Love is in the air… or at least Valentine’s Day on the calendar. To love another person is one of the sweetest blessings God gives us. Not far behind that is the blessing of having a website you love. At least that what our team of web geeks thinks.

Seriously though, one of the greatest gifts you can give the people of your church, school, ministry or business is a website that they are proud to share with their friends.

February is “Love Your Website” Month at OurChurch.Com. Our goal for the month is to help you take the design of your website to the next level. Perhaps that means making some minor changes to your site which you can do yourself or perhaps we can help create a brand new custom website. Perhaps you need some feedback and suggestions on how to improve your site. Or perhaps you’d like $50.

Keep reading for more on all these things!

1) Love Your Website Bundles – $50 Off!
Our Website Service Bundles are one of the best deals on the planet and a great way to take your love for your website to a whole new level. Bundles combine a web hosting package, ad-free option, domain registration, search registration and our Template Personalization Service, all at a huge discount. This month we’re giving an extra $50 off all bundles.

Now the disclaimers… This special offer is only available through Feb 28. It’s only available to those who do not currently have a bundle. And it’s not available online – you must call us at (727) 723-2454 to get the extra $50 off. Tell Debbie you want the “Love Your Website” Bundle Special!

2) Get an Awesome Custom-Designed Website You’ll Love!
If you and your organization are ready for an awesome website that is:

• Custom designed to look exactly the way you want it
• Has all the functionality to help you achieve your mission
• Is easy for you to update and add to yourself
• Can be updated by multiple administrators anywhere there’s an Internet connection

Check out some of the organizations we serve in our web design portfolio. Then request a free, no obligation phone consultation.

3) Web Development Videos
We want every Christian organization to have a website they love whether it’s provided by us or by some other means. One of the ways we’re doing that is by creating a series of videos to help “educate consumers” (that’s you) about the website development process. That way you know how to evaluate the options available to you. The first two videos have been published:

• 5 Things You Need to Know Before Hiring a Web Developer
• 6 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Developer

Stay tuned for more videos about website platforms, prices, maintenance, how to discuss website needs with your board and more.

4) $50 to Share the Love
When you love someone you want the world to know about it. If you love your OurChurch.Com website, we want you to let the world know. And we want to give you $50 for doing it. There are two options.

A) Follow us on Twitter and then tweet: I love my @OurChurchDotCom website – http://YourWebsite.com (You must use @OurChurchDotCom in your tweet so we can see it and enter you in the drawing)

Or

Like our Facebook page and then post to Facebook: I love my @OurChurch.Com website – http://YourWebsite.com (If you type @OurChurch, Facebook should give you the option to select OurChurch.Com, making the “OurChurch.Com” a link to our FB page. You must do this so we see your post and enter you into the drawing. Here’s a quick video demo of how to do it.)

You may post to Facebook and Twitter once per day. Each post will count as an entry. On February 28, we’ll select one winner who will receive a $50 Visa gift card.

We love you!

Thanks to all of you who have given us the opportunity to help you achieve your mission online through our web hosting, web design and SEO services or by adding to the conversation here on our blog.  We love you! And we hope you love your website or are taking steps make your website more lovable this month.

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Google has made a major change in their Google+ Local terms of service that will affect how you get reviews for your local organization.  Find about about this change and other changes in the search engines in the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohMhmiESVmM

Here’s a brief outline of the video:

1. Google is still dominating search (surprise!)
2. Google did another Panda update.  These happen regularly now and should be expected.
3. Google updated their Google+ Local terms of service.  They now expressly state owners and staff members should not post reviews for organizations and organizations should not have computer kiosks solely for the purpose of customers/members posting reviews.
4. Bing updated their images search to make it quicker and more attractive.
5. Bing updated the appearance of their Social Sidebar.
6. Bing now includes information about famous people and places in their Snapshot column.

If you prefer, you can read the January 2013 SEO Update here.

How is your site ranking in Google and Bing?

We are in the internet age. So, you need to stay strong in the search engines and use the internet to achieve your mission online. 

If you have a local organization, listings are very important.  When people search in Google Maps, Bing Maps, or Yahoo Local, local listings are what show up in the results.  If your organization doesn’t have a local listing, then you won’t show up.  If you do have one, but only have basic (or less) contact info, then people are less likely to contact you.  So, it’s important to make sure you have Google, Bing, and Yahoo listings and that they are fully setup.

Tip: Setup Listings in Google and Bing Maps.
Take a few minutes and do a search for your organization’s name, city and state in Google maps, Bing maps, and Yahoo local.  If your organization doesn’t show up, then go ahead and create a listing.  If your organization does show, click through to the listing and claim the listing.  Claimed listings tend to rank better and it will give you better control over the listing.

