If you are running a retail business, you want original and fresh content on your website that has a lot of keywords and phrases your customers will search for. This helps you when people search for your business online. If I am looking for a place that sells wool suits, I am not going to put “polyester suits” into Google. Rather, I am going to type in “wool suits” and see what comes back. I might even try “the best wool suit brands.” Now, when I want to find something local that sells wool suits, I might type in “stores that sell wool suits in the Pittsburgh, PA area” or something similar.
Websites that have content with the words that fit my search criteria are going to come back as results. Since most people click on one of the first few results, you want your business at the top when someone performs a keyword search. Shared content, which is duplicate content found on more than one website, might cause a drop in page ranking for businesses. That means they might not be right at the top for any given search result. When you make your website, every word typed on it is supposed to help you get a high ranking in the results. This is SEO or search engine optimization. Businesses spend big money on specialty companies to get them ranked higher in the results than their competitors. Big companies pay for ads that get posted at the very top of search engine results for keywords and phrases.
Most church and ministry websites are not in competition with one another at all. The goal is to share the Gospel and let people have a way of finding the church and its various ministries online. Though there are many Church of God, Presbyterian, Methodist and other churches with similar names all around the world, people searching for a church online do not usually have a hard time finding what they are looking for unless the church or ministry website is devoid of any localization. Therefore, shared content is not a problem.
If you were in Washington, Pennsylvania and wanted to see if there was a Church of God church there, you would likely type into Google, “Church of God in Washington, PA.” Go ahead and try that if you like. You will find www.livingwatercog.com. It is a website we made for the church based on the WordPress content management software. It is filled with content that is shared on other websites yet it comes back at the very top of the search engine results.
People go there and read the content. They see the pictures. They read the other pages of the website to learn who the pastor is and what the church offers. The content shares the Gospel to the lost, teaches the word to those who are saved, and lets the community know where they are at and how to reach them. The fresh content, even though it is shared, keeps the website alive. This is how fresh shared content can help your church or ministry website reach the goals you want it to. Please see our church website content pages for more information.
