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    The Top Ten Reasons Christians Should NOT Do SEO

    Kurt SteinbrueckBy Updated:17 Comments2 Mins Read

    There are a lot of organizations that don’t do SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  They have a lot of good reasons for that choice.  So, I thought I’d put together the top 10 reasons why you really shouldn’t do SEO:

    10. If your business grows, you might have to hire some new people and that can really be a hassle.

    9. If people like your organization enough, they’ll keep searching for you…even to page 1348.

    8. You already are getting enough visitors to your website.  100 visitors a month is a lot, right?

    7. Your business is already making enough money.  Anyway, if you made more, you’d just have to pay more taxes.

    6. SEO, SEM, PR, SERP…Ahh!  There are just too many acronyms.  IKR? AAMOF IHA 2. IMHO, PCMCIA, 4COL! AWHFY?

    5. Nobody really uses search engines.  It’s just a fad.  The Yellow Pages, that’s what people use.

    4. Your classes are full and you don’t want to bother with one of those annoying “waiting lists”.

    3. You like having a small church.  You don’t need outsiders.

    2. You’re a Christian organization.  God will simply cause people to contact you like He provided manna for the Israelites.  You don’t have to work at it.

    1. Someone else will help those people.

    So, if any of these apply to you, stay away from SEO!  If they don’t, give me a call.

    Share and Enjoy !

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    OurChurch.Com Director of Marketing Services Kurt serves as OurChurch.Com’s Director of Marketing Services, bringing over 20 years of expertise in search marketing, and has developed numerous marketing services and served hundreds of churches, schools, ministries, and businesses. He has authored more than 500 articles on the subject, contributing to platforms like the Christian SEO Guys blog and Church Marketing University, and is an active participant on LocalSearchForum.com. In addition to his professional accomplishments, Kurt is an ordained minister, serving as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wesley Chapel, FL, demonstrating his commitment to both faith and community. He holds a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree from Georgia Southern University. He also holds a Specific Ministry Pastor Certificate and a General Pastor Certificate from Concordia Seminary.

    View 17 Comments

    17 Comments

    1. Matches Malone on

      Very funny. The bad news is, most at this point are doing their own SEO, whether sub-consciously or not.

    2. BlueBoden on

      I could come up with many more reasons why we should do SEO.

      1. Someone else will also get paid.
      2. should not even have been mentioned in this connection.
      4. makes no sense to me
      5. is completely false
      6. Eh.. Do i need to comment?
      7. There is always something to spend money on. If not, dump the rest in donations.
      8. 100 visitors? I'm in the thousands, and I've only just begun counting.
      9. SEO is not for your customers!
      10. Somewhat true..

      I guess this confusion comes from the false assumption that SEO is wrong, since it can give you an "unfair" advantage. The problem with that is – in spite of your good intentions – that you really have to do something extreme to gain an unfair advantage. Playing by the rules of the game will not get you there alone.

    3. PaulSteinbrueck on

      Ha! How about #11 – our search rankings are already good… see, we're #1 for the name of our organization. 😉

    4. cnaconsulting on

      I definitely like #11. I enjoyed the whole list though, unfortunately there's too much truth in it.

    5. Justin Grice on

      Number 11 – so true, I hear this all the time.

      No, no, you want to rank for what people are searching for who don't know about you!

    9. Rowan on

      I vote number 5 as well, gold!

      I think the sad reality is that seo is about competing with other good churches in your town. You want your church to come up number one in the list, and thats going to come at the expense of other churches which might also be really good.

      There are some positives though, I've found in my town that the church that has lots of historical significance ranks really highly because it has a fair few links to it, the problem is its an absolutely rubbish liberal church. If I can encourage the other good churchs in town to take SEO seriously we might have a chance of getting the dodgy church onto page 2 🙂

      • Kurt Steinbrueck on

        Rowan, that's a good point. One church's advancing in SEO does mean others loose rankings. I don't know that that is ever a bad thing, per se, even if the other churches are good churches. Someone has to number 1, right? But there are also a lot of times when it may be a good thing.

        For example, the search engines may be listing one particular church because it has a central location and lots of good links, but the church may not be the most relevant result. Maybe it's a new contemporary church that's very active online, but is ranking very well for keywords like "traditional church" because they happened to write some articles about traditional churches. It would be more relevant for the search engines to rank a church that is actually traditional. So, moving ahead of them in the search results is beneficial.

        Another example is one that you mentioned. Maybe the church that is ranking at the top has beliefs you disagree with. So, you would want to rank better so that more people are exposed to your beliefs than the other church's. I see a lot of church related search results where the Mormon church is ranked at the top. The LDS seems to have put a big emphasis on SEO in the past few years. That means they are probably attracting more visitors who do not understand the differences between true Christian teachings and Mormon teachings.

        So, yeah, sometimes SEO means two good churches competing, but other times it's beneficial or even needed. I'm glad to hear that you're engaging in SEO in your town and hopefully you will be able to convince others of it's importance.

    10. Dr Don on

      I love it. I'm up to my eyeballs now in SEO stuff for our counseling ministry website and was ready to bring out the long knives on this one until I read it. Great title. Great job!

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