

If your website experienced an increase in traffic in the week leading up to Easter but you didn’t see many visitors to your Easter services, that’s an indication you did some great things to get people to your website, but there are likely problems with your website.

Perhaps it’s outdated, hard to navigate or not mobile friendly, and needs to be fixed or redesigned.

If you’re not yet using the Plan Your Visit strategy, that might be something to consider.

2) Church SEO Revelations

If analytics indicate your website got lots of visitors from search, that’s awesome – your website is probably well optimized and your local listings well established. If you didn’t get many visitors from organic search, that’s an indication your website doesn’t rank well in search engines and SEO is an area that needs work.

3) Church Social Media Revelations

If analytics indicate your website didn’t get many visitors from social media, consider stepping up your social media engagement. If you put a lot of effort into social media but your analytics still show not many people visited your website from social, it’s probably time to re-evaluate your social media strategy.

If you don’t have any analytics and/or communication cards to evaluate, then perhaps your next step is to get those things going so you have a better idea of your strengths to build on and weaknesses to work on next time.

God speaks to our hearts through his Word. He also speaks to our minds through data and the insight of others.

Want to work with our web design and/or SEO team?

If you need a hand getting Google Analytics and Google Search Console integrated with your website, or if you’d like an analytics expert to review your analytics, or you’re ready to delegate the website design or search engine marketing of your Christian church, ministry or business to an experienced team, we’d love to talk with you.

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Comment and Discuss

• What did God reveal to you this Easter?  (Spiritually or in your communications)

Read more articles in our Easter Communications series.

The post An Easter Revelation appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

If you’re a pastor, church communicator or heavily involved in church ministry, I hope you can take a breath now. But you’ve got one more important Easter task to do…

Review Your Easter Analytics

Hopefully, you’ve already done some reviewing of your Easter services and related events, gotten feedback from members of your team, and made notes about what worked well and what didn’t. You’ll be able to learn from these observations and make next Easter even better.

What about your website? Your emails? Any social media you used? Any online advertising you did? Have you reviewed how they did?

You should have your website connected with an analytics system like Google Analytics.

Analytics can answer important questions like…

• How many website visitors did we have the week before Easter this year compared to the week before Easter last year?
• How many website visitors did we have the week before Easter compared to a “normal” non-Easter week a month ago?
• Look at the sources of your visitors in the week before Easter to last month and last Easter? Which sources saw the biggest increases? Organic search? Email? Facebook? Google Ads? This will give you a good idea of how well your Easter marketing and outreach worked.
• If your website is connected with Google Search Console, look at your search analytics to see which keywords were searched most often to find your website.

Don’t be content to just guess as to what worked well (and and not so well) with your website, search marketing, and Easter outreach…

Smart people make data-based decisions.

Partner with our team of SEO/Analytics experts!

This is why when we begin working with an organization to help them with their Christian SEO or Church SEO we configure their website with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools.  With these tools we and our clients can make good data-driven decisions, which helps them better live out their mission online.

If you’re interested in getting some expert help with your SEO, fill out the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to schedule a time to talk.

Post a Comment and Discuss…

• Have you reviewed your Easter analytics? Why or why not?
• If you have, what is the most significant thing you learned from your Easter analytics?

Read more articles in our Easter Communications series.

The post Secrets Revealed by Easter Analytics appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

That means Mother’s Day is an excellent opportunity to reach out to people your community and show how the love of Christ compels us to love moms and families – those who are already a part of our congregation and those outside our community of faith.

If you’re looking for new church outreach ideas for Mother’s Day, we’ve got a bunch of them grouped into two categories: first, events you can do in-person, and second, ways to promote your events and connect with people online.

14 Church Outreach Event Ideas for Mother’s Day

1. Mother’s Day Service

Plan a special Mother’s Day service to celebrate and honor mothers. Include special music, scripture readings, and a message that honors the role of mothers in our lives.

