Thanks for joining us. Appreciate everyone being here. I will just introduce myself quick. If we have not met. My name is Jono, and I was a youth pastor for about 21 years. Started straight out of high school, 1998, went to Luther Rice Bible College here in Georgia. I was a good Baptist and went out to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Graduated in '06 with a Masters of Divinity.

Spent the next, up until 2020, spent all my time in youth ministry and now I am, full-time doing this. The reason I am not in student ministry anymore is because I chose to step out. I felt the Lord leading me into doing what we are doing now. I started a side business managing social media back in 2012, when we adopted our son from Ukraine. We already had four biological kids. My wife was home-schooling them. We added a fifth which I am not sure I recommend disrupting the birth order like we did, but that is another online seminar that I am not qualified to speak on. And we began managing social media for some of my friends who own businesses, just to make a little extra cash and, you know, buy food.

That grew into learning how to build websites. Cause some of those friends needed websites. Then that grew into search engine optimization, making those websites show up, because what good is a website, if no one can find it? There are billions of websites on the internet, billions of people ever day searching for those websites. So, you are not just going to automatically be the first one, because you think you should be. Then that grew into running some Google ads and stuff like that. By about 2018, that was my primary source of income. 2019 went part-time at the Church, raised up an intern and, he in 2020 took over for me and we still attend there, and I am just a volunteer now in the youth ministry where I used to be the youth pastor.

So that is a cool thing because there has been a lot of times where, you know, when you resigned as a youth pastor, there is no way you could have stayed at the Church. So, it is cool how all that worked out. COVID kind of help because I announced that I would be stepping down on March the 11th, 2020 and said we had two more weeks together, and then we did it. That was the Wednesday night that March madness was cancelled if you remember. That is when stuff started getting real. So, by the time youth group started meeting back, sometime in the summer, most of them had forgotten I was ever the youth pastor anyway. They were like, who is that guy with the beard? So, it allowed for us to stay there. My wife still leads a small group. My kids are in the youth ministry. So, life is good. Things are good. So now I work full time helping Churches. We do four things, and this is not a sales presentation.

I am just going to tell you what we do and why I'm the guy that can kind of talk about this. Certainly not the best, but we build websites for Churches and faith-based non-profits. Then we help make sure that they show up through search engine optimization, which I am going to refer to as SEO for the rest of this talk.

We also help Churches get the Google Grant because Google will give 501C3 non-profit organizations, including Churches, a $10,000 a month grant to spend on Google advertising. Then we manage social media for a lot of Churches. Some of that is just the day-to-day posting. We also have this Plan Your Visit Campaign that a starts with a Facebook ad and has some automated follow up through text messages, just reminding them to show up to Church on Sunday morning.

What we are here to talk about today is not a sales presentation. In fact, everything I am going to give you, you can do on your own, or you can assign someone if you are the lead pastor, you can tell someone else to do it because you are too busy to do this. But we are going to talk about how to show up in the Google Maps.

Now there is lots of things that we want to do in online marketing. I will use the term marketing, even though that feels a little bit weird using it in the Church and faith-based non-profit context. But when it comes to online, when it comes to getting the message out, that really is what we are doing.

We are getting the word out about your Church, about your organization. So, where we are going to start and what today is going to be about is all about SEO. Now you can get into things like pay per click, which that's Google ads like we talked about, then there are the retargeting efforts where just like, if you have gone and looked up green shirts on Amazon.

Then suddenly, when you go on Facebook, you are getting ads for green shirts. That is called retargeting. They are not reading your mind. They are just guessing, and they are just tracking you and following you. Then there are some online directories. Some of these are relevant, some of these are not. Things like Yelp.

You want to make sure on which you are listed. We will explain that later. Then there's social media advertising and then there's referrals. Obviously, you know, in Church world, referrals are just personal invites. Today we are just going to deal with search engine optimization.

When it comes to a local Church or a local faith-based organization. The more traffic that we can get to your website, the more people that see your profile on Google, the more calls you are going to get, the more visits you are going to get, the more forms are going to get filled out, the more interest is going to be shown, the more signups there's going to be for VBS. And you reach more people. So, this is going to take time. It is going to take some consistency, but not a ton of time, 30 minutes a week.

So, here is the question that we are going to answer: Do Google Maps matter? Google Maps, they really do not sound that important, I mean, when you, you hear me talking about Google Maps, you are thinking just like looking up directions and that is not what we are talking about.

