Unity Church Marketing

People have asked me if they were just starting out, should they do a website or a blog. My response is always immediate and to the point

If you can only do one, I would go with a blog over a website every time!

Websites have their place. And ideally, you would want them to complement each other, even be co-located in the same domain. I just am a believer that you can satisfy more with a blog than you can a website.

A recent study shows that blogs get 55% more visitors than a website!

I found that fact in a recent study done by Hubspot. It just validates my thinking of why a blog over a website. While the study is careful to say that the blogging didn’t cause the greater visitor count, the fact remains that they got more visitors. And if you are a church (or a business), don’t you want the most opportunities to get in from of your target audience?

If that is the only reason you have for doing a blog vs. a website, that would be adequate.

Blogs tend to generate more inbound links than websites!

Lots more! In fact, the study showed that blogs get an astounding 97% more inbound links than their counterpart. 

Why is that important you ask? Well, if you are a church and your marketing is on a fixed budget, you want every way possible to demonstrate to Google and other search engines that your site has veracity or what Google calls “authority” The more relevant inbound links you have, the higher you come up in the search engines. Naturally and without cost!

The by-product of that is that more links also provides more opportunities for you to be seen and have people visit you, which may account for that 55% more visitor number.

The study showed blogs had 434% more indexed pages than websites!

More indexed pages mean you have a higher chance of being seen in the search engines. Again cost effective marketing!

If you have a site with ten pages and no blog, you have ten chances to rank in search engines.  And you have probably focused on a few keywords to bring folks to your site.

Consider if have a blog with hundreds of posts (some with as few as 100 words, obviously some with more), you have hundreds of chances to rank.   You also have the opportunity to spread the keyword wealth around so to speak.

Many of the keywords you’ll rank for will get you one or two visits a month, but in the cumulative those will account for far more traffic than the high-traffic queries that a website might generate.

Other reasons why a blog over a website?

Because whether you know it or not, churches are in the relationship business! Websites don’t have that ability. It is pushing out of the corporate line. Since that line is seemingly rigid, it is pretty much a one way conversation. Most of them are static and too many of them are just old and outdated. 

Blogs are living organic creatures that invite people back to see what is new. You can discuss more easily (not saying you can’t have a discussion or forum on your website) topics. And there are more topics to discuss. Once people begin to interact with you, there is a better opportunity for them to get to understand what you and your church are all about.

In summary…

Blogs are very good complements to a website. However, there are a variety of reasons why if I could only do one, I would do a blog first. I believe that blogs can do everything a website can do and with far less maintenance. But the numbers don’t lie and if I had a way of attracting more visitors to my site and ultimately my church, you could rest assured that is the direction I would go.