Previously we discussed how most churches are creating valuable content every week – the weekly sermon – but not using it to help their church’s search engine rankings. Even if a church posts audio or video of their sermons online (a good thing), search engines can’t decipher audio or video, so it doesn’t help with search engine optimization or church SEO.
A church can very easily take steps to use their sermons to improve their search rankings by:
1) Do a sermon blog
2) Preach on topics people are searching for
3) Repurpose sermon content
What is repurposing sermon content?
Posting to a sermon blog once a week, is a great step. But it’s still just one post, one piece of content each week. There are lots of other content that can be created from the weekly sermon that will help your church continue the conversation on the sermon topic, connect with other people, and improve search rankings.
10 Ways to Repurpose Sermon Content
1) Discussion starting question. Friday morning, post to your social media channels a discussion starting question that will get people thinking and talking about the topic of the weekend services. Create an image with the question, so you can post it to Instagram. Here’s an example…
2) Sermon video to YouTube. If you record video of the sermon, post it to YouTube. Even if you use another video service like Vimeo or host the video file on your own server, you’ll reach more people on YouTube.
3) Sermon blog/notes. We already covered this here, but I didn’t want to leave it off the list.
4) Quote image. Take a quote from the sermon and create an image with the quote in it. Share it on your social media platforms.
5) Scripture image. Take a scripture verse from the sermon and create an image with the quote in it. Share it on your social media platforms.
6) #Hashtag your sermons. Select a hashtag for your church. (Make sure you check it out first to make sure someone else isn’t already using it). Show it on the screen and encourage people to use the hashtag when sharing pics, quotes and thoughts during the service. That will make it easier for you to find and re-share other people’s posts.
7) Post discussion questions. On Monday morning, post one or more discussion questions from the Sunday service to continue the conversation online.
8) Ask for action steps. Hopefully during the sermon, your pastor challenges you to take action and live out the message in a specific way. During the week, you can post to your social media channels asking people to share how they did that, ask people to post pics when appropriate.
9) Send a weekly email. If your church sends out an weekly email/newsletter, any or all of these content items can be included in that email. That email can also be saved to page on your website and a link to it shared on your social media platforms.
10) Publish community content in a photo gallery on your website. If you’re successful in encouraging people to share their thoughts and pics with the church hashtag or people post stories or pics of their action steps during the week, take those pics and images of the comments and put them in a photo gallery.
*Bonus* Show community content Sunday on the big screen. Take the pics posted to the photo gallery and show them Sundays on the big screen before, during or after the service.
Note that from an SEO perspective, only the items that involve posting and sharing content on your website (3, 9 & 10) will help your church website’s search rankings directly. However, all of these things create engagement, build community and share the story of what God is doing in your church. As the engagement and community grows, there will be even more linking, sharing, better search rankings, and living out your mission online.
Discuss it!
- Which of these sermon repurposing ideas is your church currently doing?
- Which do you want to start doing?
- What other ways can sermon content be repurposed?
1 Comment
Amazing tips! Thanks again Paul:)