We are going to change some of these numbers on the fly because I updated some of these numbers yesterday. These are the maps. These are the maps listings and when you search for something like best plumber near me, or best roofer near me, or best Mexican food near me. When you're looking for something like that, you're going to go to Google and you're going to search that phrase, best plumber near me, and the results you're going to get, whether it's on your phone or your desktop or your laptop or your iPad, whatever it is, these top three are what we call the map pack.

That is what we are going to refer to. Now we are going to scratch out that number. That should be 70 to 90%. That tells you just when we did this workshop last year, that it has grown to between 70 to 90% of Clicks and attention goes there. All right.

That is huge. You know that to be true because when you are looking for something, that is where you look, that is where your attention goes to. That is most people.

So, Google gives us a tool and lets us know how many people search certain phrases. What I wanted to show you is the phrase Church near me in Georgia, looking at the year 2022 on average, every month in Georgia Church near me was searched around 33,000 times.

That means somebody went on their mobile device or went on their laptop and searched Church near me, nearly 33,000 times. In Florida, it is about 67,000 times. So, I did not go through every state. I just looked at Georgia and Florida. I am just working to look at Massachusetts since Bob's in here.

I am curious to see how many searches happen in Massachusetts.

So, it is a little bit lower in Massachusetts. It is around 9,700 in Massachusetts. So obviously down here in the Bible belt, it is a little bit more and that influences that, but close to 10,000 people a month are searching the phrase Church near me. So, the reason this is important, the reason that Google Maps matters, the reason that we even want to talk about this is that this is where people are looking.

So, people are searching, and when they search Church near me, they are getting a set of three results. Now, most people when you are deciding on which one of these I'm going to go with, I'm going to look at reviews and we don't like to think that people do this with Churches as much, but psychologically the same way, if you're looking for the best steakhouse, you're going to look for one, that's got a lot of good reviews. You want someone that has got more than three reviews because that was the owner and his wife and his son. We are just programmed that way.

So, depending on our criteria, what denomination we are looking for the bottom line is that your Church needs to show up here because this is where the attention is going. If we know people are looking online for a Church, they are looking for a Church to attend, that is near them. Google tells us clearly that people are doing that.

 We know that close to 90% of people are going to choose one of the three that show up. Then it only makes sense that we have got to consider this. This is a gold mine for reaching new people. We cannot just ignore this. So yes, maps matter a hundred percent, maps do matter.

It was about three years ago, and I was still on staff at a Church. This was about 2018 or 2019. I was helping another Church with their website. The pastor came to me, and he showed me a picture of the three, the map pack, right. Or some people call it the local pack, but he said, how do we show up here?

Because he was searching for himself. He was searching Church near me. He was even searching the name of his Church and it was not showing up. In fact, all these weird Churches that he had never heard of were the ones showing up. Same thing happens at my house. If I search right here, standing here right now, the three Churches that come up near me, two of them, I have lived here all my life except moved away for a few years during seminary.

But there are two Churches that show up that I do not even know where they are. I could not find them. I have never heard of them. They are house Churches that somehow got picked up by Google, and the third one is the Methodist Church. That is a few miles away that has been around for 150 years, but I know that there are Churches locally that I know want to show up on maps and that are close to my house, and they are not showing up.

They are consistently not showing up in the maps. The question becomes what is going into these maps. There are a few changes that Google has made. Google is serving some paid ads in those map results now. So, if you are running Google ads, that can help you show up in the maps. Google local services that do not really affect you.

Here is something else you need to notice. Let me throw this in as a caveat, make sure that you are paying attention to your Google Business Profile. Let us just back up here. All of this is managed in what is called your Google Business Profile. Up until December, it was called Google My Business. So, Google changed things because for years and years and years, we all called it, Google My business.

Anyone can go in and suggest an edit. Okay. You have got to monitor this closely. You can go to someone's map’s location, and you can search someone's map entry or their map listing, and you can go in there and suggest an edit.

Depending on how many reviews you have left, Google has this system, this hierarchy of authority, as far as leaving reviews. I have left enough reviews where I am a level 6, trying to get to a level 7, kind of sounds like Illuminati or something. But I am a level 6 and you have got to leave a lot of reviews to get a level 6 and a lot of pictures.

But at level 6, Google really trusts you. So, I can go into a business and suggest an edit. I could change their name and Google will quickly, take my word for it and go ahead and change their name, because they trust me. When you get to level 7, if you go suggest an edit, it changes it immediately.

