I’m a web geek. Let’s just get that out of the way. My official title of my real job is Senior Interactive Marketing Manager, but you can call me Erik for short. As a result, I naturally (and professionally) am drawn to innovative digital trends, strategies and tactics.
The other day I stumbled across a church blog post that I would categorize as “keyword stuffing” because the keyword density for the keyword phrase was relatively high. What’s keyword density? Good question. It’s the percent or the number of times a keyword phrase appears on a given page. From a search engine optimization (SEO) standpoint, you want to integrate your thematic keyword phrase as many times as you can while balancing a good user experience. You obviously can be penalized by the search engines for trying to manipulate the system by saying the keyword phrase over and over and over again. In this case, the blog post was utilizing a geographic name plus the word church. For example: Dallas Church. In digging deeper, the geographic word was used 18 times and the word church was used 46.
The other day when I was mowing the lawn…lost in my thoughts, I thought about this approach to this blog post. I totally understand and appreciate the need for the post because you never know when a new family is going to move into the area and type into Google the name of their new city or town followed by the word church. It’s highly probable that people are going to organically find you online prior to visiting your church. While I totally understand and appreciate the need for the post, I think it’s somewhat telling how we’re evolving as The Church.
Here’s what I mean. The other day on my commute, I was listening to a sermon by The Summit Church entitled “We Are Jonah” by Curtis Andrusko. It was actually a really convicting message because Curtis was talking about the Pokemon Go craze that was happening a year ago. When the app first came out, my son and I were scurrying around all over town trying to virtually capture Pokemon and interesting enough we kept stumbling into others who were doing the same. Curtis mentions that people were delighted to talk about Pokemon Go ad nauseam, explaining what the app did and showing others how they can catch Pokemon too. I found myself nodding my head, recalling many conversations with random strangers in our neighborhood. Curtis’ main point was that while it was easy for us to talk about a silly app, why are we so afraid to share our faith?
So while in this digital age, it’s important to invest in your content marketing strategies on your church websites, remember it’s our duty to share the Gospel with those around us who desperately need to hear the Word of God…of hope and grace. Through our actions and our words. While the name of this post is obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek, they should know we are Christians by our love – not necessarily by our SEO efforts.
Grace and peace,
Erik
