Church blog or church website?

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There are many people out there that engage in the debate website v blog.. Its about time Ignite entered the debate.

As you can see I have gone for wordpress to manage my content for my domain.  Why did I go for wordpress when some people say wordpress is blogging software?

Well wordpress is so much more than just blogging software.

Wordpress is:-

CMS - A content management system
SEO Friendly - Once set up the engines love fresh content
Open source - Its free and updates are free
Its a publishing system - A marketer once said to me “if you write the content you
control the content”
You connect with the reader easier when a blog is more personal than writing website corporate copy

This doesnt mean that websites are the wrong way when  looking ast providing an online presence..

My home church is http://www.KingsBolton.co.uk

That is our domain and we are currently working on adding a blog on to a subdomian which is

http://www.kingsbolton.co.uk/blog

This way you get the best of both worlds..

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How to optimise you church blog with wordpress plugins

I have been promising for a while now a video tutorial on wordpress.. so I have done a brief tutorial on 3 plugins that help you get stacks more traffic form the search engines.

Enjoy and comments are welcomed.

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The secret to getting more traffic to your church blog - Part 1

Yesterday I spoke on why we should blog and how we can get a ton of traffic for our church blogs and eventually bring people through the doors of our churches and further advance the Kingdom of God.

Today I am going to lift the lid on my preferred blogging software that is free. This is the start of the series of tutorials on why you should have a blog and what you should do to drive traffic to your blog.

Firstly, you should host your blog on your own domain. I know there are so many websites that offer free blogs hosted on free websites like blogger and wordpress.com. I am a big fan of wordpress but you need to use the self hosted free install, please let me explain why.

When you are using wordpress on your domain you can use the plugins to optimise your blog and gain visitors to it. You are promoting a brand, a domain that people will start to remember. All the other free online blogs give you a sub domain such as yourblog.blogger.com. This is all well and good but you cannot control it and optimise it as much.

You maybe a preacher, a youth leader, a Pastor and cell group leader, you may be looking to launch a blog for your church to keep the community informed. Whoever you are or whatever your role, the best way to set up a blog is self hosting wordpress.

Steps 1 – Research your potential audience

We covered the importance of keyword research the other day, but we need to just cover over it again.

One of the biggest mistakes of all bloggers is the lack of research of what people want to read about in the niche you’re operating in.

I would recommend you follow this process.

Go to google.com and type in your number one keyword.

Have a look at the top 10 websites and view them. Have a look at what content they have, if they are easy to read and do they look good.

Make a list of what kind of content they have and we can use these lead keywords next.

With these “lead keywords” put them into a keyword research tool. There are plenty out there to use that free.

Here are a couple I would use.

http://www.hexatrack.com (free version for a limited period)

http://www.wordtracker.com/ (free trial then pay site)

When using these tools you are looking for “long tail keywords”. These long tail keyword are searches that people search on a regular basis but there isn’t as much competition as the “lead keywords”. This is the approach of many internet marketers that have the luxury of working for them and it works in any niche. Here are some other articles that may be worth a read.

Evangelism Blogs Evangelism Through Blogging: HOW TO START A BLOG EVANGELISM THROUGH BLOGGING: WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT Blogging: Cyber-Savvy Outreach Mark Beeson: Leverage Your Evangelism Moments The Benefits of Blogging / Social Media - Part #2 Church Marketing: Three Ways To Drive Traffic To The Blog

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