So, you know, if you can go in and mark a business closed permanently, you can go in and mark a Church closed permanently, and Google is going to think that you are closed on Sundays now. So, someone needs to have access to this. So, when we start working with Churches, a lot of times, the hardest thing to do is get access to this Google Business Profile because it was created by some staff member years ago.

We do not know where it is, or you have just never claimed it in the first place. If your Google Business Profile, if that is, when I say that you have no clue what I am talking about, then you need to go to business.google.com. That is the web address, business.google.com, and you need to log in with your Google account.

Usually that is a Gmail address, and you should see your Church. If you have claimed the listing, you should see your Church there. That is where you go to respond to reviews. That is where you go to update information. That is where you go to do posts. That is where you go to add pictures, all the things that we are going to talk about here in a minute, which is all managed at business.google.com.

You can also make those same changes in the Google Maps app on your mobile device. So, you can open the Google Maps app and make sure you are logged in to the user. If you are like me, you have multiple Google accounts. So, I have got to make sure that I am logged into the one that is attached to my Church's business profile, logged in there.

Now I can just look at my Church, Journey Church, the Church we attend, and I can go in there and edit directly and add pictures and posts and do everything directly inside of the Google Maps app. Now that just changed. There used to be a whole separate app for it. So, someone needs to keep an eye on this, not you as the lead pastor, but someone on your staff really should be paying attention to this because that is the first step. You have got to claim that.

So, if you would say we have never claimed that then what you need to do. If you do not own it, do not have access, you go to business.google.com. You cannot figure out who owns it. You do not have any control. Then go to google.com. Google your Church, go over to your maps listing, and you will see, in blueprint, it says own this. Do you own this business? You are going to click yes, and you are going to fill in some information. They are going to send a postcard to the Church with a five-digit code, and then you are going to go back to Google Maps or business.google.com.

Verify the location by entering that code. Now you are going to be the one that responds to reviews. You can add other users so you can add other staff members on your team, and they can go in and they can help you administrate that and handle all of that.

Google communicates by emails. If you get calls from Google, you will get these calls like, hey, your Google listing is about to expire. You need to know that is a lie. Google business listings, they are free. They do not expire. Google does not charge you and Google does not really call you about them. Google never calls.

If someone calls and says, hey, I am from Google. I am here to help you with your Google business listing. That is exactly how you know; they are not from Google. So, ignore those calls, but do not ignore emails that come from @google.com. Unless they are asking for money or something, you know, then you need to verify those. Google communicates by email, they are not going to send you a personal email unless you started a support ticket with them, but you will get emails from time to time saying, hey, are you closed on Good Friday? Is your office closed on Good Friday? Is your office closed on Thanksgiving? Are these hours up to date? So that just needs to be maintained.

Now let us talk about the top local pack finder factors. What I mean by this is these are the things that are important. These are the things that go in to showing up.

These things can change, but the question becomes, and like the pastor asked me, how do we show up there? It was funny because when the pastor asked me that, I am on Church staff at that time, and this was about 2018, 2019, I had been doing this stuff for about six years, and I must confess that until he asked me about that.

It never dawned on me. Hey, I should be doing this for my own Church. I was doing it for businesses. I was doing it for plumbers and antique shops and funeral homes. It never occurred to me to help make sure that my own Church was showing up in the map pack. Part of that, I guess is because again, I just always felt uneasy about trying to market the Church, but, you know, there is no difference in marketing the Church, and I mean, handing out flyers for events, putting up a VBS banner. That is marketing, and you do not have the hang up like I do, or like I did I am over it now. But marketing is not a dirty word. So, I began to work on our own Church's profile, making sure that we show up, but it was almost embarrassing that it never had occurred to me that I should be doing this for my own Church.

And so, I cannot help, but think that there is a lot of you are watching because you're obviously interested in this. But I am sure there are a lot of Church leaders out there and this has just never occurred to them that it is important to show up in maps and I do not think this pastor that had asked me about it had done the research to know that 30,000 people a month in Georgia were searching Church near me.

Now, obviously all of those were not in driving distance of his Church or mine, but a good chunk is, and we do not want to miss those. I do not think he had done that research. He just was like, hey, I want to show up in maps. I want people to know. I want it to be easy to find us. And if someone is looking for a Church, I want to be in the top of the list.

