When the average person these days has a question, where is the first place they usually go? Google.com. Google is the beginning of most every journey in life.
People have questions - lots of them (billions per day for Google.com). This is where people, at least initially, look for answers. And they aren’t just searching for dinner recipes, jokes, foot fungus symptoms and movie times. They are quite often searching for the answers to life’s most profound questions.
The good news is that the Catholic Church has the answers they are looking for. The bad news is that search engines, like Google.com, don’t entirely know it yet. That’s our fault.
For instance, if I type “What do Christians believe?” into google.com, there is not one Catholic result returned in the top ten. A few are Catholic friendly (some not), but none explicitly and accurately represent the Catholic perspective.
Now, that is admittedly because we often use “Catholic” instead of “Christian” in our online material. But is that what the average person types in when searching?
And either way, even if you search on “What do Catholics believe” instead, it’s not a stellar result. Yes, there are a few outstanding sites returned with excellent representations of the Catholic faith. But there are a few that look…let’s say, unimpressive. And there are a few anti-Catholic sites too. Of course, some of that will be hard to avoid in a search engine, but this type of search should be pulling up the best of our best. And we should have more than a few strong showings.
You’ll notice the Vatican website doesn’t show up in either of these searches…and not even in the first ten pages of search results (I got tired of digging after that). That’s pretty unfortunate when somebody searching on what Catholics/Christians believe can’t get the website of the foremost authority on the planet (the Vatican) in the first ten pages of search results!
Another search: “Is there a God.” Results: Half theistic. Half atheistic. Zero Catholic sites.
Another search: “Who is Jesus.” Results: A Lutheran site. A Mormon site. Lots of Evangelical/Fundamentalist sites. Zero Catholic sites. The mormon’s have even bought sponsored links for these searches. That’s how dedicated they are to evangelization.
Anyway, google results are not the end-all be-all. But they are pretty important these days. We have so much great Catholic content online. We just need to polish it up a bit and get it formatted, presented and shared in a way that those searching for it will easily find it. And especially when there are so many other distractions out there doing a better job of it than us.
Improving this one aspect of our evangelization efforts really could have a much bigger impact than I think we realize.
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How do we do we remedy this sad situation? Seriously, is this a needed area of funds to specific sites, is it asking those really good ones to do something? Being mostly ignorant in how a site gets to the top of heap, so to speak, I wouldn’t know how to help or encourage a good site to raise their profile as it were.
I ran into this over the past years as well and so started a video podcast for some basic Catholic/Protestant questions (Do Catholics Worship Mary? Are Catholics Christians? Did Jesus Have Brothers? and so on). http://www.youtube.com/user/dsr9996
I’ve done about six of them so far and post them on my blog and on YouTube. Immediately after creating them, some of them were showing up in the first page of Google (sometimes under the “Video Results For” that it will show along with the text results). I targeted videos because Google likes those a lot. It just goes to show that there is a lot of room for we Catholics to improve and get our links in there!
God bless,
Devin
Use Google’s Insights for Search site (http://www.google.com/insights/search/#) to see what terms people are searching on. Then make sure your pages/posts contain those terms. In the last seven days, worldwide “church”, “bible”, “jesus”, “god”, and “catholic” were the top 5 search terms in the religion category.
Also, use the Search Analytics tool on Alexa.com to see what search terms competing sites are being found with.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key, I think.
Devin is right. Video is key these days to rank on the search engines. But ranking is not enough. What is needed is DOMINATION of the engines. If you are interested, I have a formula to achieve that. I do it for my clients. Why not do it now for our faith! If you’d like to discuss this please contact me @ 209-789-Jake (209-789-5253).
Jake
More Catholic businessmen writing large checks to start up tech ventures and fewer writing checks to politicians and founding universities, please.
Adolfo hit it on the head.
The key word is “Search Engine Optimization.” While Jake is seizing on the opportunity to self-promote, it isn’t rocket science.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
The Church needs to really invite the young people who know how to do this stuff instead of alienating us.
We need more of what Devin is doing. Being ‘wise as serpants’ in the online world means to work within the existing technology. We need to walk onto Google’s terrain and stake our Catholic flag for all to see.
@Laura—I’m sorry to give you the impression that I’m promoting my services. I will never use my faith as a springboard for doing business. That is not right. And Catholics should never use their faith as a leverage for marketing their businesses. My intention was to help. Matt’s post made me think. If I can help my clients achieve their mundane objectives, I can also use my skills to advance the apostolic and evangelical aims of our faith. And by the way, I do not do just SEO. Yeah SEO is not rocket science. That is why anybody can do it. What I do is far better, and more effective than just SEO. So if you people have the content to share to the world, I have the know-how to spread the word.
Jake,
Thanks for the elaboration, and I’m sorry if I misunderstood your intentions.
Excellent thoughts here and so unfortunately true. What might you suggest to help us optimize out results?
One thing that influences google’s rankings are how many sites link to a given site. If you have a web site, link to lots of Catholic sites!
Stop using GOOGLE!!Try goodsearch dot com ,it will donate to your favorite charity with EACH SEARCH!!! This is not a spam post,trust me it is a great search engine,it also offers discounts on many websites!!
@langoley
Goodsearch is fine, but we want to reach the unchurched who are using Google. We have to be where the searchers are.
We also have to ignite the passion of more of our own. As a convert, Catholic silence surprises me. What good is a truth you hide under a bushel? We have great people on the net and in ‘real life’ - but their numbers are far too few in a world where the fastest growing denomination is ‘None’.
