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Church Website Best Practices - Entries tagged "Google"

MonMondayFebFebruary6th2012

Posted Monday, February 06 2012 @ 7 AM byDavid Pohlmeier Tagged Google User Experience (UX) 0 comments Add comment

Among many of the great features that the iMinistries church CMS has to offer, a few of them really stand out as powerful tools for a church or ministry to use. One of them is the location feature--a dynamic Google map that marks your locations.

Three of our clients use locations especially well. Check out their websites below, and you might be inspired to use this feature for your church or ministry.

Iowa Association of Regular Baptist Churches

First on our list is a Baptist organization in Iowa called the Iowa Association of Regular Baptist Churches (IARBC). According to the IARBC website, their mission is:

"The purposes of this Corporation shall be to maintain an association of sovereign, Bible-believing, Christ-honoring Baptist Churches; to promote the spirit of evangelism; to spread the Gospel; to advance the Regular Baptist educational and missionary enterprises at home and abroad; to raise and maintain a testimony to the truth of the Gospel and to the purity of the church, and to raise a standard of Biblical separation from worldliness, modernism and apostasy."

The IARBC chose to use our location feature to give it's website users a clear and easy to use method of finding churches. In addition to that, they were seeking a simple way to update this list. Because the page is database-driven, there is no special coding or HTML knowledge involved with creating the web page. Updating the location is as simple as updating a few form fields, saving, and letting the CMS do the rest. It's that simple.

Harvest Bible Fellowship

Let's now take a look at Harvest Bible Fellowship (HBF). Here's a description of HBF from their website.

"Harvest Bible Fellowship is the church planting arm of Harvest Bible Chapel. Passionately pursuing the fulfillment of Jesus Christ's promise to build His church is what we're all about. Founded by Pastor James MacDonald, the Fellowship trains, equips and coaches men to serve as Harvest Bible Chapel Senior Pastors. We oversee the development and launch of new Harvest Bible Chapels and the replant of existing churches into Harvests. We support every Harvest Senior Pastor through ongoing equipping and training throughout the life of their church."

Harvest attendees traveling on vacations or moving to new areas have used this feature to find a church wherever they are. Harvest Bible Fellowship plants churches all of the world. The location map they've created displays that nicely, and allows for visitors to easily visualize the depth and breadth of their global ministry.

Entrusted Ministries

Another creative implementation of the location feature can be found on the website for Entrusted Ministries. From the Entrusted website:

To impart to parents a personal, God-honoring vision and biblical plan for family life which acknowledges that they have been entrusted with the nurturing, training, care, protection, discipline and discipleship of their children for the glory of God, while stressing the need for a precious connection and understanding of their child's heart.

The location map for Entrusted shows locations of local churches where studies are held. Displaying a dynamic Google map is more useful to users than making them sift through location lists.

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MonMondayNovNovember28th2011

3 Modern SEO Tips for Church Websites

Posted Monday, November 28 2011 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Google Improving Google Search Results 0 comments Add comment

Search engines are constantly adapting how they compile their results to how people are interacting with the web. Below are three best practices to make sure your church website gets found in modern searches.

1. Beef up your Google Places profile

Recent studies have shown that people's eyes gravitate to local listings when they come up in Google searches (see SEOmoz's eye-tracking heat maps to the right).

To optimize your Google Places profile:

Search for your location on Google (if no profile exists, visit google.com/places to create one).
Select the place marker to view the profile.
Click the "Business owner?" link on the profile page.
To edit your profile, follow the steps to validate your ownership.
Make sure your address, contact information, website, and marker placement are correct.
Add a description of your church or ministry, briefly stating who you are and your mission.
Add categories ("Lutheran Church," "Religious Organization," etc.) to help searchers find you.
Add photos, videos, and further details (service times, ministries offered, etc.) to give people more reason to visit.

2. Increase Social Media Engagement

Today, social media has become the way in which people navigate the Internet, so search engines have begun to give more weight to popular content on Facebook and Twitter.

