Welcome to a special edition of the Church SEO Shapeup Newsletter. I'm writing this special edition mainly because I'm excited about the most recent chapter I wrote for the Church SEO Shapeup on Social Media SEO. The information I will be sharing with you is some of the most cutting-edge social media and SEO guidance you can get, and you probably won't encounter it anywhere else.

Before we move on, can I ask you a favor? Will you forward this email to one person you think might benefit from it? Here are some people who might benefit from this newsletter:

• Your pastor
• Your church's social media or communications manager
• A local business owner (all of the concepts I talk about will work for local businesses)
• Your district's mission executive

By sharing this email, you do two things: First, you'll help the individual who receives it. Second, you'll help this newsletter continue to grow. Thanks for sharing!

Besides discussing Social Media SEO, I'm going to take up a lot of other helpful information in this email as well. Here is what this email will cover:

• Dominating in AI search
• Promoting Sunday School
• Free video consults
• A free and effective tool
• Quick, cheap, and effective websites
• An idea to get reviews
• A free backlink you can build

But, first, your meme:

Dominating in AI Search

AI search products are increasing in importance, even for local searches. While the majority of traffic to websites still comes via traditional search, we all need to be preparing for AI products. Here are ways your church can make sure it dominates in AI search:

Improve Your Google Business Profile

The most important thing you can do to improve how your church appears in search is to improve your Google Business Profile (GBP). Almost all of the AI search products use GBPs as one of the main sources of information for local searches.

All SEO can be boiled down to content and external validation.

In the content of GBPs, I used to only care if it included the word 'church', the church's location, and denomination. That all still matters. Your name and description in your church's GBP both need the word 'church' and your main locale in them. Also, your description should indicate your denomination.

But, now I'm paying much more attention to providing hard information about the church. These are things I'm now trying to include in a GBP:

• Ministries (Sunday school, VBS, women's, men's, youth group)
• Worship 'style'
• What to expect when visiting
• Any other unique (and hard, no fluff!) information about the church that prospective visitors might want to know

Why am I doing that? Because queries on AI search products tend to be much more niche, specific, and conversational. People don't just search for "churches near me" on AI products. They make searches like "Hey, ChatGPT, tell me about Lutheran churches in my area that have great youth programs and traditional worship." Because people search that way in AI products, you need to feed the AI products with that information in your Google Business Profile.

Admittedly, it can be difficult to get all of that information in your description. Because of that, you need to use other features of the GBP. One way you can do this is in replies to reviews. Let's say someone leaves a review like, "My child really enjoyed it at this church," you can reply with: "We're so glad that your child had a wonderful time at our Vacation Bible School. We hold Vacation Bible School every summer, and we hope to see her again next year."

By leaving a reply like that, you are telling AI that your church has a VBS and that it is held every summer. That makes you more likely to show up when people ask AI search products to recommend churches with good children's ministries like VBS.

Updates are another feature you can use to feed AI information about your church. Add rich and informative updates on aspects of your church that you would want prospective visitors to know about.

Finally, you also need to improve your GBP's external validation. Do that by getting more reviews. I'm offering some advice on how to do that below.

Spam Your Information [Press Releases]

In the age of AI, the information that gets shouted the loudest and most often is the information that shows up most prominently in LLMs. This means that spammy old-school SEO tactics now work wonderfully.

One of my favorite old-school spammy SEO tactics is press release distribution services. Press releases are one of my favorite forms of church marketing - they are a way to get low-cost advertising for your church. But, the cost/benefit ratio has tilted heavily to these being an extremely low cost and extremely high benefit vector.

First, the costs of producing a press release have gone way down. It used to take me as much as a day and a half to make and distribute a press release. I would revise, revise, revise, until I got something perfect.

AI has cut down the process of writing a press release to about ten minutes. The way I do this is by telling ChatGPT to write a list of questions to ask me on the topic of the press release. I will then ask it to modify those questions as I see fit. Once we have a good list of questions, I ask ChatGPT to ask me each question one by one. After I answer all those questions, I then ask it to use the answers to write a press release with a 350-word count minimum.

The output is usually very good and requires only a minimum of editing. After I edit, I send it out to local news agencies via email, with the press release attached in both DOCX and PDF and also included in the email as in-line text. Finally, I also send along a high-quality picture.