2. Mother’s Day Brunch

Host a Mother’s Day brunch for the mothers in your church and community. Serve delicious food, offer a time of fellowship, and create an environment where mothers feel appreciated.

3. Mother’s Day Cards

Encourage children and adults to create Mother’s Day cards to give to their mothers, grandmothers, or other mother figures in their lives. You could even have a card-making station set up after the service.

4. Mother’s Day Gift Bags

Create Mother’s Day gift bags filled with goodies and distribute them to mothers in your church or community.

5. Mother’s Day Photo Booth

Set up a photo booth where mothers and their families can take pictures to commemorate the day. Have props available to make it extra fun!

6. Mother’s Day Devotional

Create a Mother’s Day devotional that can be shared with mothers to encourage and uplift them.

7. Mother’s Day Tea

Host a Mother’s Day tea (perhaps the day before Mother’s Day) for mothers and their daughters or friends. Serve tea, light refreshments, and provide a time of fellowship.

8. Mother’s Day Movie Night

Host a movie night the Friday or Saturday before Mother’s Day and show a family-friendly movie that celebrates mothers.

9. Spa Day for Moms

Host a spa day where mothers can be pampered and relaxed. Offer massages, manicures, and other spa treatments. Alternatively, you could give away gift certificates for a spa day to special moms (e.g. oldest mom, newest mom, mom w the most kids)

10. Mother’s Day Sunday School

Create a special Sunday school lesson for children that focuses on the importance of mothers and the biblical examples of motherhood.

11. Support a Women’s Center

Does your community have a local women’s center that provides ultrasounds and support for expectant mothers, or baby supplies for new mothers? Raise funds or collect items for donations for your local women’s center.

12 Launch New Groups for Moms

Mother’s Day is a great opportunity to announce new ministries for mothers like a a preschooler play group, bible study for moms while their kids are in school, or a class for parents of teens.

13. Mother’s Day Out

Offer free or inexpensive child care at the church, so moms can have some time to themselves, with their friends, or to shop without kids.

14. Mother’s Day Corsages

The youth group could sell and assemble Mother’s Day Corsages as a fundraiser and distribute them before services on Mother’s Day.

8 Mother’s Day Online Outreach Ideas

1. Create a Landing Page

Create a dedicated landing page on your church website that provides all the details of your Mother’s Day services and events. This page should be easy to navigate, and the information should be displayed prominently.

2. Utilize Social Media

Social media is an effective way to reach out to your community and promote your Mother’s services and events. Utilize platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to create posts and share information about your Mother’s Day services and events.

3. Ask Your Congregation to Utilize Social media

Posting info to the church’s social media profiles will only reach so many people. If you really want to maximize your social media reach, get the people of your church fired up and excited about sharing your church’s social media posts.

4. Share Testimonials

Share testimonies from members of your congregation about the impact that their Mother has had on their life. Or testimonies from mothers on the impact God has had on their family. These testimonials can be shared on social media and on your website to help promote your Mother’s Day services and events.

5. Email/Blog Devotionals

We suggested giving away physical Mother’s Day devotionals in #6. An alternative would be to invite people to subscribe to receive daily devotionals via email.

6) Use Graphics and Videos

Create graphics and/or promotional videos for your Easter services and events. These visuals can be shared in your services, on your website, on social media and via email to catch the attention of your audience.

7) Use Online Advertising

Consider using online advertising to promote your Mother’s Day services and events. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads can be used to target specific audiences and promote your Mother’s Day services and events.

8) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Make sure people can find your church and Mother’s Day events when they search online. For help with that check out The Ultimate Guide to Church SEO

Forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. –Proverbs 1:8-9

Want to work with our team?

And if you’d like some help with church web design and church SEO so you can have your best Mother’s Day outreach ever, we’d love to work with you.

Fill out the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop), to schedule a call.

Comment and Discuss…

• What Mother’s Day outreach is your church planning?

Continue reading… Church Outreach Ideas & Events for every holiday and season

The post 22 Mother’s Day Ideas for Church Outreach (events and online) appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.