Greetings in Christ!

When you signed up, I mentioned that I would send an additional email here and there when there is news or additional info to share. This is one of those emails.

It's going to be a high-value email!

Here is what we are going to cover in this email:

• Appearing well in AI search.
• Church SEO checklist (one of the most high value things I offer - FREE!)
• A free backlink you can build
• Google Business Profile "Worship Services"
• Google Terms of Service
• Personal/Business News

Before we get into it, I suppose you expect a meme from me. So, here's your meme:

AI Search

AI search is growing - fast. The rate of adoption of AI, and using it to search, is almost unseen before. I've seen statistics that up to 10 percent of searchers are using AI search products like SearchGPT and Perplexity. (If you haven't used Perlexity, give it a try. It's pretty great!)

Because of that change in search behavior, many are wondering how to optimize for AI search.

And, the answer seems to be to optimize the way we have always optimized for search: content and external verification (like backlinks and reviews.)

I just asked Perplexity to suggest a church to attend in Door County. My church came up number 2:

​

[The number one slot went to a Pentecostal Rhema-associated church. That movement really takes SEO very seriously, so that's not terribly surprising to me! Plus, it's up in the tourist area of Door County, which I am not in. I serve down by the farmers and factory workers.]

I also asked ChatGPT, which has a local search module embedded in it, to ask me which churches I should attend in Door County. Once again, my church was number 2:

​

[The top church was a Roman Catholic church. Roman Catholic churches also typically have decent SEO, as there are many directories dedicated to RC churches that promote them.]

What does this tell me?

1 - The methods I teach work for AI search, by and large.

2 - I need to do some work on the AI side of things. I'm typically the top church in traditional search. There's obviously a (small) difference in AI search versus traditional search that needs to be optimized for. I'm working on it!

I'll be working on number 2 to see how we can get my church to bump up in AI search the one spot. When I figure it out, I'll tell you.

Until then, rest-assured that what I'm teaching you, and performing for you, is going to bode well for your church's appearance in AI search.

Checklist

Recently, I had a lot of people sign up through a form that doesn't give you my free SEO checklist for churches. That's not good, because it's super high-value. So, in case you haven't gotten it before, here it is: seo-checklist-churches.pdf​

Free Backlink

How does a backlink from Bible.com (DR 89 - super powerful!) sound? You can get a profile page, including a link, on Bible.com for free. Here is my church's profile:

This also lets you list your address and phone number, so it is a local citation, which is going to help you in the map results. (Make sure to have 100 percent Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) parity with your Google Business Profile!

You can get it by navigating to this page and going through the hoops: https://www.youversion.church/​

Once you build that link, you need to make sure that Google discovers it. The way you get Google to discover your links is to build links to your links. (I'm not kidding.)

Probably the easiest way to do that right now is just by posting about it on X, with the link included. Alternatively, you can put a link to your Bible.com profile on your church's Linktree (Linktree is a decent profile to have as a church!) or even on your church's website.

GBP Worship Services

I posted about this both on X and LinkedIn, but in case you didn't see it, I'll put it here, as well.

In December 2024, Google began rolling out options for churches to list their worship time on the Google Business Profiles. I saw this for the very first time in the wild this week:

Go and check your church's Google Business Profile now to see if you can add this! (If you haven't claimed and verified your GBP yet, now is the time to do so!) The more you fill out your GBP, the better your chances of Google serving it to others to discover your church.

Google Terms of Service

This week, Google sent out a bunch of reminders about the terms of service for their Google Business Profiles. It looked like this:

I am just here to remind you that Google does not make the law, and that (in my opinion) not following their TOS isn't a moral issue. Yes, it may be grounds for them to penalize you. But, there is a vanishingly small chance that you are going to get penalized for soliciting positive reviews, for example.

Just go and get those reviews, guys.

Personal / Business / Ministry News

This newsletter is over 100 subscribers! That's a milestone that I'm proud of. Thanks so much for subscribing. I hope that you find my content to be high value.

Success stories starting to roll in. I've been helping churches with their SEO for four months now, and so the success stories are starting to roll in. And, honestly, the successes are surprising me at how quickly they are happening. I haven't experienced such quick SEO successes in other niches. Here are some of them:

• One church in Wyoming started a brand new website in November. They followed my advice to a T and also purchased my baseline SEO package (the Stratospheric Package) and they are already on the first page of Google for their town.
• A church in Northern Illinois also purchased my Stratospheric Package, and they are at the top of both the map and link results for their town. That church was very diligent in following through on their side of things (getting Google reviews.)
• A church in Central Illinois utilized my services and followed my advice. Within weeks, they are in the map results and the number 2 link result for their town.
• A church in Tennessee purchased my premium package (the Orbital Package). Within weeks, their church moved into some of the top link results and map results for queries related to churches in their community.

Some Personal / Ministry Updates

Just want to share with you:

• I did a wedding recently for an LCMS seminarian. His now wife is a daughter of the congregation. Based on the guy's sem friends that showed up, we have some intelligent, good-looking, personable and fecund young men coming up in the ministry. These guys had pretty wives, and well, the fruits of those unions showed with a church chock full of small children. I would guess that's a trend outside the LCMS as well. I'm encouraged!
• In a couple weeks, I'll get to give the sermon at the Lutheran service on the West Point campus. Pretty excited about that!
• I'm starting to have inquiries for collaboration from some major players in the church tech niche. Pray that I have wisdom.

I want to personally thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. You are some of the earliest supporters of what I'm up to. Thanks for trusting me to give you information and/or provide services to you.

God's blessings, Pastor Chris Jackson "SEO Priest" ​chris@churchseo.io​ Subscribe Now for Free Not subscribed to the free Church SEO Shapeup Newsletter? Subscribe now. Get My Free Comprehensive Church SEO Checklist ​Get the checklist that will guide you to winning top search visibility. Completely free. Inexpensive 1-Page Church Websites Designed to make it easy for your church to get on the web. Check it out. Need Help With Your Church's SEO? I aim to give away all my SEO knowledge for free. However, if you need muscle to accomplish your church's SEO goals, here are a few ways I can help: ​Stratospheric SEO Package. This is a baseline SEO package designed to give your church name, address, and phone number across the internet and to boost your church's SEO power. It helps you show up better in map results. Start with this package. ​Orbital SEO Package. The Orbital SEO Package does everything in the Stratospheric Package and also optimizes your church's homepage and boosts your church website's authority. It will help you show up better in both the map results and the link results. This package offers powerful optimizations. ​

​