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If you’re not sure, you’re not alone.  Pastors and church leaders need to know that just because their church has a website doesn’t mean it will be displayed in the search engine results when people in their community search for a church online.

As we near Internet Evangelism Day (April 27), if you pastor a church or administer a church website one of the best things you can do for IED is facilitate a meeting to discuss how to better use your church website to connect with people in your community.  A key part of that is assessing your church website’s visibility in search engines and developing a plan to improve it.

You may be saying to yourself, “Uhhh, that sounds like a good idea, but I don’t really understand search engines, I don’t know how to assess my church website’s visibility in search engines, and I wouldn’t even know where to start to improve it.�

Well you’re in luck.  This article will provide an overview, which you can use to lead that meeting and develop a great plan so your church can reach more people in your community.

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At first glance the title may seem over-hyped, but I literally quadrupled the number of new visitors to my personal blog, Live Intentionally, using images.  Recent changes in Google have made images a website traffic goldmine, and surprisingly few people are capitalizing on this opportunity.  Here’s how I did it.

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Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with family, friends, and most importantly, Jesus.  I love this time of year because it’s a time of optimism and fresh starts.  More than any other time of year, in January we believe in the possibility of what could be.

Now I’m sure you’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks there has been no shortage of articles, blogs, and TV shows containing 2007 predictions.  They range from the dire like Pat Robertson’s prediction of a terrorist attack to the wacky (the Spice Girls will reunite.)  I promise not to scare you with doomsday forecasts, and while it’s tempting I’ll resist the urge to humor you with outrageous possibilities.

In fact, I’m kind of cool to the whole prediction thing, but I believe that success often comes from anticipating a trend and putting yourself in a position to ride the wave.  My hope is that by talking about some of the current trends related to Christianity and the Internet that you can position yourself to ride one or more of these waves in 2007.  So, here are 5 predictions for 2007 and their implications for Christian ministry. (more…)

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could easily build a search engine on your blog or website tailored to the topics and areas you know and love the most? You’re not alone if you’d like that — we’ve heard from partners large and small, and users across the web who want access to the Google search platform, and want to customize and make it their own.â€�

So begins Google’s October 23rd announcement of its new Custom Search Engine.

We at OurChurch.Com created a new Christian search engine using this service.  How good is the service?  How easy was it to set up? (more…)

I hope everyone in America had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I’m sure you spent a great deal of time discussing Search Engine Marketing over Turkey and pie.  At night you dreamed of great search rankings, when you were able to sleep at all.  Well let me put your mind and ease as I finish up my two-part article on Search Engine Marketing looking at Link Building and Pay-Per-Click search engine advertising. (more…)

Over the past couple of weeks Mark has been writing about e-commerce, who should have it and what is involved.  E-commerce can be a great tool for your website and business, but having a simple, convenient shopping cart on your website doesn’t do you much good if nobody ever sees it.  I could decide to sell my car for two dollars (it’s worth at least $5), but it wouldn’t sell if nobody knew it was for sale.  So how do you get visitors?  Marketing. (more…)

Search engines are very important for websites these days with over 50% of website visitors coming from search engines. In fact, according to a recent report, search is the second most popular activity on the web, just behind email.  “Ok, so being listed in the major search engines like Google and Yahoo is important, but what’s the deal with these Christian search engines?” you say, “Are they important?”  I’m so glad you asked.  First, in case the name didn’t give it away, Christian search engines are search engines and directories which list only Christian websites.  Of course, one example would be the OurChurch.Com Christian Search engine.  Are Christian search engines important for your website?

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Hi everyone, my name is Kurt and I’m the Director of Marketing Services at OurChurch.Com.  My job is to get websites listed in the search engines and get them to rank well for the targeted keywords.  Paul Steinbrueck and I were discussing the blog the other day and thought, “We’ve been talking about how to have a useful and effective church website, but how effective can a website be if people can’t find it?”  So we decided I should make my blogging debut with an article about how to best get people to find your church online.

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