Did you know that according to the Pew Research Center, the Google searches for the word “church” rise as Christian holidays near, with Easter being the peak? This means that you have an amazing opportunity to make church website Easter plans centered around driving new church website traffic and providing helpful Easter information targeted at church guests. You want to make sure that these “googlers” end up on your website and find the Easter details they need.
Like any other time of the year, a lot of your work is going to focus on making sure your church website Easter page is search engine optimized. If you aren’t ranking high on Google (and other search engines) then guests probably aren’t finding you organically. And, if they aren’t finding you online, they probably aren’t going to find you in person either.
So, to ensure that you know how to optimize your website for Easter, here are 10 tips to get your church website ready.
1. Keep Easter Front and Center On Your Homepage
To help your church website Easter optimization, make sure that your homepage is all decked out for Easter. One of the best ways to do this is to put Easter information in a rotating banner or static image. Make sure that this image is either a picture of your church (not a stock photo), or a branded Easter graphic. No matter which one you choose, make sure that it actually links to more information about Easter! This is also a fun opportunity to use Easter colors to brighten up your site.
2. Create a Specific Easter page
It’s important that you have a page dedicated just to Easter where you can add detailed information about all services and events. Be sure to use keywords to help your optimization and provide plenty of links to other helpful pages (ex. Homepage, New Here?, Contact, Sermons, etc.). It’s also a good idea to use Easter colors, your Easter graphics, and keep branding consistent on this church website Easter page.
3. Update Your Church Website Keywords
When thinking about keywords, a good question to ask yourself is, “what would people search for if they were looking for my church?” A lot of time this is as simple as “church + city” or “denomination + city.” During the Easter season though, it’s important to include Easter keywords and phrases like “Jesus”, “resurrection” and “Easter events” in this list on your church website Easter page too. Once you have identified your keywords, update URL’s, content, meta-descriptions, and links with these words. All of this will help to optimize your website for Easter.
4. Claim/Update Your Local Listings
Claiming your local listing just tells search engine like Google how to display your church’s information when it comes up in search results. It’s important to make sure this information is accurate and up-to-date.
5. Update Headers and Footers
Speaking of updating, it’s extremely important that your church name, phone number, and address are correct and in the header and/or footer of every single website page. Easter is the perfect time to check this!
6. Embed a Google Map
Another way to help optimize your website for Easter is to make sure that you embed a Google map on your New Here? Or Contact page, as well as your church website Easter page. Not only is this good for SEO, but it is helpful for guests who may be planning their visit to your church.
7. Highlight Easter on Your Sermons Page
In keeping with the idea of keywords, a great place to highlight Easter and use those phrases is on your Sermon page. Pull up past Easter sermons and embed them front and center on this page. You can also link to this from your church website Easter page so guests will have a great idea of what they can expect your Easter services or worship experiences to be like.
8. Make Your Easter Website Mobile Friendly
Seeing that this is 2019 this is probably fairly obvious, but it’s crucial for SEO (and general user experience) that your church website Easter page is mobile friendly. People are more than likely going to be on their phones when looking for a church to attend on Easter, and you don’t want them to have to be squinting at a desktop version on their cell.
9. Add Social Sharing Links
It’s a good idea to add social sharing links to all of your church website Easter content (on your homepage, Easter page, and Sermons page). This makes it easy for your church members to share your pages and invite their friends on social media.
10. Encourage Reviews
The last tip that is a good SEO practice at any time of the year including Easter is to ask for and encourage your members to leave reviews about your church on Google, other search engines, and Facebook. A great way to do this is by sending an email to your member list with the direct link to the review pages making it as easy to leave a review as possible.
Easter is one of the biggest outreach opportunities your church has, and by optimizing your church website, you will help even more guests find out about you and your mission.
If you are looking for other resources to help in your Easter planning this year, be sure to check out our Easter survival guide to find out everything you need to do to make this Easter at your church the best yet! It’s full of tips and tricks especially for your church website that will help to make sure you’re prepped and ready for all the season holds.