Add Information:
Once you’ve claimed your listing or while you are setting up a new listing, make sure you add as much information as possible.  Upload pictures and link videos.  And, most importantly, link to your website.

You can create your listings by following these links:

• http://www.google.com/places/
• http://www.bing.com/businessportal
• http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

It doesn’t take long to setup or claim a listing, but it could make a world of difference for your local organization.

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.

• If you have a website and you aren’t getting much traffic, online marketing can bring you that traffic you desire.
• If you want to sell more widgets, online marketing can bring you customers.
• If you want more people visiting your church, online marketing can bring them to your door.
• If you want more students, online marketing can fill your classroom.
• If you want to reach more people for Christ…yep, marketing can help their, too

It’s Not Just Marketing.  It’s Reaching Your Goals.
Hi, my name is Kurt Steinbrueck and I am the Director of Marketing Services with OurChurch.Com.  Marketing is not just my job, it’s something I value; not because I really like marketing, but because I like seeing Christian organizations achieve their goals to the glory of God and I like being a part of that.

You see, marketing isn’t about campaigns and slogans and what not, it’s about achieving goals.  I not only think marketing can help you to reach your goals, I’ve seen it happen.

OurChurch.Com’s most effective marketing is our presence in the search engines, and that didn’t just happen.  We’ve had to develop strategies to improve search engine rankings.  I meet people visiting my church who found us online.  My wife’s Christian school has grown every year, even in this down economy, and their online marketing has helped them to achieve that.

I’m sharing this with you because I want you know that I truly believe that good online marketing can help organizations reach their goals.  I don’t just help others with their marketing, I put these strategies into practice at the places that are most important to me and have seen them work.

October is Marketing Month!
All during the month of October we will be focusing on online marketing here at OurChurch.Com.  I will be writing articles about online marketing techniques, posting easy tips to help you get your online marketing underway, and highlighting just a few of the many organizations with whom I have had the privileged of working with to help them towards their mission.  We’ll be doing some social shares as well.  And, who knows, maybe there will be a surprise or two during the month.

Search Marketing Services:
I know that paragraph heading makes it seem like this is going to be a sales pitch, and it is…but it’s also not.  You see, marketing isn’t really an expense.  It’s an investment; one that should bring you more in return than you put into it.

Think about it.  Taco Bell doesn’t spend millions of dollars every year getting a chiwawa to talk to you because they like dogs.  They do it because by spending millions of dollars marketing, they get back tens of millions of dollars in sales.  The same should be true of your marketing, though maybe not in the millions…or maybe it is …  It’s not just true for businesses either.  It’s true for schools, ministries, and even churches.

I’ll be sharing a lot of online marketing information over this coming month and have written a lot previous on this blog, the Christian SEO Guys blog, and the Church Marketing Online blog.  All this information can help you to better market your organization.  But I also know that for many marketing isn’t their thing or they just don’t have time.  If you know you need to be marketing, but your really don’t want to do it yourself…or if it’s something that’s been sitting on your “to do” list since January, we’d be happy to help.  Whether you have a church, school, ministry, or business…whether you want to reach people nationally, or in your local area…we can help.

Please take look at our marketing services at http://marketing.ourchurch.com/ and request a free consultation today.  If you don’t see the type of service you are looking for, please let us know.  We can customize a service to meet your specific needs.

Give Me Feedback:
So, please keep an eye out for the post throughout this month.  If you have any questions or subjects you’d like me to address, please leave a comment and let me know.

• Leave a comment below and let me know what you would like to discuss this month.

God bless!

Today’s guest post is by Cara Shelton, co-author of Classic Christianity: A Year of Timeless Devotions.

I love to teach kids the Bible! It’s addicting, really, watching their faces light up when they “get” the lesson. For over 30 years, I’ve been plugging away teaching Sunday School, AWANA lessons, VBS – pretty much whenever they’ll let me up in front of a group of kids at church! The best part is the relationships I build with the boys and girls – they always remember me, and are eager to remind me what their favorite part of the lesson was!

Other teachers have asked me what me ‘secret’ is. What they really want to know is, “Why do the kids pay attention when you teach?” After all, I’m, ahem, more than 20 years old and no beauty queen. Why would they sit there and watch me for …yes…15 minutes or even a bit more?

Well, there are the little tricks that every good teacher already knows. I know I have to compete with video games and cartoons, to some degree, so I’d better be animated and colorful! I vary my voice pitch and tone. I move around a LOT! I use my hands and face to express emotion, to emphasize, to call attention to a point. But, the real bag of tricks comes with an extension cord!