But, that's not where it ends. I also use a press release distribution service (I have a favorite Fiverr gig for this.) to send the press release out to about 300 press release aggregators. The particular gig I like to use also lets you include an embed of the Google Business Profile map - that's going to send some activity signals through the Google Business Profile and help it to rank. In addition, I make sure that the church's name, address, and phone number are listed in the press release with 100 percent parity to the Google Business Profile. In other words, this becomes an opportunity to have about 300 NAP citations, another benefit to the Google Business Profile.

I'm not going to lie - this is super spammy stuff. But, it works.

Press release distributions have been working wonderfully for me lately - especially for newer churches and organizations that search engines and LLMs don't really 'understand' yet. I used one recently for a Lutheran Tamil outreach, and I also used one for an organization that is offering online theology courses for laypeople. In both circumstances, press releases did wonderfully in helping them rank in traditional search and also in AI search products.

The costs of a press release are extremely low, and the benefits of press releases are extremely high.

Get Reviews On Multiple Platforms

Reviews on your GBP remain the most important. But, many of the AI search products are also utilizing Yelp and TripAdvisor to get information on churches. Make sure your profiles on Yelp and TripAdvisor are dialed in, and also try to send a couple of reviews to them. You probably need far fewer on these platforms than on Google.

Promote Your Sunday School Now!

There are 1,300 searches/month for "Sunday Schools Near Me." That number is averaged out over a year, so the vast majority of searches for Sunday schools are likely happening right now, as families come out of summer mode and start looking toward the school year.

Most churches probably need to think about Sunday school differently than they used to. There was a time when churches could easily fill a Sunday school with children from the congregation. Now, lots of churches are giving up Sunday school, because they are having trouble with getting a critical mass of children.

Just because a church can't fill her Sunday school with her own children doesn't mean it's time to stop. Instead, it's time for Sunday school to return to its roots as a mission- and outreach-oriented ministry of the church.

That's why I'm trying to capture some of the interest in Sunday School this time of year by using digital marketing to bring in non-member students. Here's how I'm doing this:

SEO and CRO Optimized Landing Page

First, I made an SEO- and CRO-optimized landing page for our Sunday School. CRO stands for "conversion rate optimization) - in other words, making sure that users are more likely to do the thing (convert) you want them to do on that page. In the case of the Sunday school page, I wanted them to sign their kid up to Sunday school.

That page already ranks number one for the query "Sunday schools in Door County." You can check it out here for an example.

Meta Ad Campaign

Then, I set up a 'traffic' meta ad campaign served to users within a 15 mile radius of the church to that page.

The result?

In the first day, I got 4 sign ups of non-members to our Sunday School.

Free Video Consults

Are you curious about specific steps you can take to improve your church's search engine optimization? I'm glad to do a free video consult for your church.

No need to set up a meeting. I'll record a video and send it to you to review as you see fit.

All you need to do is hit

A Free and Effective Tool

​Descript is a pretty handy tool with a decent free level. I use it to get a raw transcript of sermons, but it can do much more than that. With Descript, you can actually edit audio and video with just text. Pretty handy!

Quick, Cheap, and Effective Websites

Your church needs a website more than ever. Your website is necessary to convey trust signals to prospective members, to help you appear well in search, and also to tell your story on your own terms.

Even while websites are more important than ever, their relative importance has decreased. You used to use your website to distribute podcasts. Now, Spotify is probably the best platform for this. (Although I still use my church's website as the origin source of the sermon podcast.) Your church website used to be where your pastor had his professional profile. Now? LinkedIn is the spot for that.

Because of that, websites for churches don't need to be the behemoths they used to be.

That's good news for many churches that have held off on getting a modern website out of fear of the cost and trouble.

To meet this new reality, I created AffordableChurchWebsites.com. AffordableChurchWebsites.com creates one-page websites that are easy to keep updated, always have the most advanced tech and security, and are quick and affordable to deploy.

You can have a new website for your church within a month for $250.

And, these websites will rank in Google. A one-page website I made for a church recently got on the first page of Google within one month of coming online. Here's what the pastor of that church has to say:

My one-page websites will perform better than the majority of big websites for two reasons.

First, they are designed with SEO in mind, meaning that even though they are only one page, they will show up in Google better than the majority of church websites.