Studies by SEOmoz have shown that content gets a boost in search results when shared across social media channels (retweeted, liked, or +1'd). Make it a goal to post regular, relevant content on Facebook or Twitter (especially content that directs users to your website), and you'll see its positive impact on visits to your website.

3. Create interesting content, incorporating keywords

Even though search engines have adapted over the years, the best way to keep people coming to your church website remains to continuously provide compelling content. Make your website the source for extra information for your members, not just basic information for first-timers. In all content, focus on using keywords and phrases that people might use to find you.

Start a blog from ministry leaders, addressing relevant topics
Write studies that coincide with your current sermon series
Update your news regularly
Create event landing pages and registration

Learn More About Modern SEO for Church Websites

Improving Google Search Results - iMinistries Blog Series
Keyword Phrase Strategy's Importance to SEO - iMinistries Blog
6 Best Practices for Modern SEO - Mashable

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MonMondayOctOctober11th2010

Should I Create a Google Place for My Church or Ministry?

Posted Monday, October 11 2010 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Google 0 comments Add comment

It isn't a secret that everyone fights to appear on the first page of Google.

While you might not know a lot about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or even have a budget to put towards getting your church website "optimized"...an excellent free service that Google provides is Google Places.

By creating a Google Place for your church or ministry, you can quickly provide key details to users who have searched on specific terms in your area. For example, a Google Place will provide someone with your:

Church Name
Church address
Church phone number
Church website address
Church contact e-mail address
Directions to your church
Description of your church

And, as always...the more information you provide the better. You might consider:

Both inside and outside photos of your church building, preferably with lots of smiling happy people bustling around.
A quick 2 minute promotional video about why someone should come to your church.
Adding special announcements about important or key topics that your church is passionate about.

What are the benefits of creating a Google Place for your church or ministry?

After creating your Place and allowing a few weeks transpire, you will be able to easily review basic statistics that Google provides. They provide you with an easy to read chart of either the last 7 or 30 days worth of activity as well as the Top Search Queries that served up your listing and an impressions vs. actions break down like the one I am including below.

1326

impressions

How many times users saw your business listing as a local search result

108

actions

How many times users showed interest in your business listing

14	Clicks for more info on Maps
2	Clicks for driving directions
92	Clicks to your website

Bottom line, Google Places is a great way to increase your online presence in front of your local community.

Is your ministry using Google Places? Please comment why or why not.

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MonMondayOctOctober4th2010

Gmail Priority Inbox

Posted Monday, October 04 2010 @ 9 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged Google 0 comments Add comment

Has today's age of instant communication got you a tad overwhelmed? Does your inbox have you running for the hills? If so, you should probably try Google's new Priority Inbox.

Google continues to impress me. I discovered their new Priority Inbox recently and activated it and I am very curious to know what others think.

Questions for You

I realize that this new feature only came out a week or so ago, but have you tried it yet?
If you have, how successful has it been at predicting which e-mails should be a priority for you?

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MonMondayAprApril12th2010

Google Analytics: Campaigns, Custom Links, and More

Posted Monday, April 12 2010 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Google 0 comments Add comment

Understanding campaign variables: The five dimensions of campaign tracking

Google Analytics tracks online campaigns using a combination of the following five marketing dimensions:

Source
Every referral to a web site has an origin, or source. Examples of sources are the Google search engine, the AOL search engine, the name of a newsletter, or the name of a referring website.

Medium
The medium helps to qualify the source; together, the source and medium provide specific information about the origin of a referral. For example, in the case of a Google search engine source, the medium might be "cost-per-click," indicating a sponsored link for which the advertiser paid, or "organic", indicating a link in the unpaid search engine results. In the case of a newsletter source, examples of medium include "e-mail" and "print."

Term
The term or keyword is the word or phrase that a user types into a search engine.