And so, I am assuming that's YouTube because your Church is a good solid Church. And there are a lot of not so solid Churches around. And so, if people are looking for a good solid Church to go hear the word being taught and go fellowship and worship together, then we want to make sure, and that's part of our mission at Faithworks is to make sure that those are the Churches that are showing up on Google.

So, lots of things go into this. Lots of things are a factor in showing up. It is not just any one thing. So, some nerdy SEO guys got together and were surveyed and kind of compiled the results and took everybody's answers and kind of weighted their answers and a great organization named Whitespark, they are SEO geniuses, they published this.

So, we are sharing Whitespark's work here. I did not do this study myself. The top fifteen things that help you show up in the top three, these are the things that are the most important. The first one being your primary Google Business Profile category. Now that is easy for Churches. But if you are a faith-based non-profit, then that could get a little bit trickier.

You have got to make sure that you make your primary category, it needs to be Church. It needs to be, the big one. So, if you are a faith-based organization or a non-profit that works in education, then education should be the primary category there.

So, back to these top-ranking factors. This is how you show up in the map pack. Keywords in your Google Business Profile title. That is easy. If the word Church is in your name, then you have got that one taken care of. Now the third one, this is interesting, proximity of address to the point of search.

So, your Church has a physical address, and now this can get even dicier. Some of the Churches we work with, they have their office one place, and it is verified. That is where Google has been listed on the map, but they meet in a school seven, eight miles away. So, the results are based off their verified location of their office.

Now, if your offices and your Church is all the same deal and it is verified at that one location, then that is great. But regardless the proximity of the address to the point of the person searching, meaning if the person is thirty miles away from you in another county and searches Church near me, then you are not showing up.

Sometimes in fact, you rarely will show up outside of your own zip code. If there are so few Churches, if you are a real niche, unique non-profit with a unique mission then there may not be enough in that zip code to where Google does have to pull. You know but you know, in the secular world, if you are a roofer, you know, there's room for so many roofers, you know, you are not showing up outside of your zip code because there is a billion, all right, Churches, your kind of the same way.

There is a lot of Churches. Now. There is also a lot of Churches who are doing nothing to try to show up on Google. And Google knows that. And Google wants you to care about Google and Google can tell if you care about Google. And so, if they see that you are doing some things and showing them some love, and you are expressing your love for Google, then they are going to reward that.

And let me just make one more comment on the proximity of the address. That also means that if you Google Church near me, sitting in the Church parking lot, assuming that the Church address is verified.

If that is the case. And let me speak to that, because that may be some of the boat that you are in is your, your Church office is the verified location because you meet in a school, and you cannot exactly verify the school as your Church. There is not much you can do with that, because proximity is important.

However, it is not the only deal, so you can make sure to do all the other things. And we are going to tell you about those just a second. You make sure you do some of the other things and that is going to help expand your footprint in Google. And so, if you hopped in your car and search Church near me in your Church parking lot, you should be in that top three, along with a few others.

And then you drive a mile down the road and pull over because you are not going to Google and drive. And search Church near me again, you should get a separate set of results. Hopefully, you are in that. In fact, I would encourage you. You should try that tonight on your way home from the Church office, if that is where you are right now, pull over every mile or two, depending on how far your ride is home.

I mean, if it is a 40-mile drive, you do not need to pull over twenty times, but just a few times on your way home, pull over, Google Churches near me, and you will see that you get a separate set of results. So, a lot of times people are like, hey, I want to show up number one. Well, okay. Number one where, because number one right here is completely different than number one, half a mile away.

What we have got to do is play Google's game and show them so much love that they make us number one, two or three, and that expands as time goes on. So, this is a slow-moving ship, and you have got to be consistent at this, but if you will carve out 30 minutes a week even or have someone on your staff carve out 30 minutes a week to do a few things that I am going to tell you in just a second.

Again, we are giving it to you free. This is good stuff. And I promise if you do some of this, it will work for you and you never need to pay a guy like me to do it for you, unless you just do not have the time or, or want to do it, but you can totally do this yourself. Cause it is not, it is not difficult. It is simply challenging work because it takes time.

Proximity to your physical location is important. All right. I think I have made that clear physical address in the city of search. So, if I am in a city called Loganville Georgia. So, if I search Church near me, my results are going to be Churches in Loganville, Georgia that are closer to me.