Second, they are designed with CRO in mind. In other words, I design them to help users take a step toward your church by planning a visit.

Check out AffordableChurchWebsites.com to see if this is the right solution for your church.

An Idea to Get Reviews

You need to be getting reviews for your church, primarily on Google but also on Yelp and TripAdvisor. If you've been working on this, you know how hard it can be to get reviews.

It's probably against the terms of service for each of these platforms (I don't care!!!!), but an effective way to get reviews is through giveaways.

Last week was Vacation Bible School at one of my churches. We had a puppet involved in the opening and closing, and it was a super nice puppet - a plush and pretty kangaroo puppet.

I offered to give it away to a family that left a review. I was able to land multiple 5-star reviews, and I was also able to offload the puppet. (We have a whole collection that has been piling up over the years.)

A Free Backlink You Can Build

Soundclick.com offers a free profile backlink. It is a DR 78 - pretty powerful! That will help to boost the authority of your church's website, moving it higher in search results.

Social Media SEO

I've typically been bearish on social media as a discovery mechanism for churches. Showing up in the "For You" feed of TikTok or Instagram, or Facebook is incredibly difficult, even if lots of people follow you. To show up on the "For You" feed, you need to do the following:

• Know what kind of content the platform's algo is favoring. Which means,
• Spend lots of time on the platform
• Be able to produce great content - even if things look off-the-cuff on social, lots of times it has been very carefully prepared
• Post at a high velocity
• And, ideally have a cute influencer-type as your church's 'face'

Honestly, most churches can't compete on social. You're just not going to outdo the cute fitness influencers and the ragebaiters for space on the feed. You're barely going to show up on the feeds of your members. It's almost impossible to show up on the feeds of nonmembers.

That's why I have focused on SEO as my main discovery vector.

However, two emerging trends make me a little bit more optimistic about social media for churches. These two trends mean that you can use social media to help people discover your church, even without having an influencer on board.

First, Google is increasingly serving social posts on the first page of search results. It especially seems to favor short form video, but I've also seen it serving long form video. This means that social media posts may be an opportunity for your church to take up more space on page 1 of Google if you're already there, and if you're in a competitive market, it might be your best chance to get on page 1 if you're not already there. That's nothing to sleep on!

Second, large segments of the population, especially young females, are using social platforms as search engines. Lots of research shows that young women will turn to TikTok or Instagram to search for restaurants in particular towns, for example. I'm certain that people are using platforms like that to search for churches in particular locales as well.

The same SEO principles that apply to helping a website show up on Google will also help your social posts show up well for local searches, whether that is on the first page of Google or when people look for churches on TikTok or Instagram.

Do these principles work? Absolutely. With my guidance, a church that I've advised now regularly has its social posts showing up on page 1 of Google.

One reason why I'm excited about this prospect is that it aligns with the interests of many communications staff members at churches. The average demographic that serves as a communication manager at a church is likely one that's excited about social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Applying SEO principles to the work they are already doing for the church in creating posts will help to augment and amplify the work they are already doing.

I cover Social Media SEO in Workout 39 of the Church SEO Shapeup, but because I'm so excited about this workout, I decided to share it with my whole list early. Trust me, if you get on this trend, you will be far, far ahead of the curve.

Here is the info: workout-39-social-media-seo.pdf​

God's blessings, Pastor Chris Jackson "SEO Priest" ​[email protected]​ Subscribe Now for Free Not subscribed to the free Church SEO Shapeup Newsletter? Subscribe now. Get My Free Comprehensive Church SEO Checklist ​Get the checklist that will guide you to winning top search visibility. Completely free. Get All My Free Resources ​This Google Sheet has all my free resources. Inexpensive 1-Page Church Websites Designed to make it easy for your church to get on the web. Check it out. Need Help With Your Church's SEO? I aim to give away all my SEO knowledge for free. However, if you need muscle to accomplish your church's SEO goals, here are a few ways I can help: ​Stratospheric SEO Package. This is a baseline SEO package designed to give your church name, address, and phone number across the internet and to boost your church's SEO power. It helps you show up better in map results. Start with this package. ​Orbital SEO Package. The Orbital SEO Package does everything in the Stratospheric Package and also optimizes your church's homepage and boosts your church website's authority. It will help you show up better in both the map results and the link results. This package offers powerful optimizations.

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