A Brand New Evangelism Strategy In The Digital Culture

Paul Moon

Strategy Advisor to LeadershipEdges & Leadership Coach at The Epicenter Group

Old paradigms for evangelism stopped working decades ago at the advent of the digital world we are now in. An urgent need, thus, emerges to develop a new evangelism strategy in the digital culture. I’m certain a church should enjoy a great ROI from Local SEO, as the new evangelism strategy in the digital culture, since the first thing people do, regardless of different generations, with the ever-popular digital devices is an online search. 93% of any digital experience begins with a search engine according to a statistic.

Local SEO as a new evangelism strategy in the digital culture

The Local SEO is seeking for a relationship building with those, in the proximity of a local church, who search for keywords like “best churches near me,” “VBS near me,” “marital counseling,” “Bible study,” “wedding venues,” etc. These searches are intrinsically meant for finding a local place. It’s why I strongly suggest local churches to take it as a new evangelism strategy in the digital culture.

For the maximum output from Local SEO as a new evangelism strategy in the digital culture, you should first look at keyword research. Keyword research is not finding an attractive term for one of your ministries. I still remember how I creatively called my youth ministry a long time ago. It is not that case. Keyword research is to find the most potential keywords, related to your ministry, are being searched in your local area. The keywords at the top ranks may be nothing to do with your ministry. There still remain low volume local searched keywords with which your ministry can be represented. Grab them and optimize your church web page for those keywords. (If you need a help on optimization, don’t hesitate to contact me at rpm@leadershipedges.com. That’s my ministry.)

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.

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