Additional Google, my business categories. What happens is a lot of times when people set up their profile, they do the Church category, but you will notice there is a lot of categories, sub-categories you can put in there. But you are in a hurry. You do not really understand this. You are just trying to get this set up.

And so, you breeze past that and never go back and add those additional categories. So, one of the first things that we do, and one of the first things I would recommend you do is go back to your categories and add anything that fits. Now it is a little trickier for a Church, but if you have a preschool, at your Church, then add that. If you have a student ministry, then go add, you know teenage programs, you know, and you can even do custom ones and just type out, describe it however you want. Children's programs, children's ministry, children's activities. If you have stuff, you know, produce everything that you offer. If you have got, you know, addiction recovery programs at your Church make a subcategory, addiction recovery, so you're just telling Google, we offer addiction recovery help here at Journey Church so that when people Google addiction recovery near me, Google knows, oh, Journey Church told us they have an addiction recovery program and they call it Celebrate Recovery. Let us show them in the results. We are just sending signals to Google where we are, who we are and what we do.

So those additional Google categories are important. So, I would encourage you to go check out your profile and add some categories. Now the next one. Quality authority of inbound links to your domain. Search engine optimization, a lot of this rises and falls on authority. Google wants you to have authority.

And the way that you gain authority in Google's eyes is that if you have a good solid website, then that that should mean that other websites link to you. So, what you want is other authoritative websites to link to your website. In my case, every time we build a website, what do I do?

I put a little link down there, built by Faithworks Marketing to my site. So those are links. And those tell Google that I have some authority. One of the biggest things I did was join the chamber of commerce and our chamber of commerce, lets us set up a profile on their website. And Google loves local websites like local newspapers and local chambers of commerce.

And those are high authority websites. And so now I have a link to Faithworks Marketing on the chamber of commerce website and that moved the needle. Okay. So, you want to get links to your website. If you support a non-profit, then ask them to put a link on your website. That is just going to help get your message out and help more people find you.

It is not shady. All right. This is white glove, harmless practices. Join the chamber of commerce. Get that link. If the newspaper does an article about something going on at your Church, make sure that they put it on their, they are going to put it on their website version of their paper, but ask them specifically to link to your Church website from that news article.

Then there's other ways to go about that. There are directories. Make sure that you have a free profile on Better Business Bureau. Make sure that you have got your profile set up properly on Yelp. Now, Yelp is going to call you and ask you to spend thousands of dollars a month advertising, just ignore those calls but get your free profile anywhere you can set up a free profile, Better Business Bureau, yellowpages.com, White Pages.

You know, all those places get those free links because that is going to give some authority and Google pays attention to that. All right. Keywords in native Google reviews. Google reviews are vastly important in you ranking. Okay. Probably it should be moved up on this list by now, honestly, but what I would say to you is in your Church, and again, it feels weird, but what I would do, what we do at our Church is it's just in one of the announcement slides like, hey, if you enjoyed your trip, if you enjoyed your visit today, tell somebody about it on Google.

Then we have got a QR code that takes them to our Google Business Profile. And we ask our members to leave a review. Not because we just want to look impressive, but because we know that Google will show us more on the maps if we get Google reviews. So, ask your members for reviews. Now do not just do it one time, this Sunday and get a hundred reviews and never do it again.

That is going to raise some flags. What you need to do is just get in a nice little rhythm to where you can get a couple of reviews a week. That would be amazing. And in those reviews, ask them to mention what they love about the Church. Somehow communicate. If you love the student ministry, talk about, you know, my teenager loves coming to youth group on Wednesday nights, they get encouragement. They play games, whatever it is, there's free pizza, you know, describe what is going on in the review. If it is the children's ministry that they love, if it is the preaching, get them to say the word we love our Church. We want Church to show up in those Google reviews.

Okay. We want them to leave you five-star reviews. You really do not want below a 4.7. And so, everybody is going to get a couple of bad reviews, that happens. But I do not eat at a restaurant that has got a 4.6 personally, just because I know how these reviews work and I am not saying I would not go to a Church that has a 4.5 rating, but it is simply better for all of us.

If you keep it above a 4.7. One of the things I want to mention here, completeness of your Google business listing. That is important. You get 750 words to describe your Church. I see time after time after time, Churches just copy and paste their mission statement in there, which is, you know, 250 words, go fill it out.

Go use all 750 words. Okay. Talk about your student ministry. Talk about your children's ministry. Talk about Sunday mornings. Talk about everything that is important to you. But fill out all 750 words, because remember, we are just trying to remind Google that we love them. Okay. We do not, but we are just trying to let them know that we understand their importance and they run the world and it is just, it is their world.

