Do people know your church exists? Can they find it? We are traveling all over the US and I find it difficult, at times, to find churches. Here is how you can exploit Google 
Understand and Promote Your Google Places listing
An owner-verified listing is critical! We have been led to a pastor's house which was not close to the church because he did not verify his listing. We missed the services. So, here is what you need to do...
Understand and Promote Your Website
Blog, blog, blog
I see instances where the church's website lacks information while the pastor is busy writing his own personal blog. If you are one of those pastors, tsk...tsk...tsk... Promote your church as well!
It is now known that Google is looking to see if you update your blog daily/weekly. Certainly, a pastor should be able to add a blog entry to the church's site at least once a week.
Get people, in leadership positions, who write, to write blog posts...
The more you write, the more you will have a commanding presence on the WWW and the more exposure you will get in your community.
Understand and Promote Your Google Places listing
An owner-verified listing is critical! We have been led to a pastor's house which was not close to the church because he did not verify his listing. We missed the services. So, here is what you need to do...
- Go to www.google.com/local/add/ to capture or add your listing
- Update your listing to include as much information as possible
- Add photos and video to the listing.
- Build citations from other websites with the exact same address information. [more below on citations]
- Get people to give legitimate reviews from their own locations. The more reviews you get, the better you will do. If you are not centrally located to town, this will help you get to the "A" pin.
Understand and Promote Your Website
- Put the location of your site on every page, not just a "Location" page
- Make sure the location on your site matches the Google listing
- List the cities/towns/counties/state on your site. Look at my website, www.evmikna.com (scroll all the way down) to see what I mean.
- Change the <title></title> tag in the header to focus on the keywords people are searching. Do not spam your title with 100 words. Keep it to the very max, 60 characters. For example, a good title will read: <title>Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, Dodge County, MI</title>
- Build links to your website. (more below on linkbuilding)
Blog, blog, blog
I see instances where the church's website lacks information while the pastor is busy writing his own personal blog. If you are one of those pastors, tsk...tsk...tsk... Promote your church as well!
It is now known that Google is looking to see if you update your blog daily/weekly. Certainly, a pastor should be able to add a blog entry to the church's site at least once a week.
Get people, in leadership positions, who write, to write blog posts...
The more you write, the more you will have a commanding presence on the WWW and the more exposure you will get in your community.