What is the best way to bring visitors in our community to our site?

• A very good question! Some search engines go out on the Internet to find new sites and will place them in their system. This process takes 30 to 90 days. However, it makes a big difference how you have your site set up to help them find the key words you want visitors to associate with your website. I would suggest making a list of 20 to 50 "Key Words" and I will place those key words in a special marker called "meta tags" or "meta data" where the search engines can find them.
  
• Tips on Key Words:

1. Location Key Words... When it comes to your site, "location, location, location..." is very important. For example, if you want people who move into your area to find your website, you need to use some location key words...

Example: Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Texas, TX, 76017, Rolling Hills (community), Jackson County

Any word that describes where you are located and the surrounding area is a good key word. Location Key Words will most likely be your most important Key Words for people to come to your site.

2. Subject Key Words... For example, faith, salvation, baptism, baptize, heaven, etc.

3. Name Key Words... For example, Church, Christ, God, etc.

4. Phrases are sometimes even better. After you choose 20 to 50 Key Words, try to select 7 to 15 phrases that would best describe your site. One that most of us will use is: Church of Christ... However, there are thousands of Churches of Christ listed on the Internet, so in addition to Church of Christ, choose other phrases that describe the congregation you attend.

• A combination of these Key Words and Phrases will narrow the search down to a location, subject matter and name recognition so that your website will be displayed.
  
• Not all search engines do the above, and there are over 1,000 search engines available on the Internet. The best (but not practical) way is to manually go and contact each search engine by way of the Internet and manually fill out their forms so your site will be listed on their search engine. However, to keep things current, updated and near the top of their list, you would need to do this every month. By the time you completed some their forms, you would need to start all over again :-) You may want to select the most popular 3 to 5 search engines and do this on a monthly basis.
  
  • The major search engines reported by StatMarket are: 
    
    1. Google
    2. Yahoo
    3. MSN
    4. AOL
    5. Go Network
    6. Excite
    7. AltaVista
    8. Lycos
    • These top rated services represent 96.71% of the total search engine queries per day, or approximately 308 out of 319 million queries per day (as of December 2002).
      
• Prepare a key word / phrase list and email it to me at gospel@newtestamentchurch.org, and I will place those words as meta tags on your site. This is at no extra charge.
  
• I am purchasing a fairly sophisticated software program that will register you with the top 150 search engines and also give you a report of where you are rated on their lists. If you want me to keep you current on a monthly basis and send you your monthly rating, I can do that for you for an additional $12.00 /mo. (Sorry, but this program is costly and still takes time to implement.) This is not required, but I wanted to let you know that it is available.