Christian blog about church website design

What really makes a website live? People. That is the only answer. As in other domains of activity, a Christian website, in particular, since this is our topic here, is driven by people. If you have people reading your website, your posts, looking at what you have done lately, then everything is good. You have an audience. People come to your website, comment on it, speak about it, etc. If you don’t have an active site, where people come and discuss, then you are dead. Your website is dead actually.

Forums used to be the heart of such living communities. There are many Christian forums outthere, there are many Christian communities on the internet, where people meet and speak. Nowadays, forums are not that popular anymore since blogs became the thing to have.

Of course, as the trend required, many Christian blogs appeared so people had something to look at and to read. Enter my site, see my blog, comment on it. This is the way you should think. Make people comment on your website so you have some movement there. A website that has no movement on it, does not have a life of it’s own. You need it, your site needs it.

Think as a business man, actually. Do you know what can define a good manager? In my opinion, a  good manager is that one that can build a business that run without his presence. Here is the same case. You start a Christian website, make all the efforts to make it run by itself without you being present to write on it. Think smart, make your site build a life of it’s own, this way you will work less but with more results. This is how you should think. This is how you should act.

I always try to train myself to think like this. Do you?

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There last few days it was a bit curious for what happened around the internet. A lot of websites losing Page Rank, people getting mad or just laughing about this, but everybody was annoyed about this. And I can understand why. In the end you worked hard to have your site  as popular as possible and in the end you get yourself penalized.

Anyway, I was not penalized and I am happy about it. Or maybe I should have had PR 5 and I have been penalized to PR4 again who knows. Just joking…

The fact is that the PR is not a very important thing, even if you get some traffic increase because of the fact that it gets into the algorithm that is used to calculate the position in SERP. So indeed, if you have a higher PR, you rank better but it is not something that could take you on the first page from the 5th. No way, maybe you win a position or two but not much than this. Anyway, as far as I know, even the ads value is higher on a site with a higher PR, in the end you have a better considered website selling ads, so it is not the same like when selling ads on a low importance site.

My Christian site was not penalized, I am happy about it.  It may be because I don’t sell links, if this is the real reason behind the penalties. I try to make my site grow and earn money on a natural way, even if it is not always the most productive way of doing it. Selling links used to be a good way to earn money from your website, but not anymore. Or at least that is what is going around these days. I wonder what opinion a web directory owner would have.

If you have a web directory and your main way of making money with it is by selling links, how would you react about this penalties? It is a personal curiosity since I don’t operate web directories, I have not any and not the intention of having any on the short term.

The interesting part of this is the fact that the only reason or at least the main one, for entering a payed web directory would have been the PR value of that directory. When the PR went down, all web directories had to suffer since it hit them hard. I will have to ask somebody that operates such a directory.

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Today a not so pleasant thing happened with a lot of sites: the Google PR, the one that we love so much, decreased. A lot of respectable sites got the PR down to 4-5 from a PR of 7, I was astonished to see this and at the same time happy that we kept our PR. That means the Google likes Christian websites, or what? Or church design? Who knows, only Google.

However, the reasons are not clear, people wonder, everybody has an opinion, some believe that it is because of removing Google ads from their sites, others that is because G wanted to hit hard TLA, etc.Of course I have my own opinion, it is a normal thing, I think everybody is entitled to one as long as there is no official explanation, and mine is that they have removed those fast links coming to your site on a short term or those links coming from sites that looks like selling links, like if you would have bought those links. That is my opinion, I am entitled to it, I don’t argue about it, you are entitled to have your own.

That is about it. I told you, I am happy that my PR is still4 (I am happy that it is not 2 or 3, but I would  have hoped to get to 5)!

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Because I run this site that delivers free website templates for religious websites, I think about starting a new category here, Adobe Photoshop tutorials. I don’t know if I will find the time for it, but it sounds interesting. And this way, people downloading my templates will have some tutorials to read in order to customize the templates.

I don’t know if this is such a good idea since my target is not represented by designers, but by regular people wanting to start a Christian website and they don’t even own a Photoshop copy most of the times. I will think about it.

I am a designer, along with 10 other things so I can put up nice free Photoshop tutorials here in order to have a nice base of material to present to you, my visitors. You can trust my knowledge of Photoshop, I know my way around it.

What do you think, is this a good idea or should I let it for an other time?

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Did you see how many times searches similar to Christian singles, Christian single, Christian dating are performed? It made me think of the same thing I have posted here, about the fact that it is all about trust and nothing else. Ah, yes, I think there is more. Trust and expectations. great expectations.

People join communities that make them feel welcome, at home, communities that will help them get what they need. For this kind of services, for Christian dating, I mean, the idea is quite simple - it is clear that the expectations are great in the direction of meeting a Christian single that of course, share the same interest with you. The most important one, being a Christian is met by default due to the community specific.

We should all get together in such communities,  not only in dating ones, this is not what I mean, but instead of joining dating communities, which is not a bad thing if you are looking for your soul mate, but joining all kind of communities that may help you feel better as a person.

Of course, joining a community should be based on free consent, not on constraints, but sometimes, we may just need a small kick to start joining such communities.

However, I am not a big fan of these services, first of all maybe because I have never had the occasion to get there since I am happily married and I don’t have any interests in going to Christian dating sites. The only interest I had at one point was to build one but this is an other story for an other time…

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I was reading on Reuters, on their blog that in order to solve your website usability issues, 5 people will be enough. Well, they may be right about this. I think that it is a fair number, and 5 people looking at your site will do a great job. Just stay behind them and watch their mouse pointer to see what they do with it, how are they reacting to your website, etc.