You see, I have a new tool in my teaching arsenal, which has all but replaced my flannelgraph of old! It’s my computer and my Epson Powerlite Presenter. Now I have pictures and maps that illustrate my points, I can “fly” the students to the location of the Bible lesson, and I can give them the background information they need to understand the critical points of the teaching!

Let me give you a few examples. In VBS this year, I used the Presenter and my computer with a wireless connection to “fly” the kids to Capernaum. I simply used Google Earth to make a flight from the front of our church, up, up, and across the whole world, down, down, to tiny Israel, to the edge of the Sea of Galilee, to the little town of Capernaum. I saved it as a “trip” and was able to play it for the kids the next day. Wow. Google Earth had some pictures I used – like the picture of Peter’s house. What did this do for the kids? Well, they realized that these PLACES and these PEOPLE are real. Peter really did exist – and there are remnants from his house!

Every time we visit a new place, we can “take off” from church, and “land” at our Bible destination. We talk about the time Jesus lived, giving historical and geographical context. I look for pictures to illustrate important points. Google Earth has tons of great pictures from all across the region.

But that isn’t the only thing my little Powerlite Presenter can do. I also create illustrations for my Bible lessons. I look up pictures, scan in photos or maps, and search for images that will make the story come to life. What does a fisherman’s net look like? I can show them. What did Soloman’s temple really LOOK like? I have a model all ready to walk through. I simply save the jpg images, tag them with a numerical code that puts them in the order I want them, and download the images onto a flashdrive. I can plug the flashdrive right into the presenter, and use the remote to forward through them from anywhere in the room.

With just a little more work, I can also make up a slide show, complete with music from the region. Burn it onto a DVD, and the presenter will play that as well. Since Epson’s Powerlite Presenter has a good sound system and a mic, I’m not limited as to the size of my audience. I have used it in a single classroom, or in front in the sanctuary, projecting onto the “big” screen.

So, I’ll keep on teaching Bible lessons, teaching about missionaries’ lives, and whatever else God leads me to teach. And I will keep on looking for ways to bring it all to life for the kids whenever I do. Have you noticed that I never once have used the term “Bible stories”? That’s because they aren’t just stories, they are the real lives and real adventures of real people living for Jesus! Technology can help us make it just that real for kids, as well as for the adults we minister to!

How would you use a projector during a teaching time with children? Have you found other online resources that make Bible lessons come to life? I can hardly wait to hear!

Happy Flying!

Cara

Kurt Steinbrueck, our Director of Search Marketing, has faceted another gem to the Christian SEO Guys blog.  In a post published yesterday he reveals some great tips to improving search rankings in Google’s local listings which are also incorporated into Google Maps.

The tips are based on research done by Bizable, which showed having reviews, pictures and videos posted on an organization’s Google Places page had a positive impact on that organization’s rankings on Google Maps and the local listings that are displayed when a person searches Google.com

For more details see the full post: Study Reveals Positive Reviews Boost Google Map Rankings

How is your church, school or local business doing in Google’s local results?  Do the results of this research motivate you to take any action to improve your rankings?

About LHSS:
Lutheran High School South is a private Lutheran high school in St. Louis, Missouri.  They provide a Christ-centered college prep education for grades 9-12.  They currently have 540 students and are working to continue to grow.  They offer a wide range of co-curricular activities, including athletics, music, art, and various clubs.

Marketing Success!
Lutheran High School South came to OurChurch.Com for a website over four years ago.  A little over 2 years ago they decided to partner with our marketing services team getting the Top Schools Search Rankings service.  Within 2 months of completing the optimization of the LHSS website they had:

• Over 400 top ten rankings
• Over 100 #1 rankings

They have continued to gain more top rankings since then.  Currently, they are ranking on the first page of Google for keywords like “high schools in St. Louis” and “Christian schools in St. Louis”.  Recently, they upgraded to the Progressive SEO Management service with link building to push those rankings even higher.

Increased Website Traffic!
In addition to high rankings, LHSS’s website has seen big increases in traffic.  So, far this year unique visitors to the LHSS website are more than double what they were last year at this time.  Organic search traffic is up over 40% and referrals from listings around the web are up as well.

After having worked with the staff at Lutheran High School South for several years now, I would happily recommend LHSS to any high school student in the St. Louis area.

If you’d like to talk with someone at OurChurch.Com about marketing options that can help better achieve your mission online, read more about our search marketing services and request a free, no-obligation phone consultation.

