An hour of work to improve your Google search rankings

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you might have picked up on my opinion that…

…ranking high in Google search should be a top priority for churches and schools!

People devote their entire careers to hacking Google search rankings, so there’s no one silver bullet.

However…

There is one thing you can do this afternoon that can improve your rank.

Address your Orphan Pages

Yep, that’s a technical term​

Orphan Pages are pages that can’t be found during the natural process of navigating your public site.

These pages aren’t linked anywhere – not in your navigation, not in text, not on buttons.

Unless you have the direct link to a page like this, you won’t be able to find it.

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Examples:

• You still have your Christmas 2022 page built on your site but it’s no longer in the header or linked anywhere. It’s just chilling on the admin side.
• All the forms to apply for WI School Choice are hosted on a web page, but it’s unlisted to the public. You have the direct link saved in an email somewhere and you forward it to parents when they ask for it.
• You accidentally duplicated your Livestream page and didn’t notice. Now you have www.Church.com/livestream and www.Church.com/livestream-(1), but only the first one is linked in your navigation.

Google crawls your website to evaluate it. That’s how Google decides to show (or not show) your site to searchers. Google doesn’t like cluttered websites. Google loves a frictionless user experience that provides visitors with everything they could possibly need.

SO…

Go through each page you have and evaluate (in this order):

1. Is this page orphaned? If yes, carry on…
2. Is this a duplicate? If yes, delete. If no, carry on…
3. Do I need this page anymore? If no, delete. If yes, carry on…
4. Would it actively harm a visitor’s experience if this page was linked somewhere on my public site? If no, link it in the most logical place. If yes, keep it orphaned.

There are legitimate reasons to leave a page orphaned: You probably don’t need first-time web visitors to see sign-up forms for the meal after Pastor’s farewell service (hence Question #4).

Take care of your orphan pages and give Google some time to re-crawl your site. Check in a few weeks to see if your search results improved!