Content
The content dimension describes the version of an advertisement on which a visitor clicked. It is used in content-targeted advertising and Content (A/B) Testing to determine which version of an advertisement is most effective at attracting profitable leads.

Campaign
The campaign dimension differentiates product promotions such as "Spring Ski Sale" or slogan campaigns such as "Get Fit For Summer."

Creating Custom Links

Ever wonder how many of your site's users click on your ads or hyperlinks? Google Analytics can track that, too!

After creating an ad, visit the Google Analytics URL Builder. After adding the end location of your link, edit a few descriptors and Google will create a custom link. Copy this link and use it as your hyperlink URL. Every time your website users click on this link, Google will track their visit information. To access that information, just click Campaigns under Traffic Sources in your website report.

MORE RESOURCES FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Getting Started Guide – Google Analytics
Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting – Google Analytics
How Do I Tag My Links? – Google Analytics

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MonMondayMarMarch29th2010

Google Analytics: Viewing Traffic Reports

Posted Monday, March 29 2010 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Google 0 comments Add comment

Analyze tons of data about your ministry website visitors

After you add your Google Analytics account number to your iMinistries website, you'll need to wait 24 hours for data to accumulate on your GA profile. When your data is complied, you can view any of the dozens of Google Analytics reports by clicking the View Reports link at the top of your Analytics screen.

Types of Reports

Important reports in the Content section:

Overview: lists pageview volume and lists the pages (Top Content) that were most responsible for driving pageviews.

Top Content: Which are the most commonly viewed pages on your site, and how are they used? The table lists all of the pages which were viewed on your site. A high "Time on Page" may indicate content that is particularly interesting to visitors.

Top Exit Pages: From which pages do people exit your site? It may be common for visitors to exit your site from a receipt or "thank you" page because they have completed a conversion activity. But a large number of exits from a news item, blog, or event pagemay indicate that the page is confusing or uninteresting.

Important reports in the Traffic Sources section:

Overview: Shows the different kinds of sources that send traffic to your site. The graph shows traffic trends. The pie-chart and tables show what is driving the trends. How did your website visitors get to your site: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, or Search Engines?

Direct Traffic: How do the people who clicked a bookmark or typed your site URL into their browser to visit your website compare to the "average" visitor to your site?

Referring Sites: How do the people referred from other sites compare to the "average" visitor to your site? The graph shows the overall trends in traffic volume from referrals while the table lists the sites driving the trends.

Search Engines: How does search engine traffic compare to traffic as a whole to your site? The graph shows overall trends while the table lists the search engines driving the trends. (Read our blog entries on how to improve your Google search results.)

Keywords: How does traffic from search keywords compare to traffic as a whole to your site? The graph shows overall trends while the table shows the keywords driving the trends.

Important reports in the Visitors section:

Visitors Overview: How many new and returning visitors came to your site and how extensively did they interact with your content? This traffic overview allows you to drill down into aspects of visit quality (i.e. average pageviews, time on site, bounce rate) and visit characteristics (i.e. first time visitors, returning visits).

Visits: The number of visits your site receives is the most basic measure of how effectively you promote your site.

Pageviews: Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed on your site and is a general measure of how much your site is used.

Average Pageviews: Average pageviews is one way of measuring visit quality. A high Average Pageviews number suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site. A high Average Pageviews results from one or both of:

Appropriately targeted traffic (i.e. visitors who are interested in what your site offers)
High quality content effectively presented on the site.

Conversely, a low average pageviews indicates that the traffic coming to the site has not been appropriately targeted to what the site offers or that the site does not deliver what was promised to the visitor.

Time on Site: If visitors spend a long time visiting your site, they may be interacting extensively with it. This can sometimes be misleading because visitors often leave browser windows open when they are not actually viewing or using your site.

Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren't relevant to your visitors.

New vs. Returning: A high number of new visitors suggests that you are successful at driving traffic to your site while a high number of return visitors suggests that the site content is engaging enough to keep visitors coming back. You can see how frequently visitors return and how many times they return in "Recency" report and the "Loyalty report," both under "New vs. Returning" in the Visitors section.