Your local organization is just one of many out there.  We all want to show up well in Google and Bing, but unfortunately, there is only one #1 ranking and only ten rankings on the first page of results.  So, what decides if your church, school, or business is ranked #1 or #51 and can you do anything to improve your rankings?  (I’ll give you a hint…you can )

There are four big factors that determine how well your local organization ranks in the local search results like Google Maps.

1. You Listing’s Content.  Your organization’s name, the description you include in your listing, and the categories you choose play a significant role in your rankings.  Try to use your city name and any descriptive words you want associated with your organization (I.E. “family church”, “Christian school”, “craft supplies”)
2. Your Location.  I know you can’t really do anything about this, but how close your organization is physically located to what the search engines consider the center of town has a big impact on your rankings.  If your location isn’t in the city your want to target, that makes it even more difficult to rank well.  There are, however, things you can do to overcome this as we’ll talk about in a minute.
3. Positive Reviews.  Ratings and reviews, both on the search listings and other local listing sites can have a significant impact on your rankings.  The more the better.  This is one of the ways you can overcome not being located in your city’s town hall building.  You can read more about the importance of positive reviews in my previous post, Church Marketing Round Table Follow Up Tip – Church Reviews.
4. Local Citations.  The more citations your organization has around the web, especially from quality, authoritative websites, the better.  Having many citations can have a big impact on your rankings.  This is very important for churches, schools, and businesses in large cities and this is what I want to talk about today.

What Are Local Citations?
Local citations (sometimes called Google citations) are simply listings of your organization with its name, address, and phone number.  The listing can appear pretty much anywhere to qualify as a citation and does have to include a link to your website, though it can and it’s better if it does.  The important thing is that your church, school, or business is cited (referenced) and the citation includes your address and phone number.

Why Are Local Citations Important?
There are 2 reasons Local citations are important to the search engines.

1. Local citations send a signal that your organization is real and has a real location.  Many local citations also indicates that your organization is well known and important.  When the major search engines started their local search options, organizations quickly realized that showing up in those local search results would bring more traffic. So, organizations started creating listings, even if they didn’t actually have a real local presence.  This is essentially spam and wasn’t good for the search results.  The search engines realized that if an organization is referred to on other sites with their local contact info, they could use that to confirm whether an organization is real and thus whether they really deserve to show up in the local search results.
2. Local citations can indicate an organization’s popularity and importance.  If a local organization is referred to frequently on many websites, then the search engines see that as an indication that many people know about them and consider them worth noting.  This causes the search engines to think that the organization is popular and important and thus worthy of a high search ranking.  In this way, citations help improve local search results in a similar way that links help websites to rank better in the general search rankings.

Who Needs Local Citations?

• Any local organization that isn’t ranked #1 for their target keywords in their city
• Any local organization that is in a large city with lots of similar organizations
• Any local organization that wants to improve their rankings for searches in the towns near their town

How Do You Get Local Citations?
You can get local citations in a variety of ways.  The most common methods of getting citations are setting listings in local listing sites and doing things that are news worthy.  By doing something news worthy, a organization can have stories written about them in newspapers (most of which have online versions now) and blogs.  If you are contacted by someone wanting to write a story about your organization or you find a story online about your organization, ask them to include your contact information with your organization’s name.  Other than that, you can go out and get local citations by setting up listings in local review sites, church locators, school directories, business review sites, and directories.

Hopefully, this is enough to get you out there getting local citations.  If you’re still unsure or you don’t really have the time do this, we can help with that, too with our local citations service.

Are you having trouble ranking well in the local search results?

Do you have any questions about local citations?

What local citation sites do you think are the most important?

Each week during Marketing Month we’re going to feature in a “Marketing Spotlight” blog post an organization that is doing a great job with their online marketing.  Today, we’re featuring Christian Leadership University.

About CLU:
Christian Leadership University is a Christian university offering a wide variety undergrad and graduate degrees, including ordination, through distance learning and online classes. Their department heads include Ron Luce, John Arnott, Lamar Boschman, Mark Virkler and other, all international leaders in their own fields.

CLU uses the Lamad educational technique which focuses on real life experiences, Biblically grounded teaching, and revelation from God.

Marketing Success!
CLU is performing advance search engine optimization with link building to increase their rankings in the search engines and get high rankings for popular keywords (like online Bible college) in a very competitive field.  Despite a down economy, over the past year they have seen a 10% increase in overall traffic, and enrollment has continued to increase.

If you are considering going into the ministry or just going to college, I encourage you to look into Christian Leadership University.

If you’d like to talk with someone at OurChurch.Com about marketing options that can help better achieve your mission online, read more about our search marketing services and request a free, no-obligation phone consultation.