Church Planting & Website Content

One big mistake church planters make is thinking that the design of the website is the most important part of creating a website.  They focus all their energy on getting cool flash sliders and great looking color schemes with rockin graphics all to show off just how far along their new church is.  While there is definitely a design element that church planters need to be thinking about – you should not neglect the power of good content!

Content is the text that defines your site.  When Google’s robots search your church planting website, they are not looking for design to rank it (this is called SEO).  They are looking for good relevant content that will be deliverable to the person searching for such content.  This means it’s important for you to start thinking about what kind of content your website design will deliver to your new church.

When thinking through content, we suggest you do a little exercise…

Ask yourself this question:  What are the 3 most important search terms someone searching for a church in your area will use?

I know your first answer is going to be – children’s ministry, or small groups, or relevant preacher with cool glasses (making fun of myself – my wife always knocks my sweet military issue black rimmed glasses).  Actually, the 3 terms they will use will be something like this:  church wichita ks.  Do you see, we are thinking specifics when someone looking for a church will be thinking generalities.  This means you need to liter your website with the word church, your city or neighborhood (which ever is more likely to be used by someone searching) and your state.  We are looking for google to pick up on the fact that you are a church in such and such state and such a such city.

One problem people often have with writing content is that they get sucked into the common mistake of writing like you would for a college paper.  When writing content for the web, you want to replace pronouns with nouns – you want to be specific not general.  You want to repeat keyword phrases over and over again.

We would love to talk with you about how to get the right content for your website and how to provide you with a killer design so you can have the best of both worlds!  Happy church planting!