Welcome to our guide on improving your website's search engine performance. Follow these steps to boost your site's ranking. 

Change Your Site Title

The title of your website is a crucial SEO factor. Search engines use it to understand the content of your page and display it in search results. Including relevant keywords in the title can improve your site's visibility.

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How you change your website identity is dependent on what website platform you use:

Cloud: Project Settings > SEO #2 Site Title
WordPress: Site Identity > #3 Site Title

Search Engine Visibility

It's important to ensure your website appears in search results. You have the option to hide specific pages or even the entire site. This feature can be useful when editing, allowing you to keep your site hidden until it's ready to be published.

Once your site has launched, follow these instructions to ensure your site is visible in search engines.

• 1. From your Amplify Cloud Website, click on the CMS icon on the left sidebar
     
     
     
      
  2. Click on Project Settings
  3. Select the SEO tab
  4. Enable Search Engine Visibility at the bottom
  5. Click Save Changes 
     
     
• 1. From your Amplify WordPress Website dashboard, click Settings
  2. Click on Reading
  3. Verify that the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is unchecked. Check the box to stop your site from showing up in Search Results.
  4. Click Save Changes 
     
     

Add Your Contact Information

Including your contact information serves multiple purposes—it aids search engine visibility and facilitates communication for visitors to your church. To optimize accessibility, we advise placing your contact details on both your Contact page and homepage. However, the placement and presentation should align with your site's design and objectives, allowing for flexibility in implementation.

Add Page Meta Descriptions

A page’s meta description is the description that Google uses to promote a page link to a user. If you don’t write one, Google will write one for you which is never good practice. This is because Google will often throw together random sentences, phone numbers, and addresses on a given page to write one. When writing one, you should include keywords related to that page. Think of words or phrases that people would type into Google, that you could use to help your page get found, so long as those keywords are on that webpage. The goal is 2-3 sentences.

• Content added to your Amplify Website module (Sermons, Articles, Events, Groups, and Staff members) does not have metadata available at this time.

• 1. From your Amplify Website Cloud dashboard, click the CMS menu icon and Pages.
  2. Click the Page title you want to edit. 
     
     
     
     
  3. Click the SEO tab. Every page, blog post, or custom post has an SEO tab where you'll find the custom SEO options, Title, and Description, for that page. 
     
     The SEO Title and SEO Description options are the most important ones and will be used no matter what you have in the Content or Global SEO settings. Always use the custom SEO options as it will give you full control over your SEO title and description.
     
     
     
     
  4. When finished, click Update.
• 1. From your Amplify Website WordPress dashboard, click Pages.
  2. Hover over the Page title you want to update and press the Edit link. 
     
     
     
     
  3. Scroll down to the section titled Meta Description and add the text you want search engines to display for that page’s link. 
  4. When finished, click Update button in the top right corner, and you’re good to go! 
     
     

Add Content to Your Site Using Keywords

Search engines like Google look for “keywords” in your website content to help determine what the site is about. If you are a Baptist Church in Athens and your site does not use the words Baptist, Church, or Athens, then it’s unlikely you will show up in search results when someone used those keywords to search.

These keywords should be added throughout your site, but use the keywords naturally, not in a forced way. Here are forced keywords:

• Thank you for visiting the Athens Baptist Church website in Athens, Georgia. We are a Baptist Church that serves the Athens, Georgia community through prayer, fellowship, and various outreach activities.

Now compare it to this more natural use of keywords: 

• Thank you for visiting the Athens Baptist Church website. You are invited to join us during the following services:
  
  Sunday 9:30-11:30 AM
  Wednesday 7:00-8:30 PM

Which one would you rather read? I’m guessing you chose the latter, natural reading sentence.

Submit Your Site to Local Search Directories

For a new website, it's crucial to get listed in local business directories so people can find your church in the area. Submit your church/ministry to:

• Google Places
• Bing Business

When listing your church, be sure to include as much information as possible.

Include detailed information when listing your church. Remember to verify the listing on Google and Bing, either through a phone call or a postcard with a confirmation code. Opt for the phone call if you're near the church phone for quicker verification.

Related Help Article
Ready to learn more? Check out our article: Advanced SEO

Updated September 16, 2024 23:45