We had a meeting of the Ballou Channing District Board at First Unitarian in New Bedford tonight.
“Hey,” said Don, one of the board members, “I was looking for directions on how to drive here, and I found your Web site. I like your Web site.”
“Yeah,” I said, “we’ve been working on the church Web site for some time and….”
“No, actually I found your Web site first,” said Don. “When you type ‘new bedford uu’ into Google, your personal Web site comes up first.”
“Oh,” I said. “My Web site comes up before the church Web site?”
“Yep,” said Don. “Oh, and I liked your church’s Web site, too.”
Hmm… my Web site isn’t supposed to come up before the church’s Web site. Unless maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine has an article about how today’s pop musicians and singer-songwriters are building audiences with blogs and Web sites: “…this is a trend that is catalyzing the B-list, the new, under-the-radar acts that have always built their successes fan by fan.” Am I supposed to be marketing myself (and the church) the way the singer-songwriters are marketing themselves?
On the one hand, there is no doubt that Unitarian Universalism is a B-list religion and that Unitarian Universalist congregations don’t have the resources to mount massive media campaigns. On the other hand, I don’t think we can use the same online marketing techniques as the B-list singer-songwriters — creating a MySpace site, writing blogs, answering email, and then finding out which cities have enough fans to warrant staging a concert there. And I have to say I am a little surprised and uneasy that my personal Web site sometimes comes up on search engines before our church Web site — this blog is supposed to be a hobby for me, and I’m not sure I want it to become part of my job. I’m not quite sure what I think about all this. What do you think?
Church websites aren’t networked as well as individual blogs simply because their content isn’t linked to as often by other sites, and their traffic is lower. You write something interesting on your blog, a bunch of other bloggers link and talk about it, and the Googlebot picks up all those connections. Plus there’s all the people that have your blog on their blogroll, and all the blogs you have on your blogroll.
Same kind of reason that Wikipedia comes up first when you search for all kinds of things, including Unitarian Universalism, instead of their respective “official” sites – more people link to Wikipedia and Wikipedia contains more links to other places, so it’s crawled more often by the search engines.
The only thing that will “fix” the phenomenon is a change in the Google algorithm to pull “official” sites higher in the ranks than blogs with lots of traffic and links.
Pingback: Just thinking out loud
Your blog has more Googlejuice than the church’s site. More people link to it, which moves it up the page significantly. The best thing you can do is make certain that there’s a prominent link to the church’s site on every page of your blog. But your blog is going to remain above the official site pretty much no matter what you do. It’s not a reflection on how much of your time it should take up, though.
Three thoughts: Ministers who blog under their own names, even if they imagine that their blogging is distinct from the church’s web site, will draw local traffic — especially if they blog about their town or congregation. This is partly due to how successfully blogs take advantage of search engines (as others have described already) but it’s also due to the personal voice and “access” a blog provides. A thought: You might as well provide some basic visitor’s information on the blog: Time, location, upcoming events.
Second, I’m not convinced that MySpace offers a great opportunity for individual UU congregations, although a bunch of the Virginia UU congregations are trying it. In Boston, however, the Church of the Advent has a thriving MySpace ministry. It helps to have a music program or other “draw” to promote; trying to drum up interest in the Sunday morning service through MySpace seems like a terrific waste of time to me.
Finally, I recommend The Blogging Church: Sharing the Story of Your Church Through Blogs.
The person searched for ‘new bedford uu’. I’m guessing that your blog has more references to ‘uu’ than your church site does (I checked the first page of your church’s site, and it has ‘uu’ in the keywords but nowhere in the text of the page.)
Jess — Yes, much of this probably results from a quirk of Google’s algorithms. For example, Google does give undue importance to blogs.
Rebecca — Yup, I better make that link to the church Web site more prominent.
Philocrites — Yup, I might as well put basic church info on my site. And I agree about MySpace.
Paul — Yes, time to use “uu” more in the church Web site. I hate using abbreviations, but this particular abbreviation is such an excellent and sepcific search term that we almost have to exploit it.
Thanks, everyone, for the helpful advice and comments.
I agree with Philocrites–read “The Blogging Church.” I don’t think it’s possible for ministers to have personal websites. It’s always going to reflect on the church you serve. Also, instead of MySpace, there’s MyChurch.
Phil on the Prairie — I think you’re right, and it isn’t possible for ministers to have truly personal Web sites. On the other hand, if I’m a minister who has a blog, and if I maintain my blog totally on my own time, and if my congregation has really no interest in the fact that I write a blog (or would just as soon I did something different with my spare time) — that leaves me in an interesting place. Then I am blogging as a minister, who happens to serve such-and-such a congregation, but who is really serving the wider denomination rather than my own congregation. I suspect this describes the situation of many blogging ministers — and such ministers may have to add a caveat like the ones we add when we sign controversial public statements — “I’m listing my congregation for affiliation purposes only, but my congregation doesn’t endorse what I’m writing here.” Which is always an interesting thing to have to say….
Saludos desde Puerto Rico,
There are many more people interested in UUism (how is that for a key word, Google) than in one specific church. I am not exactly sure how I first found you, but I wasn’t looking for a blog, I am too much of an addict to look for new ones! And I wasn’t looking for a church in New Bedford. Keep up the good work, it is such a great way to spread the word of our liberal religious faith. I only wish I could blog in Spanish, but Jaume in Barcelona does a great job and I have a link to his blog on all 70 plus Spanish pages of my website, maybe I should link to a few English blogs on my 40 some English pages.
May I share a milestone with you. Last year, after GA I decided to put a counter on my web site. It has been less than a year, but I am about to pass my 150,000 visitor. Less than 5 % stay more than a minute, but often they stay 15-20 minutes. Longer visitors ( 30 minutes to over an hour) when they stay as much as an hour will visit 15 or more pages. I love my stats, nothing like positive reinforcement.
Any luck with small group ministry in Portuguese?
Donner