Greetings in Christ, Reader,

And welcome back to the marketing newsletter for people whose brains are fried on Easter 🌀. Mine was so fried, I thought I saw footage of President Trump talking about bombing Iran while the Easter Bunny looked on!!!!!!

There's another kind of hallucination among church workers, and it doesn't come from being sleep-deprived. It comes from being so big, you forget the basics of digital marketing. That's our theme for today: 🌀 SEO Delusions of Big Churches [And How You Can Beat Them].

🗞️ Personal and Business News

🎼 Organ Rededication

This will be a highlight for my entire ministry, and it was a marketing coup as well.

Over the last five years one of the churches I have been serving has been renovating its pipe organ. This project was a major undertaking for us and required a great deal of consensus building, planning, work, and prayer.

We were finally able to schedule a dedicatory hymn festival in January. Wonderful, right?

Well, yes, but in a sense that only created additional cares and concerns. As soon as we scheduled the festival, a huge concern came to my mind: How will we get people there?

I put into play the 4 Pillars of an Effective Church Marketing Campaign. And, it worked marvelously.

Through this campaign, the local NBC and Fox affiliates got wind and came out to do a story on the organ and hymn festival. Our members were thrilled about this!

We also had about 30 people pre-register for a free gift. (This is how we got people to make a commitment to coming.)

The result?

200 people showed up to the organ dedication.

It was truly a blessing to be able to share this occasion with such a big group.

🚀 Launched a Site

I recently launched a site for Redeemer Lutheran Church in Arkansas City, Kansas.

This was a significant site launch, because I developed a proprietary site architecture for this project that will serve as the basis for all new sites going forward. Through this architecture, Redeemer will be able to keep everything updated and looking good through simple forms on the backend - everything ends up looking super slick on the front end.

Redeemer also bought an SEO package from me. And, the results are undeniable. Before working with me, their website was practically invisible on the internet.

Now? It's on page one of Google for queries like "churches in Arkansas City, Kansas."

This project personally gratitifying to me, as well, because some of my cousins attended there. (In the 1980s lolol.)

If you're interested in a site like this, I'm offering it via the Starbase Package.

📽️ Video Reviews

I'm dumb.

Over the last year, my most powerful mechanism to help churches has been video reviews of their website and SEO situation. But, I haven't had a form for people to fill out to request one.

Dumb.

​Anyways, I've fixed that.

🌐Around the Web

Google just completed its first core update of 2026. Broad core updates are comprehensive adjustments to the algorithm. You may have seen your church's SEO rankings move in relation to this.

Ranking well in the link results can mean ranking worse in the map results, and vice versa. Joy Hawkins (a fellow Christian, by the way), reports a way to get around this: linking to a different page than your homepage in the Google Business Profile. I'm trying this on my own church's site by linking to its "Plan Your Visit" page instead of to the homepage.

​30K WordPress sites may have been impacted by a compromised plugin. It seems that this plugin gave backdoor access to a third-party. I love WordPress and use it for several of my own projects. But, I don't build sites for customers on WordPress for just this reason: it is a security nightmare with lots of backdoors. Basically, it's not an 'if my website gets hacked' situation with WordPress. It's a 'when my website gets hacked' situation. Getting hacked is expensive - think $1,000 to recover from. That' why I use Carrd for churches that only need one-pagers and Webflow for churches that need full websites. These are solutions with enterprise-grade security baked in.

🙏God Stuff

As a matter of habit, I like to read classic preachers on texts I'm going to be preaching on. Preachers I read consistently are John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, and Martin Luther.

Augustine is fun because he can come off like a non-denominational preacher having a good day. (By good day, I mean actually preaching the Gospel, which is terribly rare for the non-denoms, hate to say.) I'm paraphrasing big time, of course, but "There's a God-shaped hole in our hearts" is, more or less, Saint Augustine.

I came across one of these recently in his sermon on the woman at the well. Another paraphrase, but what Augustine said was, "What Jesus really thirsted for was her faith. He's thirsty for your faith!"

Of course, as the account goes on, it is Christ who supplies her with faith in demonstrations of His divinity and promises of her reconciliation to God.

That's a wonderful message: God supplying what He desires in us.

🌀 SEO Delusions of Big Churches [And How You Can Beat Them]

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of hallucinations:

1. Sleep deprivation
2. Being so big you think you can't fail.

Let’s talk about the second one.

Because I see major SEO problems with big churches all the time—and it genuinely feels like I’m losing my mind.

(If you want to see a related video, here you go:)

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🌀 Hallucination #1: “We hired a professional design agency, so our SEO must be good”

Nope.

What you actually get most of the time:

• Five H1 tags on the homepage (??)
• No clear page topic
• A meta title that says something like “Welcome | Home”
• Zero mention of the city they’re trying to reach

It’s like walking into a beautifully designed church… with no sign out front telling you where you are.

Google just stands there like:

👉 Your homepage should clearly say:
​“We are a church in [your city].”

Not subtly. Not artistically. Clearly.

🌀 Hallucination #2: “Our one homepage is enough to reach everyone”

Meanwhile, in reality:

People are driving 45 minutes… an hour… sometimes more to find a church that fits.

But most church websites?

They only optimize for one location.

So Google assumes:

When in reality, you’re pulling people from:

• Suburbs
• Neighboring towns
• That one guy who drives in from 70 minutes away every Sunday like a legend

👉 You should have pages for the areas you actually serve, not just where you’re located.

Even a simple page like:

• “Church serving [Nearby Town]”

…can quietly pull in people you’re currently missing.

Hallucination #3: “We’re posting content, so it should get traction”

This is my favorite one.

Church posts:

Result:

Why?

Because modern platforms aren’t really “social media” anymore.

They’re interest engines.

Which means they’re asking:

So instead of:

• “Message on faith”

Try:

• “Why does God allow suffering?”
• “What does the Bible say about anxiety?”

Same sermon.
Different packaging.
​Wildly different results.

🧠 Final Thought (before I go lie down)

The strange thing is…

Most big churches won’t fix any of this.

They’re too committed to the illusion.

Which means—if you’re paying even a little attention—you can outrank them.

Without a $10,000 website.
Without a big team.
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God's blessings, Pastor Chris Jackson "SEO Priest" ​[email protected]​ Get a Free Review I'll record a free video review of your church's website and SEO situation. Get your review. (No sales calls.) Subscribe Now for Free Not subscribed to this newsletter? Subscribe now. Get All My Free Resources ​This Google Sheet has all my free resources.

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