New! With every hosting plan or WebSite TonightŪ account, you now have easy access to Google Webmaster Tools, right from your hosting control panel. Without a doubt, Google is the most influential search engine, and it's important that you see your site the way Google sees it.

With Google Webmaster Tools(GWT), you can see how your site is performing, diagnose problems Google may have accessing your site, share information to help Google crawl your site better and much more. It's a fast, easy, free way to help increase your visibility and make your site more Google friendly!

Accessing GWT will depend on whether you have shared hosting or WebSite TonightŪ. In both cases, you'll need to login to your account. If you have a shared Windows or Linux plan, you will open your "Hosting Control Panel" from the "My Hosting Accounts" page. From there, you'll open GWT with a link near the top of the page.

If you have a WebSite TonightŪ account, you'll need to "Launch" the WebSite TonightŪ management tool from the "My Websites" page. From there, look for a button near the bottom of the management tool.

Once you open Google Webmaster Tools, you'll need to verify the domains you have linked with the account, and then you can begin to see the tools that are available. You can get reports on the errors that Google found, you can create a sitemap to help Google index your site, and you can even change the frequency that Google indexes your site.

Labels: design, Google Webmaster Tools, Search Engine Optimization

posted by PastorJon @ 9:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

This is the third article in our series on promoting your church website. You really should take time to read the first and second articles before you continue. This article will be a bit more technical than the first two...but vitally important for you to consider as you prepare your site for submission to the major search engines.

One of your first steps in making your site visible to the waiting world is the use of META tags. While META tags cannot guarantee you a good listing on a search engine, they certainly can help. Please make sure that you put good META tags in your site before you start submitting your URL to search engines.

There are two primary META tags that are important for you to put on your site. META tags are often indexed by robots and spiders that visit your page in order to identify the content of your site, and the keywords that most effectively describe your site. I would suggest that you put META tags on every page within your site. Below, are some good tips you can use to help make your site more likely to get a good search engine result.

TITLE - Using the TITLE tag, make sure you give your page a good title. It doesn't hurt if your title is descriptive, and contains a few keywords that would describe your site. The TITLE tags should be the first tags in the HEAD section of your page.

META DESCRIPTION - Using the "description" META tag provides an accurate description of your site for the search engine to display in its results page. Write one or two sentences that are descriptive, compelling, and utilize your important keywords. All META tags should be placed after the TITLE tags, but before the /HEAD tag.

META KEYWORDS - In this tag, you'll want to include a number of keywords that someone might use to perform a search. You might also want to consider variations and common misspellings. Also, you should try to use a few of these keywords in your TITLE, H!, any ALT attributes, as well as within the main body of your document. All of these things could help your rating with the search engine.

Beware of "search engine spamming." This practice simply uses keywords repetitively within the document, and while you might fool a search engine or two, you might also lose your listing with them.

There are other META tags you can use (name="copyright"; "author"; "generator"; etc.); however description and keywords are the most important ones to help you with search engine listing.

A special note for users of Microsoft FrontPage: You can edit META tags either by using the "HTML" tab, or by right clicking on the page, choosing "page properties..." and then choosing the "custom" tab.

Make sure to go through your site and develop your META tags before you start submitting to search engines. While it is tempting to just start telling people about your site, make sure you do things in the right order.

Lastly, remember that this is equal parts science and art--you'll have to do some experimenting with your tags and see how they affect your listing and your traffic. You might also want to consider using a product like Traffic Facts to help you analyze how well your site is accomplishing its goals.

Labels: design, Search Engine Optimization, Traffic Facts

posted by PastorJon @ 8:16 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

This is the second article in our series on promoting your church website. You can read the first article on our blog. While we won't dive into the technical aspects of search engine preparation in this article, please don't skim over these important steps you can take to help prepare your site.

Search Engines!! The best site in all the world does your church no good if nobody can find it! I assume that since you have a website, you want people to visit it. Therefore, you cannot cut corners when it comes to submitting to search engines and indexes. While we will show you some tips to save some money, if you want your site available quickly, you may end up spending some money on promotion. But, before you do, please follow some of the tips we offer here!

Before you even consider submitting your site to a search engine you must make sure it is finished. There should be no "Under Construction" logos or text anywhere. All of your links should work. There shouldn't be anything in your site that could cause a spider or a human editor to scratch their head. Finish the site!

There is a lot to be said for understanding the process of search engines and directories. There is a lot to be said for understanding how spiders and robots index your pages. Many designers swear by META tags, and they are certainly important.

However, the first tip I would like to give you is to design your site so that there is lots of valuable content for spiders and human editors to digest. You want to make your site so valuable that any search engine or directory would be foolish not to include your site.