I have noticed this problem when searching to the Catholic response to something said to me. The top few Google pages are usually only protestant or anti-catholic responses. It is discouraging when you can’t pull Catholic results to help you. The exception is when I search for a bible verse, the USCCB site always comes up in the top 5 results.
The answer is like was said above, more Catholics need to pay attention to SEO when designing their sites. I write web content for a seo company and it is not rocket science, you just need to do some research and pay attention to your word placement. Specifically to what words are hyperlinked, in titles, and in the first 2 paragraphs. Links to other sites on the side are great also. I don’t know all the tricks but I know there are several to getting ranked on the top pages.
Thanks Matt to drawing attention to this issue! Maybe more of us can work on our Google rankings to help spread the Good News.
Good discussion. Don’t know if this commentary addresses the question of the purification of Google as a search engine, but on the general question of Catholic participation on line, I would like to share some points…
Fr. John Hardon SJ founded an organization named Intermirifica which is named for the Vatican II document on social communication.
Father spoke before Human Life International audiences in the early 90s and encouraged us to become involved in the internet.
Father Paul Marx taught us to watch for teachers who are faithful to the Magisterium.
And friends in the Traditional Latin Mass movement prepare us to be alert for preservation of our traditional faith practices…
When we bring this together, we discover our opportunity to advance discussion from a Catholic point of view, on the internet is an opportunity to evangelize and acquaint others with reliable sources to turn to for guidance in this challenging age.
<! endif]—><title>St. John’s Catholic Community - Darwin, MN</title><meta name=“description” c church serves the communities of Darwin, Dassel and Cokato, MN. through worship, education, service and fellowship.”><meta name=“keywords” c johns, catholic, church, community, darwin, dassel, cokato, mn, minnesota, education, worship, service, ministry,disciples,jesus,christ,mission,proclaim,celebrate,fellowship “><meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” c charset=windows-
I am surprised no one mentioned using keywords in the metadata of the web pages. Pretty basic stuff. Guess I’ll have to add a few more to our web site
Keywords, keywords, keywords! This is the science behind it all. If the director of a Catholic website does not understand this, he or she needs to research it or hire someone who can “optimize” the website.
All well and true but in the end our biggest problem is reaching Catholics themselves who don’t know this stuff anyway.
That’s the point: the searcher may not know any of this. They click on what pops up. The website is in charge of making sure they “pop up”.
Lots of misinformation in the replies. Search Engine Optimization is the closest thing to voodoo there is. Google’s algorithm is one of their most closely held secrets. On of the biggest factors of a site getting “ranked” high is “quality” inbound links from other sites as well as traffic. What “quality” means is the mystery Google’s keeps to itself and frankly changes on an almost daily basis. Add in the fact that Google’s search results are now unique to each individual based on their own unique search history (which Google logs every one) and “getting ranked in the search engines” is the equivalent of nailing Jello to the wall. Sure there are some basic things you can do - but trying to trick the search engines is chasing the wind.
This guy teaches the US Patent office on technology issues
Mike Marshall talks about the impact of personalization on search engine results and search engine marketing.
Personalization of search results changes everything, but few search professionals are ready for the change. In this video, Mike lays out many widely used search marketing techniques that no longer work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxAye2hWk-c
This article presents the problem, but it does not present the solution. Being no technocrat, I am at a loss as to what to do but to continue contributing to Catholic Radio. Fortunately, KSMH AM 1620 keeps us in Sacramento informed. Immaculate Heart Radio is doing an excellent job but there is much more to do. Please support Catholic radio, folks!
I know Catholics who think they’re able to satisfy their Sunday Mass obligation by simply viewing an entire Mass on YouTube. In time most of the world’s Catholics may agree with them. The next step will be attending Mass by joining all your friends or millions of other Catholics on Facebook.
Keywords are very important in getting your site to appear higher in search results.
Also make use of Google Analytics (it’s free). It will show you the traffic sources for your site, and the keywords people used to conduct their search. I have found it imperative to always include keywords such as Catholic, Catholic Church, Catholic Christianity, Christian, etc.
Mike is on the right track about having quality links for your site or blog. However, the more quality sites you can get to link TO your site, the better you will appear in search results. Many search engines take sites linking to you in higher consideration than the sites you link to. Unfortunately, not all Catholic sites have any way to ask for a link to your site, but some do. Search those sites out. Many will link back to you, if you will link to them.
One quick way to see who is linking to you is to do a basic link search on Google. Just type the following in the search box: link:my.website.com (use your website url in place of my.website.com)
Very enlightening discussion—even for an old time communicator such as me. I think the organization that really needs to lead the way in this effort is the Communications Office of the U S Conference of Catholic Bishops, and they are, in fact, sponsoring seminars and training sessions around the country that are quite reasonable. But we have to step up the pace. Thanks for this sobering and insightful article, Matthew and thanks to all those who commented.
Dennis
Somebody needs to update the DMOZ directory’s Catholic section, which still has an effect on search results placement. Only for some reason it’s locked up. Anybody know who to contact?
I think the Vatican should invest in some SEM!
So true Matt, any pointers you could share with us fellow Catholic “interneters?” Thanks and God bless!
Margina
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www.CatholicSurf.com is the answer, they have a broad range of results weighted towards Catholic content.
Catholic Surf - The Catholic Search Engine
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