Media Outreach

Now that your fH website is online and rockin, you’re probably wondering how to get more people stopping in and actually reading the awesome and thoughtful content you have added. While there is no foolproof way (short of paying for a sponsored link) to ensure that your volume will increase, here are a few tips we have found effectively increase your site’s visibility.
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN closely guard their exact methods of how they provide accurate results. However, among the factors that influence results are how related a site’s Meta tags are to the search terms, link popularity, and site depth.
One of the best ways to improve your ranking in search engine results is to encourage friendly websites to link to your site. Your church’s parent organizations, coalitions, and other affiliated groups are a good place to start. More often than not, these sites feature a member listing. If you think of a hyperlink as a path, the bottom line is that the more paths there are leading toward you, the more likely it is someone will come down yours. Getting other websites to link to you is one of the easiest ways to increase traffic.
While help from others can go a long way, as a quote attributed to Ben Franklin goes, “God helps those who help themselves.” So, here are some things you can do: Keeping your Meta tags relevant and novel will help differentiate you from every other church website that wants display when someone searches “church” (342,000,000 results on Google). More than likely, there are a few things that make your church unique and relevant for your members. Reflecting these qualities in your Meta tags will help you connect with potential visitors looking for those qualities.
Outside of Meta tags, search engines increasingly scan entire websites for keywords in their content. Having robust content on your website will not only be more interesting for your current readers, but also gives the engines more to work with. Keeping your site up to date with your latest news and keeping things “fresh” in general will keep your site interesting in the long term. The more content you have on your site, and the more frequently you update it, the more people will keep coming back (and more than likely, coming into your actual church). Having an in-depth, interesting site is by far one of the best ways to increase your online visibility.