Church Consultant Website Project Part 5

Back in March 0f 2022 we decided to build and track the development of a new website that we called “Church Consultant”. As a Church Encourager that provides Church Consulting it is important to understand how websites work in order to help churches with their digital platform. We walked through the process of finding and purchasing a domain name (churchconsultant.org) and getting a website stared on the WordPress.org platform. We looked at adding some plug-ins and putting a theme on the website to give it some polish.

On March 15th we checked on the 3 day old site and we were already being indexed by the search engines. We were on page 2 in Bing and page 22 on Google. We checked today on how the site was showing up after being around for 3 months when searching for church consultant on Bing. The homepage of the website shows up as the number one result and there is an article from the website showing up in the number three result. Which is cool but Bing doesn’t generate much traffic at all.

We checked on AOL and our Church Consultant website in the first and second result there. Also cool, but again doesn’t really generate any traffic to the website.

The goal is to get on the first page of Google, preferably in one of the first three results. Last time we checked we were on page 22. Lets do a search on Google to see what progress we have made as of today:

We are at the bottom of page 6 in the 60th position. Still a long way to go to get to the first page but quite a move up from page 22 three months ago. So, how do you get the website to keep moving towards the first page on Google? Patience and effort. Patience is required because it takes time. There are a lot of well established websites for church consultants and just because you put up a website doesn’t mean they will all yield their position. Effort is required because you have to take the time to write really good content that will actually be helpful to people who are searching and you have to do the work to make sure you are following good SEO practices.

We have spent some time making the necessary tweaks to this website and at this juncture we will begin adding useful content in a steadier fashion. As we add content we should begin to see the website advance in the results. Slowly. Once we have some helpful content on the website, say a dozen articles on three or four important topics, we might start doing a little social media advertising to attract some traffic. How long will it take? If you are in a hurry you might not like the answer. I am guessing that to get this website on the first page of Google will take about two years. It might be a little quicker if we put up a lot of good content but I think two years is about right. You will get the occasional person showing up and they might share your site with some of their contacts and you could develop some traffic that way. So don’t give up if you are not seeing immediate results. Take your time and write good content.

Steve Lawes is a church encourager and the lead pastor of Keys Vineyard Church.