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SEO Guide
Kilgore Trout
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I volunteer as the webmaster for my church. By way of background, I started doing this back in high school when taking a coding class, being able to do a "Hello World" website in HTML and being "a young person" was sufficient to be considered a proficient web designer. Fast forward more than a decade, we now have a Wordpress site so that instead of me ruling the website with an iron fist, we now have a small group of volunteers of all ages and computer skills are able to upload content to the site. This has been great for a number of reasons, but as with all good things, there is a downside. People are now asking me questions about why our website's google ranking has dropped (we used to be at the top when you searched for anglican church and our city) and have started suggesting that I "do SEO" for our website.
I think this is partly because Wordpress has some SEO options available when people go to post but I haven't explained to anybody what to put there. The reason I haven't done that is because part way through high school (again, over a decade ago) I decided to stop studying computer science so my knowledge of web design principles stops around a time when CSS was the cool new thing. I don't have a clue what SEO is, how it works, or how I would start "doing" it. I've been looking for an online guide so I can teach myself how it works and how I would implement it using Wordpress, but most of what I've found just explains what it is and not how I would use it.
Like I said, I don't have any current web design training, but I'm a quick study and more than open to taking the time to learn. I'm hoping someone can recommend a good resource that I can use to learn how to properly use SEO. For reference, here's a picture of what Wordpress gives us to work with.
tl;dr - Can anybody recommend a beginners guide on how to implement SEO.
I think this is partly because Wordpress has some SEO options available when people go to post but I haven't explained to anybody what to put there. The reason I haven't done that is because part way through high school (again, over a decade ago) I decided to stop studying computer science so my knowledge of web design principles stops around a time when CSS was the cool new thing. I don't have a clue what SEO is, how it works, or how I would start "doing" it. I've been looking for an online guide so I can teach myself how it works and how I would implement it using Wordpress, but most of what I've found just explains what it is and not how I would use it.
Like I said, I don't have any current web design training, but I'm a quick study and more than open to taking the time to learn. I'm hoping someone can recommend a good resource that I can use to learn how to properly use SEO. For reference, here's a picture of what Wordpress gives us to work with.
tl;dr - Can anybody recommend a beginners guide on how to implement SEO.
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Posts
Sort of a two for one, they'll consider them if it jives with the content and click through.
SEO is kind of a garbage concept anyways, there's not really anything one can do other than putting relevant content and getting others to search for it and click it.
It sounds like I'd be better off trying to unbury some of the content (where we used to have most of the info on the homepage, we've broken it down into subpages) and take some time to clean up the html. With the old page where the content was all up front, we were always top ranked. I wonder if now that we've made it harder to find, people are going to other pages instead so we're not getting as many click-throughs.
Out of interest, have you found that breaking your content into subpages has helped? I'm also looking at brushing up on SEO, but don't really have the time to get too bogged down in it. I used this website checker and it suggested creating a sitemap as well... Does anyone have any experience with this, and how much it might help?
ok, so, if your website is about "italian restaurant tampa florida", you can vomit keywords into your page all day long, but unless you're listed on Yelp and Facebook, and linked to by your local newspaper, then Google is not going to look at you in a positive light, because Google generally thinks the best way to determine if a website is "good" is if other people are talking about it. that's what a crawler does.
when that system breaks down and there's not a whole lot of information out there, or someone is searching with atypical keywords that google doesn't have a lot of heuristics on (say, "italy food on 4th street"), that's when things fall back to the stone age concept of keyword laden content and fancy page names, etc
its not a bad strategy for mom & pop sites like churches and plumbers n' stuff, because you will get some leads with certain niche phrasings, but it's not the vanguard strategy
how do you apply this to a church? I have no idea. but just bear that in mind. exposure > all
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
First of all. Fuck meta tags. Meta everything. It's not going to have a huge influence on search rankings. When you do a google search result. The snippet of text below a link that talks about content of the site is the meta description. It's useful to have for people who see the link to know what the link is about, but it's not going to effect rankings.
For example if you search 'penny arcade' and see the penny arcade link come up, underneath you see this text
"17 hours ago - Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary."
That's the meta description.
Ok SO.
We need content. First of all let's look at the home page. The most important things to optimize on the home page are going to be
Title Tag: If you hover above the tab of your current window and see text, for example on this thread, the text of the tab says 'SEO Guide - Penny Arcade", that's the title tag. It has a very good influence on SEO. This is also the text that appears in the search result as the link to the website. Again, for example, if you search "Penny Arcade" and see PA's website, all it says is "Penny Arcade". That's their title tag. **IMPORTANT TITLE TAGS HAVE A ~70 CHARACTER LIMIT. KEEP IT SHORT**
Below that you might see wikipedia, which says something like, "Penny Arcade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" That's wiki's title tag for their PA page.
Ok so optimizing the title tag, my suggestion is to have the first part be what you want to optimize for. "Anglican Church in CITY, STATE INITIALS | CHURCH NAME"
You don't want to overstuff any tags, keep it simple. This tag says what the site is about 'An Anglican Church in This City" and then it mentions the Church Name.
Every page of your website should have a unique Title Tag. That title tag should be specifically about what that individual page is about, but it can also be optimized.
For example if you have a landing page talking about the choir, you can have the title tag be 'Anglican Choir in CITY | CHURCH NAME", or about the Priest, "Anglican Pastor in CITY | Church Name"
Generally, following that "KEYWORD YOU WANT TO OPTIMIZE FOR IN CITY | CHURCH NAME" Formula is going to be your best bet.