So, even though you are itching to start submitting your site, take a moment and relax! Go back through your website. Eliminate any broken links or "under construction" indicators. Have a friend (or even an enemy) check your site over for errors. Make sure you have a lot of original content broken up over several pages. Designing your site with excellence in mind is one of the best ways to get listed in any search engine or index.

Labels: design, promotion, Search Engine Optimization

posted by PastorJon @ 6:17 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Well...at least take time to promote your church's website!

Seriously, if you're going to invest a lot of time in designing your site and creating great content which will help spread the Good News, you need to make sure to promote your site, so all that hard work doesn't go to waste.

There are two primary means to promote your website--offline and online. Offline methods are those methods which attract the attention of someone when they're not sitting at their computer, while online methods help computer users find your site.

Offline: Be sure that the people in your pews know about your website--list the address in your worship folder (bulletin) and on your church stationery. When I launched our sermon podcast, I put the following slogan on our sign in front of the church, "Download Uplifting Sermons - www.capenazarene.org." And, I've asked our local newspaper to include our web-address with our listing in the religion section. If you have any regular advertising--newspaper, posters, radio spots, sports team sponsorships--be sure to include your website there as well.

Online: One of your goals in online promotion is to work to increase the number of links to your site. Not only will this increase the chance of someone clicking a link to visit your site, but it may also improve your search engine rankings. Check out other websites in your town--the local newspaper, the official town website, the chamber of commerce, the tourism directory, etc.--and ask them to include a link to your site. Encourage members of your congregation who have blogs or other personal websites to link to your church website. Maybe you and a "sister church" can exchange links--and be sure your denominational website has your web address.

Promoting your site will take some time, but even if you set aside an hour once a month, you'll find that you can greatly expand the reach of your internet ministry. Next month, we'll expand our discussion on promotion by looking at simple things you can do to prepare your site for search engines and directories.

Labels: design, promotion, Search Engine Optimization

posted by PastorJon @ 3:40 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Our March edition of YCW eNews contains this article:

It's quite possible that there is no better internet marketing tool than the very powerful "blog." Short for WebLog, a blog can be used for anything from a collection of links, to commentary on current news, to a place to post regular devotional thoughts, to an online journal or diary. Why should you (or your pastor) have a blog? Here are just a few reasons:

1. Blogs provide an easy way to provide regular fresh content without technical expertise.
2. Blogs allow for the author's personality to shine through in a way that informational websites usually don't.
3. Blogs will help your community get to know you better.
4. Blogs allow for controlled and focused dialogue around a particular topic.
5. Blogs are very search-engine friendly, and may help you improve your visibility on the internet.

I'd like to take some space here to expand each of those points, and to invite you to add your comments about how you have used blogging to expand your internet ministry:

1. Blogs provide an easy way to provide regular fresh content without technical expertise.
Anyone who can write an email can write a blog entry. Yes, it will take a little technical expertise to setup your blog on your website, but once you've done that, you can just give a username and password to the blog owner and let them start posting. They can write and publish, without any intervention from the webmaster!

2. Blogs allow for the author's personality to shine through in a way that an informational websites usually don't. Blogs have developed a reputation for being a more informal means of communication than a polished, published website. Authors have more freedom to be personable, and to share details from their lives. You might use a blog to show the development of a sermon or sermon series, allowing people to see the questions that you are asking, and the lessons you are learning.

3. Blogs will help your community get to know you better. You might use a blog to talk about your interests and hobbies, thus helping people in the community see you as a real person. You might talk about community events, or something your kids did. You might use your blog to invite dialog from the community, or to provide answers to Biblical questions.

4. Blogs allow for controlled and focused dialogue around a particular topic. Often, a scripture passage that you might preach about on Sunday morning will be far to complex to share all of the lessons that you learned in your study. You could use a blog to develop those concepts further, for those that were interested in going deeper. Or, you might choose to write a devotional blog--I know of one pastor who is "blogging through the Bible," sharing the lessons that he's learning as he reads.

5. Blogs are very search-engine friendly, and may help you improve your visibility on the internet. Because blogs are content-rich, search engines love them. If you are using blogger (this blog was created with blogger), then you can quickly notify Google of new posts. You can set your blog up so each post gets its own page, and is somewhat optimized for search engines. Done right, a blog will help improve your visibility to search engines, which will also expand your internet ministry.

What other ways are you using blogging tools to enhance your ministry? What questions do you have about getting started? Go ahead and post a reply, I'd love to hear from you.

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: blogging, design, purpose, quick blog, Search Engine Optimization

posted by PastorJon @ 2:40 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

There was a day when churches were the centers of their community. They were the social services, providing help for settlers who hadn't yet built their houses. They were the town meeting hall, where business was conducted. They provided space for education, weddings, family reunions, and more. When a group of people settled a new town, the church building was often one of the first to be built.