We are just living in it; they make up their own rules and we must play by their rules. And so, if we want to show up, we have got to do some of this stuff. Okay. So, make sure that you are doing that.

I want to answer a question. Bob had a good question. He said, our Church recently changed locations. So, I updated the location this morning and the new location shows up as corrected, however the Google Maps physical address on the dropdown menu has the old location. I hope that makes sense. So, the pin is in the correct spot, which is important. Let me just say that I have been reading several articles recently about how the pin being in the wrong spot can really hurt you more than it used to.

So that is good. You have the pin in the right spot. The business profile lists the correct address, but the dropdown menu on the map listing is the former address. Do I need to just wait a few days for this to be updated? So that would be yes. Google is a slow-moving ship. They are a business that did not figure out and during COVID how to telework remarkably, they were a business that just could not do that.

So, they are still running on a skeleton crew in a lot of ways. So, what I would say is, yes, give it three days. If you are still seeing that on Friday. Shoot me an email at jono@faithworksmarketing.com and I will help you investigate that for free. You know, no charge because that would help me learn more about what is going on with that.

So, if you do not get a resolution in the next few days, in fact, either way email me or let me know, like, hey, it took a couple of days, but now it is fixed. I am not a hundred percent sure when you are talking about the dropdown. You are talking about when you are on maps.google.com when you are in the maps app and you start searching and there is a dropdown, the pre-populated address is that the one that's still kind of, that is still wrong.

Yes. Okay. Yes. I can totally see that taken a couple of days to propagate. So, if it is showing, when you log into business.google.com, the pins in the right place and you have put the right address. Then yes, you are in decent shape. It is just going to; the dust has just got to settle.

Now here is something to think about though. One of the things that is going to raise red flags for Google, is, if you do not change that other place on the internet, Google wants your name, address, and phone number the same across the internet. And so, you have already done this, but change it on Facebook.

If it is on Twitter, change it on Twitter, change it on Instagram. If you're listed on any directories you know, a denominational website, you've got an entry on your denominational website or you're members of any Church planning networks or Southern Baptist Convention or anything like that, chamber of commerce, you need to go change those there too, because when Google starts seeing mismatched what we've seen a lot is, if you change it on Google and all those others, you know, let's say you're listed 10, 12 times other places on the internet. Occasionally, we will see Google, go revert your Google profile back to the ones that are listed elsewhere on the internet. I collaborated with a roofer one time who his phone number kept changing and we would go in and make it the right number and then it would change back. And we finally figured out that Better Business Bureau had the wrong phone number and Google was taking Better Business Bureau's word for it more than they would listen to us, even though we are typing it in.

Okay. So that is what I mean. You have got to keep an eye on it and just make sure that it is consistent across the internet. So, make sure you change that in other places. Okay. You are not spamming lots.

Top ten things that could really hurt you, incorrect business category. You are not going to struggle with that, that much.

Listing detected at a false business address. You are not lying about your business. But I would say that if Google got confused as to, if you had a listing at the school you meet at and you have a listing at your offices and Google gets starts getting confused, that could start to hurt you.

Okay. So, you only want one in one place. Do not use a PO Box or UPS mailbox, et cetera. You know, a lot of people used to do that. Make sure your website does not have any malware on it. Try not to get any negative reviews. If you do get a negative review, make sure that you respond to it. It cannot hurt you to only have a couple of reviews.

That is why I say it is important to get some reviews, get multiple reviews. And one thing that could hurt Churches. And honestly, I do not have an effective way for you to manage this. But let us say that you are letting another smaller congregation, you know our Church hosted a Hispanic congregation for a couple of years.

Okay. Now, if they got verified at your location, and now you have two Churches at the same address, it is going to hurt you both. So, it is one of those things where, you know, they may or may not do it, but I would just be careful with that because it would end up shooting you both in the foot.

If you let a congregation, that is using your facility verify themselves. Okay. Now let us talk about quick. Let us talk about conversion factors and I am not talking about a faith conversion. Okay. Pastor joke there. What we are talking about is the conversion from, I see the three listings in the maps and deciding on which one I am going to click on and convert to.

Now I am a much warmer prospect or a lead, or I am much more connected now. So, I am converting from just the viewer to somebody who is now assessing whether I am going to visit your Church, whether I am not going to donate to your non-profit, whether I am going to volunteer with your non-profit.

