Finding the Lost [Church Website]

One question that arises when dealing with web content is how to get your site listed in search engines so that others might find you.

There are several things you can do, all varying in cost and complexity. I'll stick to three free and simple options.

1. The easiest way to get noticed by search engines is to have others link to you. This both provides the search engine's crawler a means to find you and implies that others trust you enough to establish some level of authority, elevating your ranking a little. Some of the links back to you will happen naturally as people take notice, but it may be helpful to ask others, like a denominational site, a partner organization, or a blogging friend for a mention and link back just to jump start things.

2. Pay attention to the text in your site. The more your site mentions key words about your church, particularly nearer to the top, the more your site will be "remembered" for that topic. Please, don't sacrifice good layout and good content for this, though. It's not worth it.

3. Text in graphics doesn't count. The crawlers collecting information for the search engines can't read the beautiful graphic header that you've created with your church name, only the typed text on the page. Make sure your church name, including city and state, is listed in non-graphical text somewhere on your page and in your page title.

If you can cover the three items above, you'll be off to a healthy start. If you would like an extensive explanation of the topic, read "Search Engine Submission Tips" from the experts at SearchEngineWatch.com. Pay particular attention to the "Optimizing for Crawlers" section.

That's it for this week's focus on websites. Keep us posted on your progress.