You will have a nice surprise if you are willing to accept comments, than not all your ideas were that great. Really, everybody thinks in an other way than you, probably. What you may consider as a normal think may not be that “normal”. The hot spot of your (religious) website may be different than the one you imagined it would be.

Think that you have started a Christian website and you expect that all the people visiting your site do a specific action. But, instead, 80% of your visitors click on other things than where you expected. Why is that? Because you see your website in an other way than your visitors see it. Looking at your visitors mouse arrow is a good way to tell how they see it since the mouse pointer follow most of the times user’s visual trace, shows you where the user looks.

Ok, now the big problem in some cases will be to accept that what your testers will tell you and not react against their opinions.  You will probably have the tendency of explaining yourself to them and telling them why you have done one thing or an other, but you can not ignore the fact that they “saw” your Christian website in an other way that you imagined and this should make you wonder why.

5 people for 5 hours they say and it will be enough. I say that you should listen to at least 2 people about what they think about your site and you will gain good knowledge about it. Try it, it won’t hurt, this will be your first experience with real life feedback!

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I was thinking about what makes you buy anything from a site. Buying here means also to leave your email address or to come back next time, to remember the site itself, etc. What is that it makes you come back? Well, I think it all comes to trust. If you trust the site, if it gives you the feeling that the person writing articles there is an authority or if it gives you the feeling of a familiar community then you are hooked.

That is what makes you buy from a website. A Christian website, like mine for example, does the same thing. It sells you trust. It sells you the trust of representing a community that you are familiar with: Christian community. You visit my site because you know the values of Christianity, you buy from me because I am a Christian.

When you visit a website somewhere on the internet, you leave, most of the time, after a short while, without ever coming back to it. This is because it does not make you feel you could trust it for teaching you something valuable, for
giving you the information that you need.

But first, it is all about trusting the site.

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I was recently asked if I provide here catholic blog templates. Of course I provide catholic blog templates, I provide also orthodox blog templates, Lutheran blog templates, etc. All you need to do is look around and you will find something to fit your needs. If you don’t find exactly but you find a blog template that can be turned into a catholic one, keep in mind that it can be done easily, with no big effort.

Catholic blog templates or not, they can be easily adapted. What I want to say is that it is an art form, you can not do it mathematically, you should find what you think it suits you best and the CUSTOMIZE it. This is what I have tried to tell you since a long time: using a church blog template the way it is, is ok, but customizing it is what you should do since you need a custom solution, your church blog or your church website is something particular, not a generic software, or at least it should not be.

What we provide here is something that you should build your church website or church blog around. If you download a free catholic blog template for ex, or you purchase a premium one, don’t consider that you have the final design for your website. Please don’t! Consider customizing it since your website should be unique, not a duplicated one.

Consider this and again, since I have started this with catholic blog templates, if you don’t find a catholic blog template that you like, use one that is close to what you are looking for and…customize it.

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Or directly speaking: on my site, this one you are reading this article on.

One of the most important ways to grow the traffic of your website is by getting traffic from those keywords that are not searched that many times. Thus, they don’t have a big competition either. When you search for Christian MySpace layouts, due to the high number of searches, there is also a large competition, making it difficult for you to rank well for this. Maybe you are good, maybe you know your way around web. Well, in this case, I guess you already know what I am speaking/writing about here.

But for those interested in finding out, here it is: look into your statistics and see how people got to your website. Look for those longer search phrases that you are not sure you have blogged about. Test to see who sent you that visit. Let’s say Google sent you that visitor. Search on G and see…well you are on the 3rd page without intending to get there.

What does it mean? It means you have the potential for it, it means that if you make a small effort blogging about that particular search terms you may come closer to the first page. Maybe on the first page! And then what? Well, you gained visitors, plus the fact that you will probably generate other long tail terms. Look further,  am I right or what? You can easily find 3-4-5 search terms that you know for sure you have not blogged about but brought you at least one visitor.

As an example, let’s say you  blogged about Christian MySpace layouts and a few days ago about premade church flash templates. Due to a particular search you may find yourself ranked wel, let’s say on that 3rd page for premade Christian MySpace layouts. Just ask yourself, what would be the benefit of blogging right about premade Christian MySpace layouts? Will you make it to the first page or not?

I know I  use this technique a lot and it works well for me. I pick those long tail keywords from my Analytics account and I just blog about some of them and then the surprise comes: traffic, free, intended traffic from Google. Best traffic ever!

What do you say? Will you try it or not?

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What would be the best position in Google index? I guess there is only one answer: the first one!!! I want to be the first!!! Yes, indeed! I guess that the first position is almost all the time clicked. BUT: does it convert all the time?

Well, some of the internet marketers say that the best  position is the third one. Why? Well, it is simple: supposing you are searching for Christian MySpace layouts on the internet. You go to the firs page in G. Look, but maybe you want to look some more. Ok then, go to the second position. Now you are already  a bit  educated about what you are looking for.  Go to the third page…and  why not use one from here? Since you already have an experience with the first 2 pages, plus this one, 3.  More than this maybe it would be too much.

It is the same thing with music. Experts say that in a concert or on a CD or DVD, the most important songs are the first (since it opens the show with it so the people is waiting for it) and the third. On the second song it seems that people lose attention for a short while, after they payed attention to the first but come back to the third. Thus, put the best songs on the first and 3rd position.

I find it similar to the search engine index position. The third position seems to convert very well.

What do you think about it?

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