Despite relatively lower search volumes, Local searches often carry a lot more intents and can deliver foot traffic to your church that is far more likely to convert (“convert” here in my article is not a “Religious” term. It simply means that those who search for a certain keyword will take a related service to the keyword. For an example, a search for “VBS near me” leads to a new signup.)

A good keyword research helper: Google Keyword Planner

Do you like to know how a thriving church optimizes their website for the Local searches? You don’t even have to attend a ministry seminar, offered by a successful church, on how they have done it. There is a tool to help you research how those successful churches in digital culture (for example, those who are listed in the top of Google SERPs for the Local searches) are targeting the locations? Simply put their contact page URL into Google’s Keyword Planner tool and you will be able to see which keywords Google is likely to be associating them with. You should then be putting these terms on your target keyword list and also look for the search volumes of theirs as combining them with your own locality. Google’s Keyword Planner tool is free and an excellent tool for keyword research.

Individual search volume for such specific areas will probably be low but cumulatively, it can deliver a modest amount of pre-qualified traffic potential with high intent. That’s why you should develop it as a new evangelism strategy in the digital culture. In the next post (“Church Website Optimization For Local Searches”), I’m going to talk about how to optimize your church website for the local searches for a maximum ROI.