You’ve likely heard of it, you may even be familiar with it, but you definitely know that you need it. SEO. By the end of this email, you’ll know what it is and become equipped to tackle it head-on.

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is the process of improving your website’s ranking and visibility on search engines like Google.

To help, I asked ChatGPT to explain SEO to me like I was five years old 🤖

“Imagine you have a big box of your favorite toys, but it's messy and hard to find the one you want. SEO is like organizing your toy box so that you can easily find your favorite toy when you want it. Just like you put labels on your toy bins to know what’s inside, SEO helps to put the right words on your website so people know what it’s about. When you share your toys with friends, they might tell others about them. Similarly, when other websites talk about your website, it helps more people find you. So, SEO is like making sure your toy box is organized and easy to find so that you can have more fun!”

In case you didn’t catch it, your website is the proverbial toy box. Your church is worth visiting, and the story you’re telling is worth giving your life for. Making more people aware of your site and making your most important information easily accessible is what SEO is all about.

Now that we know what SEO is and why it’s important, here’s how to boost yours using Nucleus 🚀

1. Content Keywords

The biggest improvement you can make to your website’s SEO today is to simply incorporate the words that people are searching for on your church’s website. These are called content keywords. For example, if your church is called Life Abundant, you’re located in Niagara, and your mission is to help people practice the way of Jesus, use those words on your website - and use them often.

Search engines are constantly scrubbing your website to learn what your site is about, so tell them! Insert these content keywords thoughtfully into your website copy so that when someone searches for “churches near me” or “Christian Community in Niagara”, your website has a chance at showing up on the first page.

2. SEO Descriptions

In the Nucleus dashboard, there are a few places to input SEO titles and descriptions that will give immediate information to search engines. If you choose to leave these fields empty, Google will still scrub your site to determine what you’re all about. But by filling out these fields with intentional SEO information, you explicitly inform search engines and increase your chances of showing up in search for the right things.

You can add SEO titles and descriptions on the site and page levels.

To add SEO information to your site globally, you can do that here in your Website Settings.

By default, Nucleus sets your browser title (the title of your page in search results) as Church Name | Page Title. Our official recommendation would be to set that and forget it. Easy!

Next, you’ll want to add an SEO meta description for your church website. It’s best to write it in this format: “Join us at [church name] in [church city]. A church [mission and vision].” Here’s a real-world example.

Lastly, here’s where you can add some of those extra keywords that Backlinko generated for you.

Now that you’ve added SEO descriptions to your site globally, you can do the same thing on a page-to-page basis. Start with your homepage, adding the same information that you just added to your site settings. Beyond that, it shouldn’t be necessary to add individualized SEO information to each page on your site unless you have a very unique page for a one-off event like Christmas, Easter, Summer Picnic, Fall Festival, etc.

3. Google Business Profile

Last but certainly not least, give your church website the ultimate SEO boost by completing your Google Business Profile. It’s free, it’s easy, and we’ve created the master guide to help you complete it with confidence.

By implementing these three simple steps, you’ll be well on your way to rising the ranks of search engine results. This will get more eyes on your church’s website, and more next steps being taken on journeys with Jesus!

Bonus tips and tactics!

• The Church Welcome Video Formula

• 3 Must-Try Social Media Posts for Smaller Churches

That’s it for this month! You can expect a monthly newsletter like this with actionable tips and tactics on the first Tuesday of every month. If you ever need a hand, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected]

If you have something that you’d like to ask me in particular, you can simply reply to this email and I’ll talk with you soon.