Public Sample of the
Evangelism By Search Engine - The Complete Series
This is a sample of the tutorials contained in the BA-02 Effective Online Ministries Course. This example discusses how to use search engines for evangelism.
Search engines match up people seeking something about faith with the information that is stored on the Internet. In other words, we have a really big bunch of people proactively searching for something about faith among a really big bunch of information that search engines can sift through, accurately, in milliseconds. Plus, we are compelled in numerous places in the New Testament to tell the good news whenever an opportunity to do so presents itself. It seems like the scripture and technology presents a pretty compelling case to use search engines for telling an evangelical message; to use the Internet culture to share the gospel with people who are already searching for something related to faith. Evangelism by search engine
The Online Ministries Community Blog published an eight-part series on how to use search engines for evangelism. Show below are the titles and abstracts of each posting in the series.To read the full text of the blog, click on the title of each posting.
To add comments and discussion and participate in all of the community's features and functions, please click here to register into this community.
|
Apr 30 |
Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 1 - The Mission |
Abstract:
Search engines match up people seeking something about faith with the information that is stored on the Internet. In other words, we have a really big bunch of people proactively search for something about faith among a really big bunch of information that search engines can sift through, accurately, in milliseconds. Plus, we are compelled in numerous places in the New Testament to tell the good news whenever an opportunity to do so presents itself. It seems like the scripture and technology presents a pretty compelling case to use search engines for telling an evangelical message; to use the Internet culture to share the gospel with people who are already searching for something related to faith. Evangelism by search engine!
|
May 01 |
Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 2 - Basic Requirements |
Abstract:
In order to do Evangelism by Search Engine, we first have to have web pages that can be found, crawled and entered into the search engines’ indexes that are used for searching. If we don’t, our web pages and even whole websites are “non-entities” in any search; our pages and sites can’t be presented to users because they are missing from the indexes. Today’s blog posting will address the most basic of requirements for doing Evangelism by Search Engine: having a website and making its pages “crawlable” in order to feed the indexes of the search engines.
|
May 06 |
Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 3 - Getting Your Pages Found |
Abstract:
I’ve written about viewing your church’s website, not in simple tactical terms but, instead, about using your website asset as a missional tool for evangelism; harnessing the Internet culture and addressing it on its terms. I have also written about the very basic steps of having a website and making sure that all of your content can be found and can be searched by the search engines’ crawlers. The next step in today’s blog posting is almost as equally basic; getting you pages found once they are in the search engines’ indexes. You want your pages shown on the search engines’ results pages AND clicked on by users, so they actually visit your site.
|
May 08 |
Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 4 - Off-Page SEO Factors |
Abstract:
In Part 3 of this series, I wrote about the two different methods that most modern search engines use to rank search results: (1) on-page factors; and (2) off-page factors. In Part 3, I also covered details about how the on-page factors work. In today’s blog posting, I am going to write about off-page factors used in ranking pages shown in search results and how they can be used to improve greatly search results for end users as well as the websites that do basic SEO processes.
|
May 10 |
Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 5 - Applying Best Practices |
Abstract:
In the previous blog postings in this series, I have written about the concept of doing evangelism by search engine, search engine optimization, its theory of operations and recommended best practices. In today’s posting, I am going to write about how to apply all of these practices in a simple, practical, real-world scenario in order to provide a working example that you can follow if you are new to SEO.
|
May 24 |
Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 6 - Local Search and Hyperlocal Sites |
Abstract:
Today, I will be picking up this series where I left off ten days ago writing about Evangelism by Search Engine. I want to write about an often overlooked aspect of the use of search engines by churches and ministries: “local search” and "hyperlocal sites." If you are a local church, serving the people in your parish well is one of the most important things your website can do. Therefore, making your site easy to find by these, the most important of your visitors, is a very important task for any webmaster.
|
May 27 |
Evangelism by Search Engine - Part 7 - PPC Ads |
Abstract:
In today’s blog posting, I am going to write about pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. With PPC advertising, you don’t have to wait to earn your search engine results page (SEPR) positions; you buy them! Because you purchase your position, you have a high degree of control over when and where your content appears in the SERPs. Also, your results can be immediate instead of having to wait for you organic page rankings to climb; you get immediate gratification for the money you invest in PPC advertising. PPC ads provide opportunities for churches to extend their evangelism-by-search-engine strategies very quickly beyond what they can reach by organic tactics alone.
|
May 30 |
Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 8 – An Ecology of Content |
Abstract:
In this series “Evangelism by Search Engine,” I hope you have seen that websites are not monoliths or hierarchies. Information on the pages in your website does not exist in isolation. There is an “ecology of content” where visitors interact with web pages within the environment of your website. Everything is interlinked; each page is an individual unit but is also interdependent with other pages and creates synergy among the whole! The resulting ecosystem of content is a gestalt of wholeness in form, but one that is made up of freestanding piece parts of hypermedia. Visitors, as they flow from page to page, aggregate the values of individual behaviors and interactions.
Sections |
Registering |