While this may still be true in some parts of the world, I find that many churches are no longer considered an integral part of the town around them. Residents of the town use the public schools for education, the town hall for town meetings, and the local Elks Club for their family reunion. Government agencies and other non-profits have taken over the task of social services, and non-Christians have fewer reasons to walk through the doors of your church.

The greater problem of churches being essential and relevant to their community is one that each church must consider...and it's also outside the scope of this blog! However, I'd like to brainstorm some ideas about how we can make our church websites be an integral source of information to our community.

Search Engine - In order for this to work, you've got to take the time to properly optimize your site for search engines. Your goal is make your site visible, not just when someone searches for the name of your church, but when they search for your town, county, or even your state. The more traffic you can attract to your site, the better opportunities you'll have to become indispensible to your community.

Content - Are you providing content that is useful to your town? How about people who are interested in moving to your town, or coming there on vacation? Can you provide a section of pages with information about schools, real estate, community events, and tourist attractions? What about a calendar of events, or a place to list important updates? When you provide this sort of information, your site becomes a destination that contains indispensible information.

Questions and Answers - What would happen if churches moved beyond simply putting a "statement of faith" on their website, and answered the questions that people are asking about life? (Not to say that they don't care about our statement of faith...but I think that most non-Christians care more about whether or not God is real--and if He cares about them, then they care about our understanding of justification or sanctification). What if your pastor began a Question and Answer section? You could solicit questions from members of your congregation, and post them (along with answers) on your website. Once you got this started, you could also accept questions from visitors to your site.

Testimonies - One of the most powerful witnessing tools available to us is our own story of how God has worked in our lives. Wouldn't it be great if you had short testimonies of God's grace included on your website? Members of your congregation could write brief stories of what God has done for them, providing real-life stories of God's goodness.

Pastor's Blog - I'll be expanding this thought in a blog entry of its own, but I wanted to mention it here as well. I think one of the best things you can do for your church website is to help your pastor get started blogging. A blog provides a way to keep fresh and interesting content on your site, thus encouraging return visits. You might choose to offer devotional thoughts on your blog, or perhaps you will use your blog as an opportunity to talk about the needs in your community, or comment on news items. However you choose to use your blog, you will improve your sites exposure and visibility--increasing the pool of conversations.

How are ways that you've made your website indispensible to your community? What services can you provide that nobody else can? Feel free to post your thoughts below.

Grace and Peace,

Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net

Labels: design, plan, purpose, Search Engine Optimization

posted by PastorJon @ 9:19 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Once you've managed to get your website into a search engine, that's when the fun really begins. You can type in your church, ministry, or business name to make sure that you're in there. Hopefully, you'll be near the top of the list. And why not? There aren't many web sites out there about the 'East Timbuctu First Baptist Church.' You ought to come out near the top!

But being near the top when you type in the name of your organization is not really an impressive feat. After all, one of the purposes of the website is for people who don't know about you to find you! And people who don't know about the 'East Timbuctu First Baptist Church' AREN'T going to type that into a search engine.

So you need to step back and take an objective look at the situation. What sorts of people do you hope to attract to your website? Pastors? Christian Education directors? People in your community? People in your state? Newcomers to your community?

Now, pretend for just a minute that you aren't part of your organization. If you were one of the people you are trying to attract, what kinds of searches would you be likely to do? Make a list of the searches you think your potential visitors would do, and then go to the following web page: Keyword Tool. This is a great free page for webmasters; it lets you type in a keyword or phrase, and then tells you popular search phrases related to the phrase you typed. Jot these suggestions down in order of popularity.

When you're done with the suggestion tool, go to your favorite search engine. (Naturally, at this point, your favorite search engine is the one that your organization is listed in!) Try typing in some of the keywords and phrases you obtained from the suggestion tool. Do you show up? If you don't, there are a few things you may want to consider:

Can I change my page title, description, or keywords to include some of these popular keywords? Can I change the text of the page to include some of these popular keywords in the first paragraph? Does my page title NEED to have my organization name in it? (The homepage for my software company no longer contains the name of the company. The downside of this is that I may lose a little bit of name recognition--the upside is that I was able to squeeze a couple extra important keywords into my title.)

Carefully recraft your your title, description, and page text to include as much 'meat' as you possibly can. Now resubmit, wait two months (that's about how far behind many of the search engines are), and try again.

A disclaimer: as you play around with your keywords, descriptions, etc., please remember that keywords are not the only thing search engines look at. If you can't get high rankings, it may not be the fault of your web design; link popularity is also a crucial part of your rankings, so start looking for people to link to you!

Douglas Twitchell
Biblical Illuminations

Labels: Search Engine Optimization

posted by Douglas Twitchell @ 8:21 AM 0 Comments Links to this post