Okay. So, here is some of the things that assist, not in showing up. But getting them to convert and engage with your organization. Having a high numerical Google rating. So having more than five. Okay. So having a lot of Google reviews helps. Having a lot of positive reviews in the text having, you know, well-written not just somebody gave you five stars and then skipped out, but people writing reviews in the text of the review and giving some detail, even adding a picture that helps.

Okay. I am sorry. So, this top one should be, the four to five stars. Okay. I misspoke there. This third one is how having a lot of reviews. Okay. So, you want to have a high number of reviews. Okay. And then we get in here into the proximity of the address because of course they care how far they are going to have to drive.

Some people believe some of these guys say that having the messaging feature enabled matters. I do not know that that is important, but I would say these top, these top four, which really come down to reviews with three of the four come down to reviews. So as far as making your profile show up in searches, and then actually having people respond to those reviews are paramount and they get increasingly important by the day.

It is no different than if you are looking for a restaurant, all right.

So, we want to make sure that we optimize the heck out of your Google business listing. So, if you have not claimed that this is a recap, if you have not claimed it, go ahead, and claim it. If you go to your profile, you will sometimes you will get this prompt. It will say, do you know this place? So, you could go ahead and answer those questions.

Now, sometimes people are going to ask questions. Do you offer childcare? Do you have an interpreter for the hearing impaired? Okay. Some people will ask those questions. If you get an email from Google saying, hey, so this, you know, Bob asked if you have an interpreter for the hearing impaired, you need to go answer that question that people ask. You can also go check some boxes, you know, like we have wheelchair accessible ramp, we have wheelchair accessible bathrooms, all of those things make sure that Google knows all of those descriptions, all of those, they have a unique term for that, that just slipped my mind, but make sure that they know everything that you have to offer.

But the other thing that you can do is you can go in and you will see, ask a question. So, if there are some questions you want to go ahead and already answer it, that is not a bad idea. If you have, if you have an interpreter for the hearing impaired, go ahead and ask the question. Does Journey Church have an interpreter for the hearing impaired and then answer your own question.

Yes, we do. Answer that however you want. Okay. So go ahead and seed this by asking some questions and then answering them yourself. Okay. Like we said, completely fill it out, use all those words, use the additional categories use all the words, services, and products. You do not have any products.

Do not worry about that. Make sure that your main category is the big one. You could even add a welcome video in there. You could talk about why your Church stands out versus the competition. Give a quick history. What I want to highlight here is make the first sentence count because only about 16 to 20 words, show up in the preview.

So, make sure those count. Okay. Now when you go to business.google.com, I just want to show you quick. If you log in to your Google Business Profile and click over here on info. You can see, add a photo.

So go in there and add some photos, but you can also add videos. I think a great idea for you as the pastor would be to record a two-minute welcome video or one minute welcome video and upload there. Have the student pastor do that, have the children's pastor do that.

And so, because people are going to look at those, the other thing right there to the left is create a post. What I would encourage you to do these are not as important as they used to be, but it still sends signals to Google, which is what we are trying to do. But not only can you add photos, but you can also create posts, and these are like social media posts.

They feel like that. You can add a photo and then you can add a caption and talk about it. There are diverse types. There is a what is new, which is kind of, social media posts. So, if your Church just served out in the community and you have a good picture of it, put that out there and, and describe the picture, just whatever you do you cannot put a phone number in that.

So do not put your phone number in there. You can add a button for your web address. Okay. There's also COVID updates. Google loves it when you update them about COVID. So, if you have got any COVID news, make sure that you let Google know. You can also create events inside of Google. So, there's event type posts.

So, if you have vacation Bible school or you are doing a sports camp or whatever it is, go in there and create an event. And again, we are just letting Google know what is going on. We are sending them signals, let them know what is going on, let them know that we love them.

And they are going to reward you for that. Okay.

You can also go look at your insights. If you are a nerd like me and you, like some of this data, you can see how many people viewed your profile and then how many people did something. Google will tell you how many people went from your website or from your Google profile to your website.

This is not your total visitors to your website. It is just how many came from the Google profile to your website. For Churches, it is going to be important to see how many people requested directions. Not all of those are obviously new people. Some people just cannot remember how to get there, and they are looking for the fastest route to avoid some traffic, whatever.

