Church Search

CHAPTER 1

WHY YOU NEED TO BE ONLINE AND HOW

Two co-workers are talking at work. “My anniversary is coming up and I need to find a place to take my wife for dinner.”

“A couple of years ago I went to this place with my wife. They had great food and atmosphere. My wife still talks about the piano playing while we ate.”

“What was it called?”

“I don’t remember. It was up in Huntersville.”

“Here, let me Google it. Let’s search for ‘restaurant’ and ‘Huntersville’ and ‘piano.’”

“Did you find it?”

“Was it called Mickey and Mooch?”

“That’s it. You were able to find it?”

“I guess so. There’s a write up on it on Citysearch. I guess it’s still around. It’s on Sam Furr Road. I know where that is. Let me write down that phone number in case that is where we go.”

“Is there a link to their website?”

“Not on this page. Let me get back to Google. Hmm, there’s no link on Google. Let me look at this review on AOL. There is a Mickey and Mooch page. And, okay, there’s their website.”

This conversation could have happened anywhere. Sure the business would be different and the search would have been for something else, but people everywhere are investigating new places online. Churches are no different.

Richard Reising, president of Artistry Marketing in Dallas, Texas, and author of the book Church Marketing 101, thinks "currently, 80 to 85 percent of people are finding their church based on websites…Websites are replacing the yellow pages as a key mode of church advertising." This is exactly the point of this book. If the majority of church visitors determine which church to visit based on websites, you need to have your church’s website findable online—or determine that visitors are not part of your outreach.

When most churches come across the stats from Mr. Reising or others stating the importance of an online presence, their response is to create an attractive website. Although web designers are great at their craft and can make nice websites, they generally do not consider whether people can find their works of art. Most web designers use Flash to create church websites—probably because they have been asked to do so—but search engines cannot read Flash so that content is now hidden from the rankings.

Calvary Baptist Church is arguably the largest church in Winston-Salem, NC. They have put time and money into creating a nice looking website, but if you search for “Church Winston Salem”, Calvary’s website is ranked 34. Only a motivated seeker would look through that many pages to find you. Even a more refined church search “Baptist Church Winston Salem” ranks them at 10. For Calvary, having a Flash-based site has hurt their website’s walk-in traffic. The top three returns for this last search are not particularly beautiful sites, but search engines know what they are about. Calvary is a wonderful church and was a church home to me for my first couple of years in Winston Salem. They have great people on staff and usually keep an eye on details. My guess is that they have someone watching the traffic to the site, which I also assume to be high. With 5,000 plus families as members and with many other regular attenders, they are bound to have large amounts of traffic. But, are they missing out on the traffic from people searching the internet for a church in Winston Salem? Are they missing out on the opportunity to speak to these searchers at a point when they are in touch with their felt need?

The goal of this book is to educate you on the importance of having a presence online for your church, how to leverage the power of search engines to help people find your online presence, and how to determine if people are viewing the pages you want them to view once they find your website. This book is not intending to take the place of the work of the Holy Spirit in drawing people to Jesus, and it is not intending to steal from the work of other ministries that your church is engaged in for the benefit of the body of Christ. Rather I desire that the tools you receive from this book would enable non-believers to stumble upon your church’s website—to discover the work Christ is doing through your church and to be drawn to investigate further at your place of worship. Similarly, I hope this book will help Christians who have just moved to your area to more quickly find a church home by selecting some potentials through a few minutes online.

Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. If you are not thinking with regards to search engine traffic, you might be leaving it up to other people to tell your story. Notice in the Mickey and Mooch example that the search performed led to reviews about the restaurant. Your church might have a great reputation, but are you going to rely solely on someone else to speak for you?