If search engines and social sites can’t find you, people can’t either.
One of the areas most often overlooked by churches is their listing. What’s a “Listing?”
It's an online portfolio that contains information about your church, such as your name, address, phone number, hours, and other data. Most platforms that provide this information are free to use, but users must manually add their information or claim their church.
The goal of local listings is to make your church info more accurate, searchable and findable online. Churches with information and photos listed often have better search engine optimization and are seen as credible and authoritative on the Internet.
I was sitting down discussing listings with a church pastor and we pulled out our phones and searched "Church" in Google Maps.
They showed up on page 9.
We were quite literally a block away from their church.
Also, it showed that they were closed when they were very much open.
Before you launch an SEO campaign or get too fancy with Digital Ads, we want to lay down a strong foundation. Otherwise, your church will not easily be found. Also, many local sites share information with others, so if your information is incorrect it may translate onto other sites. This is one reason why it is important to update your church listings regularly.
For example, we were working with a church that had changed their service times. No biggie right? They updated their website and their Facebook page. Little did they know sites like Google, Yelp, Yahoo, City Search and 80+ other sites were not updated. The problem? For the millions searching on those platforms each day, the church had incorrect information for anyone who stumbled upon them.
The result? The search engines lowered their ranking and prospective attendees were frustrated.
A strong presence is the first step toward success. Within Relay for example, we built a tool called the Listing Builder for this purpose. Our technology integrates with Google Insights directly offering a valuable glimpse of customer activity, including how customers find your listing and what customers do with it.
For example,
Also, Relay allows you to build accurate church listings on the four major data aggregators—Acxiom, Factual, Infogroup, and Neustar Localez. These aggregators are referenced by over 300 sites. Think of them like the credit bureaus of the internet.
By using Relay, you save 300 hours a year minimum. It also helps you:
• Improve the likelihood that potential customers find your church in local search.
• Fix inaccurate church info at the core of the problem.
• Broaden your reach and boost your visibility online.
Listing Building gives you one place to create and sustain accurate church listings across an established network of over 70 listing sites. You update in one place, and it pushes it out everywhere!
With Relay:
• Sync to Google, Facebook, and Twitter for no extra charge.
• Generate and fix church listings with one click.
• Make unlimited updates from one place.
• Protect listings from changes by third parties.