Greetings in Christ!

I pray you had a blessed Easter. For the Jackson family, it was different, as it was the first Easter without our son at home.

Still, a blessed occasion. I noticed a big change over the last few years - more people in Easter service than I've had in years. Many young people in the pews. I've heard many similar reports from fellow pastors and Christians worldwide on social media.

Do you think there is some sort of global vibe shift, even something of a renewal happening?

It seems possible. And, if that's the case, it's never been more timely to work on your church's search engine optimization. If people are looking for a church, you want yours to be one of them that is found!

Whatever may be happening on a broader, social scale, I pray that you had a blessed Easter, and that the people gathered at your church heard clearly the good news of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and came away with strengthened faith in Him.

Here is what we are going to cover in this broadcast:

• Results from a recent test
• Always being on the lookout for backlink and citation opportunities
• A new offering
• A free backlink you can build

Results from a Recent Test

One of my earliest customers was First Presbyterian Church in Covington, Tennessee. Their pastor, Scott Sealey, reached out to me very early and asked me to help out with SEO for his main campus and two satellite campuses, including one in nearby Ripley, TN: Covenant Chapel.

The results have been great. His main campus improved both in the link rankings and in the search grid for the map results.

I'm not terribly surprised at that. Their main campus already had a good SEO foundation - we were simply improving on a decent situation. I was a little more worried about his satellite location in Ripley.

The Test

When we were discussing the approach for the Ripley campus, we debated on whether we should focus our SEO efforts on a subdirectory on his main church website or to set up a new website for the church plant. For various reasons, we decided to set up a new website, but there was one major problem: setting up a new website is usually a huge hassle. It can easily take days of work to get one up and running, and it can be rather expensive to do so.

We decided to try something different than usual. Instead of setting up a typical five-page website at a large cost of time and money, we decided to set him up on a platform called Carrd. Carrd is a one-page website builder and host. They have some of the best-looking templates you will see, and you can do lots of fun, modern effects like gradients and animations. You can get a good-looking website on Carrd in no time, and for less than $20/year. (Yes, per year.)

This was a bit of a gamble. Typically, Google likes to rank larger websites, but we thought that with the right optimizations we could get their one-page website to page one of Google.

The Results

Last week, their site made it to page one of Google for queries like "Ripley TN churches."

I'm not going to lie, I was a little bit nervous about this, but it turns out that you can, in fact, get a church to page 1 of Google with a one-page website.

How We Did It

Here is how we got that one-page website to page 1 of Google:

Exact Match Domain. Scott was able to grab ripley.church as a domain name. This is what is called an exact match domain, where the domain name exactly matches the query that people are searching for. I have an exact match domain for one of my churches: doorcounty.church. That's one of the most powerful SEO levers you can pull.

Optimized Metatitle. After the domain name, the metatitle is your next strongest ranking factor. We used my typical formula for the metatitle - it performs great.

Optimized H1. Your H1 header tells Google what the main topic of your page is about. Most churches get this wrong - they often have multiple H1s, and usually none of them are optimized to tell Google "We are a church serving this particular community."

Optimized H2s and Paragraph Text. We used variations of H2 headers and paragraph text indicating that Covenant Chapel is a church that serves Ripley, TN.

Links. We sent a smattering of directory links and a couple of blogger links to the website.

Even though it is only a one-page website, these optimizations got it onto the first page of Google. Honestly, I think that a one-page website might be the perfect solution for lots of churches in many markets.

First Presbyterian Church, Covington, TN (Evangelical Presbyterian Church) is located at 403 S Main St, Covington, TN 38019. It can be contacted at (901) 476-2434. https://www.1pc.church/​

Covenant Chapel, Ripley, TN, Evangelical Presbyterian Church is located at 1243 US-51 #5, Ripley, TN 38063. It can be contacted at (901) 476-2434. https://ripley.church/​

☝️ See What I Did There?

Do you see what I just did there? I cited the Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) of both First Presbyterian and Covenant Chapel, and I also included a backlink. Why did I do that?

These email broadcasts are also published on the open web at my Kit Creator Profile: https://churchseo.kit.com/profile.

That means that each of these posts is indexable by Google, and they serve as an opportunity to post NAP and also a link. NAP citations with 100 percent parity to your Google Business Profile help to boost it map results. And the backlink is a powerful one. Kit has one of the most powerful domains on the internet.

By posting that information, I just boosted First Presbyterian and her satellite campus.

The moral of the story here: Opportunities for citations and backlinks are all over the internet, and you should always keep your eye out for them.

Here are some examples of places you can post your NAP and also links:

• Social profiles (Facebook, Pinterest, X, Instagram, etc.)
• The show notes for your sermon podcast
• Your local chamber of commerce (often has your NAP not 100 percent parity to your GBP - reach out to them if that's the case!)
• Your payment page for your online giving tool

A New Offering

The results from the Ripley experiment came at just the right time. I have been getting consistent messages from people, including LCMS mission executives, pastors across the US, etc.: Churches need a low-cost, easy, and worry-free way to get a website up. Now that the experiment with Ripley worked out favorably, I feel comfortable offering this as a product.

Check out the new website I made offering low-cost one-page websites over at: https://affordablechurchwebsites.com.

I made that website with Carrd, too!

A Free Backlink You Can Build

I'll keep this one short: Pinterest. You can make a profile for your church on Pinterest. Use the profile to cite your NAP, and the backlink it offers is dofollow. That means it transfers SEO power to your church website, and Pinterest is a powerful domain.

I also like Pinterest, because it offers links to individual pages on your website. If there's a page you want to give a little boost to on your church website, make a pin for it, and post it to your church's Pinterest board.

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.

​