SEO and the church
As you will have discovered by the end of this sentence, this post has nothing to do with the recently married royal couple. Your search engine didn’t know that, though, and landed you here anyway. A few years ago there was a lot of feather ruffling in the media about the fact that a metallurgy site with the word Britney Spears in its title was attracting hundreds of thousands of hits from people who had no interest whatsoever in the study of metal. Since then, the science of search engine optimization (or SEO) has moved on. Not only that, but a Washington Post article earlier this week pointed out that the Mormon church has embraced it wholeheartedly. They have done this so successfully that a Google search for ‘friend’, ‘young women’ or ‘church’ or even ‘family’ is liable to bring them out near the top of the list. They have experts employed in the field, and are educating their congregations in the importance of links and clicks to keep them near the top of internet searches. Industry professionals are holding them up as an example of how to play the SEO game.
Savvy or cynical, do you think? I’m all for churches being media savvy, and new media savvy in particular. Not only that, but I am delighted if people looking for definitions of family or friendship find some spiritual content in their search. However, I can’t help the feeling of some undue manipulation here. To me, social media is an open, unfettered conversation place, where ideas can be aired and exchanged freely. When religious organisations start to get too involved in SEO, it feels as if the goalposts are being moved, somehow.
Years ago, when I was a student at St Andrews University, I attended a training session for an upcoming mission. The speaker told us that we should find ways to ‘turn the conversation around’ to the Gospel. From that moment onwards I switched off from everything else he had to say. It struck me that if you are listening to your interlocutor only with a view to turning the conversation around to your particular topic, then you are not really having a conversation anyway. By your secret agenda you have trampled on the delicate ground of conversation and made the flowers of truly human interaction wilt.
Surely if we want people to read what we have to say about family, or friendship, it must be based on the quality of what we have to say? Our contributions on these subjects should be of such a high calibre that they want to read it. If they then find out more about us and our other work, then we become the best kind of hyperlink to the church.
What do you think?
Don’t forget the more inbound links a post gets, the more it is seen as an ‘authority’ and bumped up by the search engines. So this doesn’t at all exclude “quality”, indeed it rewards it. If Christians start writing material on those topics, as good as the LDS, then we can beat them at their own game.
That said, I did chuckle at how the LDS church is killing it with their SEO. More power to them for seeing this avenue and exploiting it!
Never fear though: digital strategy is wholistic – it’s not just being present in social or good SEO. It’s Banner ads. Emails. Live broadcasts etc…
But if that’s enough to give your less tech readers a headache – don’t forget at the end of the day when it comes to effective evangelism, it’s the work of the Spirit not Google search algorithms! 😉
I value this comment especially from a pro who knows what he is talking about. As you rightly say – there is a hidden Holy Spirit dynamic to all this too!
i have to say that I think SEO should be the concern of those more tech minded in our church communities…but that content quality should be more heavily weighted. yes, it is important that you are able to be found online, but one needs to work out who it is imperative you are found by and focus on making sure that you are geared toward that audience. It frustrates me to see the slapdash (repetition of key phrases over and over) approach to SEO on many church related sites. it also annoys me know end that there are sites that are seeking to garner those searching for “christian” links who essentially harvest my posts copy them and think a link to the original is sufficient. I am wary when anyone overemphasises SEO to newbies (it’s a little like Multi-level marketing sometimes) at the expense of training in content – but then the literature teacher in me would say that wouldn’t I…..
All of that to say, I think Jonathon is spot on.
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