Google will tell you how many people visited the website, how many people requested directions and how many people called you and that's invaluable information. And as you work on the profile and do those posts and get some links and clean up your website, make sure your website's super fast make sure that your website looks good on a mobile device.

Makes sure it is looks good on a phone because that is where about 75%, 80% of people are going to be viewing your website and make sure it looks good there, Google takes all that into consideration. And as you get those things cleaned up and get those things right, you are going to begin to see visits to your website, go up, you are going to see web traffic go up and you are going to see request directions, go up. You are going to get more phone calls. And that is the whole goal here in the end is that we play Google's game. We get everything nice and clean and just how Google likes it so that they will tell more people about our Church so that those people, those 33,000 people in Georgia who are looking for a Church every month.

When they search Church near me, the best of the best is going to show up. And that you would be one of those. You can go in there, upload the photos, do it on a consistent basis. I would say at least post, you know, we say every 90 days, honestly, if you got somebody who would do it once a week, go for that.

I prefer to do it once a month, but at the least do it every quarter. Okay. Make sure you respond to reviews, do not just be happy that you got a Google review, make sure that you go in there and thank them for the review, answer the questions that get posted.

And like we said, a minute ago, make sure that those counts. We have already touched on this, your name, address, and phone number. Make sure that those get dealt with if you wanted to go list your website, get some useful links, some good solid links. Here is a few, obviously your Google profile go to maps.apple.com.

Make sure you are showing up on maps because a lot of people with iPhones like me use the Apple Maps app, because it buzzes my watch, and I do not forget to make as many turns. So, you have got to get verified on Apple Maps, and it requires a phone verification. So, there is some hoops you have got to jump through.

You have got to have apple ID. You have already got Facebook. Make sure that everything is correct on Bing, it is called Bing Places. Go check Yelp. Go to foursquare.com, they are an aggregator. If you have a listing on there, they will send it out to a lot of other places.

So that can get you some solid links. Go to Better Business Bureau. Go to the local.yahoo.com. MapQuest. Yes, it is still a thing. And it is still a valuable link to have. Yellow pages.com. Yes. It is still a thing still a valuable link to have. And the other one I would add to that is one I mentioned earlier, go back to your chamber of commerce.

If you have not joined the chamber of commerce, it is a few hundred bucks a year in my county and it is well worth it, well worth the connections. Opportunities to be out in the community. And that link, honestly, I would pay $300 a year just to have that link and never go to a chamber event, but I do, I love my chamber.

It is great chamber of commerce. Ask every member for a Google review. Like I said, be creative with that. Probably do not want to work it into the announcements all the time. I understand that. But if it could just be somewhere, even a QR code, everybody is used to QR codes now with COVID just, hey, leave us a review and you will have to explain why it is important.

So, you do not feel like a restaurant or something, but people are used to leaving reviews. People know that reviews are important, and people read reviews. So, it is not, much of a stretch for people to understand that a Church needs reviews too. There are some automated tools you can use.

You can put it on the screen, you can do a printed card. You know, there is all kinds of ways to do that, but just build it into the culture.

Then finally make sure that your website, looks good on a phone. Figure out important keywords, and in most cases, which is going to be Church near me. So, we want to make sure that we have that phrase somewhere on our website, church near you. We are a great Church near you in Atlanta, Georgia. And make sure that you have specific pages for your children's ministry. Make sure that you have a specific page that is all about student ministry.

If you have got a fun calendar set up for the kids, this summer build a page on your website, that is all about fun three things for kids in Tampa, Florida, this summer, and Google is going to notice that. So, you want to build out pages that speak to things that people are going to be searching.

All right. And look, you know, like I said, this is not a sales pitch, but if you do need some help, you have questions. You are looking for some help with this, my information's there. You can go to faithworks.link/discovery. We schedule a 20-minute one-on-one, and I am not going to pressure you or anything like that. I will just answer your questions. You will walk away with some good free advice. I love talking about this stuff. I love helping. If one day we can help you and, you have some budget for it, then cool. We will work together.

But that is not a stipulation. We just want to help Churches, want to advance the kingdom, and we feel like we are good at online stuff. So, we want to help you as much as possible.

That is everything that I wanted to share with you today. I appreciate you being here.

Thanks, Bob. Thanks for your encouragement. And if I can ever help you in any way, you have my email, you know, where to find me, just reach out and we will help you in any way that we can. So, thanks again for being here and God bless you. We will talk to you soon.