Is your church website easy to find?

One of the things that I’ve noticed about church websites is that sometimes they are not optimized for search engines.  Here’s a few ideas that may help you out:

1.  Page Titles: Look at the home page of your church website.  What is the title of the page?  Is it New Page 1 or Home?  This seems to be common on some of the sites I have visited.  Page titles help engines to identify your site.  Use something that is descriptive of the content on that page.

2. Pictures vs. Text: Some sites use pictures in place of text so that fonts are not lost and to ensure the same look and feel across browsers.  The problem with this is that Google or Yahoo will not be able to index the text that is created as a picture.  This will make it harder for search engines to index the content of your website.  Do your best to use actual text when possible, it will ultimately help others find your site.

3. Meta Tags: Meta tags can also be of value, though I’m not so sure that they are as important as they used to be.  With metatags you can describe your site by keywords and by phrases.  Click here if you’d like to learn more about meta tags.

4. Site Maps: Sitemaps are a good way to help engines index your site the way you want.  Later on we’ll try to devote a whole post to creating your own Sitemap, but if you’re in a hurry, you can checkout Google’s help page on Sitemaps.

What other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips have you found helpful?