Map Overlay: Use this map to visualize visits by geographic region, country, and city.

Length of Visit (Visitor Behavior): Length of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of lengthy visits suggests that visitors interact more extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply the ‘Average Time on Site’ across all visits.

Depth of Visit (Visitor Behavior): Depth of visit is a measure of visit quality. A large number of high pageviews per visit suggests that visitors interact extensively with your site. The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of visits instead of simply the average pageviews per visit.

Terms Used By Google Analytics

Visits vs. Visitors

Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account. Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site. If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.

The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit and an additional visitor. Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors.

Pageviews vs. Unique Pageviews

A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview will be recorded as well.

A unique pageview, as seen in the Top Content report, aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.

Viewing Traffic Reports

Check out the video below to see report checking in action.

MORE RESOURCES FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Getting Started Guide – Google Analytics
Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting – Google Analytics
Reporting Basics – Google Analytics

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MonMondayMarMarch15th2010

Google Analytics: Why Add it to Your Church Website?

Posted Monday, March 15 2010 @ 9 AM byBryan Young Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Google Improving Google Search Results 0 comments Add comment

Track your website traffic with detailed reports from Google Analytics.

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. It is the most widely used website statistics service, currently in use at around 40% of the 10,000 most popular websites. GA can track visitors from search engines and other websites and direct traffic. GA is designed to be used by both the casual Web administrator to the advanced Web marketer.

In your general reports, GA will display:

number of visitors to your site (within custom date ranges)
average pages per visit
bounce rate
average time visitors are on your site
percentage of new visitors
traffic sources
a list of your most-visited pages

The more advanced user can create custom reports with an astounding amount of variables.

How to Add Google Analytics

Adding Google Analytics to your iMinistries website is as easy as "copy and paste."

We are excited to offer you the ability to track your websites hits through Google Analytics. Set up is easy and free and the information that Google provides you is very useful.

To begin, you must create a Google account. It is free.
After you create your account, go to Google Analytics.
Login with your new Google account.
At the bottom of the screen, click on "Add a website profile."
Next, enable the first radio button titled Add a Profile for a new domain.
Add your url into the URL area.
Click Finish.
The next page is the important one. Look at the code that is provide and find your Google tracking code. Here is a example:
Now, go to your website and log into Site Administration.
Click on Site Controls
Click on Site Preferences
Enter in your Google Analytics Account number. It will be in this format - UA-xxxxxxx-x.
Save
That's it! Your reports should begin to populate after 24 hours.

MORE RESOURCES FOR GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Getting Started Guide – Google Analytics
Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting – Google Analytics
How Do I Tag My Links? – Google Analytics

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MonMondayJulJuly14th2008

Google Analytics

Posted Monday, July 14 2008 @ 8 AM byTravis Hickox Tagged Best Practices for Church Websites Google 0 comments Add comment

We are excited to offer you the ability to track your church website's hits through Google Analytics. Setting it up is easy and free and the information that Google provides you is, in a word...amazing.

To begin, you must create a Google account . It is free.
After you create your account, go to Google Analytics.
Login with your new Google account.
At the bottom of the screen, click on "Add a website profile."
Next, enable the first radio button titled Add a Profile for a new domain.
Add your url into the URL area.
Click finish.
The next page is the important one. Look at the code that is provide and find your Google tracking code.
Now, go to your website and log into the Administration area.
Click on Site Controls
Click on Site Preferences
Enter in your Google Analytics Account #. It will be in this format - UA-xxxxxxx-x.
Hit Save
That's it! Your reports should begin to populate after 24 hours.

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Church Website Best Practices - Entries tagged "Google"

Among many of the great features that the iMinistries church CMS has to offer, a few of them really stand out as powerful tools for a church or ministry to use. One of them is the location feature--a dynamic Google map that marks your locations.