HEADER TAGS
Now, we get to content. When you are writing content, think of the way a news article is written. First they will have a headline. In HTML you create a headline for your text using <h1>HEADLINE HERE</h1>
These are called h1 tags. Each individual page of a website should have it's own individual h1 tag. Every page should also have ONLY ONE h1 tag.
So lets say you are going to write content on the home page, generally below the fold.
The formula you would follow is
<h1> headline</h1>
<p> TEXT WHATEVER CONTENT YOU WANT TO WRITE HERE THAT IS RELEVENT TO THE SUBJECT OF THE H1 TAG</P>
After that, you can add other sub-headers like <h2> <h3> <h4> etc. You don't have to follow the ONLY one rule with these though, so you could just go
<h1>
TEXT
<h2>
Text
<h2>
Text
H1 tags are going to have the most weight as far as these tags go, so it's best to use it for more broad keywords. Where as the title tag is very short and formal 'ANGLICAN CHURCH IN CITY | CHURCH NAME"; you should write the h1 tag in a friendlier manner. For example, "Come celebrate Christ with CHURCH name, Your Local CITY NAME Anglican Church"
Or whatever you'd like to write there.
Sub headers, like <h2>'s should maybe be a bit more specific, like talk about other areas of focus for your website or church. The choir or pastor or whatever programs you might have.
SEO TEXT
So you have the title tag and h1 tag. Now you need all the text that is relevant. The best advice i can give you is, give Google what it wants. And by that I mean, don't write specifically for Google. Google wants content that is written FOR THE CUSTOMER. Everything you write should be for the actual humans reading your website, not for the sole intent of SEO. If your content is good, it will have natural keywords throughout the text. If you try to stuff random keywords into the text, or use too many keywords, this is going to be a big problem.
Other tips:
-use semantic keywords. In other words, if you are trying to optimize for 'church' don't specifically use the keyword 'church' over and over again, try to think of other keywords similar to 'church'. (Chapel, congregation, etc)
-It's helpful to link to other pages on the website in this text. If you mention in the text, the pastor's name, then have his name link to his biography page or whatever you have on the site.
-Don't go crazy. You don't need a ton of content here, generally following the formula of h1 tag, text, h2 tag, text, h2 tag, text should be good enough.
-Other Stuff
-Get your Google+ Business Profile up and running. This is going to be VERY helpful
Go here to get started
https://www.google.com/business/
it's basically like Google Plus, but it's going to make sure that you specifically show up in maps. So if someone is searching for church's on their phone using google maps, they aren't going to see you unless this is created.
When you create the business profile, make sure to fill out all the information. Your address, phone number, URL, and select the best category for your church.
To finalize the listing, they are most likely going to send you a post card in the mail with an authorization code. That post card has to be sent directly to the church address, so make sure to let anyone who might get the mail to know it's coming. A lot of times it gets mistaken for junk mail and thrown away. It's also time sensitive, so if you get it but don't use it right away, it can expire.
That's all a very basic and short rundown. If you have bigger questions or want me to take a short look at the site, feel free to PM me.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Make sure you've verified the church's site in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Every time someone says "we've dropped in rankings" and it turns out they were Googling themselves and checking where they appear on the search page, God kills a kitten. Seriously, there's a huge amount of personalization happening on a Google search result page; that's not an accurate way to gauge your SEO work at all. Those two tools will show you exactly how well Google and Bing are crawling and indexing your site, what key elements they're pulling from your content, and exactly how many searchers are finding your site. They also give you hard data in pretty line graphs to gauge your improvements. (sorry if you've done this already!)
An addition on titles - I generally tell clients that, while short, the title should clearly indicate what content someone will find on the page. If you can write just the title on a piece of paper and still understand what the page is about, you're good. Title is limited by pixels, not characters. Here's a good testing tool -- https://www.portent.com/serp-preview-tool
Make sure you're using WordPress' image information to its fullest. Alt text is extra on-page text for search engines to reference, and pretty critical if you're trying to attract people using assistive technology. Put actual descriptions on your images, like a photo of the church saying "A view of Our Church's Name of Our City, State, as Pastor Pastorname greets newcomers before Sunday Service."
Fuck meta keywords unless you're trying to rank on Baidu. I know @Element Brian said this already, but people ignore the advice for some stupid reason. Google ignores this meta field entirely, Bing considers it a spam indicator.
Oh, in Google Search Console especially, check what weird phrases people are using that make your site appear in search results. Since Google is trying to guess searcher *intent* instead of literally churning out keyword matches, you can nail the traffic on some pretty specific phrases for your area.
@jackerby a sitemap will help if you have a very large site, you're adding content faster than a crawler finds it, or you otherwise think there will be an issue crawling & canonically indexing your site. It's a "strong suggestion" to crawlers, at best. On your measuring side, an xml sitemap helps in checking how many pages are on your site and comparing that to the actual number of pages indexed.
I *kind of* agree with "exposure > all", but only in that SEO is a small part of marketing strategy. Backlinks aren't a solid strategy, and can get you manually penalized. Google recently clamped down even more on that practice. Page recommendations *are* a ranking factor, but only if organic.
The effort you put into SEO really depends on your goals. "Raise in rankings" is not really a goal to use for marketing/SEO anyway. Improving Bible Study signups, increasing attendance at youth group events, attracting more new visitors with a specific need--those sort of goals are probably more what you want SEO to augment.