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early all churches and religious organizations are using the internet in some form today. While the majority are using email or a basic website to communicate and publish information like upcoming events and request forms, others are looking to grow their reach to new members and retain current members by advertising their organization online. However, just building a website is not enough to obtain results. A website that is not advertised, or "optimized for search", will likely rarely be seen by anyone. It's the second part of the website process that many fail to realize- you must come up with a plan to bring in the visitors.

One of the two primary ways to gain new and repeat visitors to your website is through advertising. Advertising can be through more traditional methods, such as posting your website link in print publications, handouts, or signs at events. The traditional advertising methods are great for retaining visitors you already have, or perhaps bringing in new visitors when placed with a magazine or newspaper with appropriate circulation. After the website is built and completed, it is important to publish the website link everywhere you can. Many organizations even find a way to incorporate the website link along with their logo or name, usually right underneath. This allows for your visitors to associate the website with the name of your church while providing maximum exposure.

Within AdWords, you can create custom advertising campaigns that target a specific audience based off of several factors including search terms they have placed, the user's location, and even the time of day or date. When a user types in a certain search term on the Google.com website, these paid for ads will appear on the top and right side of the screen depending on the bids placed for those keywords. The highest bidders for that particular search term wins the highest spots on the page, while the others fall in below. These ads are highly cost effective for many organizations because you only pay for what people click on. Your ad may be displayed hundreds of times for free, and you're not charged until someone actually clicks the ad.

In addition to search advertising, Google offers content advertising as well. Content advertising is where your ad may appear on a website that specifically mentions a keyword you've selected.

Content advertising is where your ad may appear on a website that specifically mentions a keyword you've selected For example, if you select a term like "airplane", your advertising will appear on other websites that mention airplanes, airplane manufacturing companies, or even airports. Content advertising can be very powerful and cost effective when utilized properly as it can place advertising directly in front of a specific audience. As with the search ads, costs are not incurred until a user clicks on one of your ads.

Google AdWords may seem to be complicated, and in this case it really can be. It's a highly effective medium for advertising, but it is possible to quickly waste money on the wrong terms, or overbid on keywords creating a quick exhaustion of your advertising budget. We recommend that you consider working with a Google AdWords consultant or a search engine marketer before putting money into an online advertising campaign to ensure that you'll achieve the results desired.

Search engine optimization, known as SEO to online marketers, is a process applied to your website in order to ensure you're as visible in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft's Bing. When someone searches for a particular term that is relevant to your site, you'll bring in more visitors if your site is one of the results they see.

SEO strategies try and give the search engines specific information around the search terms you're most interested in. Although there are many complex strategies to SEO, we'll try to give you the basics that will dramatically improve your search ranking.

1. Use the TITLE tags to your advantage. If you do nothing else, make sure the page title is relevant to the content of the page, and is unique from any other pages on your site. A popular mistake is to leave out the titles, or use very basic titles. You can use up to 120 characters for your title, and most people use 3-5 word sentence fragments to describe the page. Although not always needed, normally use the Church or organization name within the title of the front page, but don't put it on all of your pages.

2. Make sure you include many if not all of the words from the TITLE in the actual text of the page. This tells search engines that the page is definitely relevant to the title that you've specified, and will yield stronger results.

3. Use META Keywords and META Description fields. This is similar to the TITLE rules, ensure your META tags are relevant to the page it's describing. Also be sure not to duplicate any META keywords on other pages. If you use the same META keywords or description, the search engine will determine the page may be irrelevant to the topic and lower the chance of the page being displayed.

4. Relevant Inbound Links are very important. This means that you need as many related websites you can find to link to your website. The number of inbound links you have to your website is directly related to the chance of your site appearing in a search result. This is one of the key factors that search engines use to determine how "important" a website is to the intertnet.

5. Control your Outbound links. Outbound links are links that you place on your website to others. Generally you can have 3-5 outbound links on a few of your pages without any trouble. If you have too many links, the search engines may mistake your website for spam - and consider your website irrelevant to the internet. If this happens, you rarely appear in search results, and possibly never.

Churches of all sizes are using the internet to grow their outreach. Through the use of the tools and methods above, you can create a website that brings in new visitors on an ongoing basis. Many of these ideas can seem difficult to implement, and we do recommend hiring a consultant to help you through this process if at all possible. If you want to learn more about how to promote your site better, search online for Internet Advertising or Search Engine Optimization.