EP255 - TCD Sidekick TAKEOVER

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast. We're doing another bonus episode here as we're doing a podcast takeover. The Church Digital Podcast Network, TCD Podcast Network, is taking over my show every Thursday, and we're featuring a new podcast, a new episode from one of those shows every week. And this week, well, y'all probably know him. He's not necessarily new. He's been around for a long time, to be honest. He's older than me. We were featuring Tom Pounder. Tom Pounder's been a digital pastor, has been around. Even when I started the Church Digital, he was already doing some of the stuff with YM Sidekick, your ministry sidekick, and YM Sidekick Podcast. And so he, to be honest, Tom was the first guy to really reach out to me when I started the Church Digital.

And it was awesome building this relationship over the years and seeing how things have developed in ministry for him. And we are excited. About a year ago, we brought him, maybe a year and a half ago, we brought him on board the Church Digital. And so as a matter of fact, right now, he is the content director for the Church Digital. And super excited to have him in that role and bringing TCD Sidekick now into play and letting Tom do ministry and helping platform him through what we're doing with the Church Digital. Super excited to see that and super excited to bring Tom, TCD Sidekick here onto the podcast. So we're bringing TCD Sidekick onto the Church Digital. You're about ready to listen to an episode that he did right now with another really good friend and another guy who's surprisingly old.

This is Mark McDonald. No offense. Actually, I found out on Facebook, Mark went to school for like 40 years ago, like went to college 40 years ago. And, you know, if you look at Mark, he doesn't look like the type of guy that's old enough to be in college 40 years ago. But matter of fact, it was. Hey, Mark, who's an incredible communications guy, church communications branding is coming on board in the Tom's podcast, TCD Sidekick, to talk about communications and how your church can take advantage of it. Talk about practical, insightful information. You will want to hear this podcast. TCD Sidekick and Mark McDonald coming up. But before we go there, here's what I want you to do. I want you to pull up the show notes and I want you to subscribe to the TCD Sidekick podcast.

Subscribe to what Tom is doing and start to share some support with what Tom's doing. TCD Sidekick, find the link in the show notes. More information on the entire network at thechurch.digital slash podcast. There's all sorts of information there, thechurch.digital slash podcast. But hey, we're going to land a plane and actually hand it off to Tom and Mark as they're going to have this conversation on church communications. All right, everybody, here you go. Today, we're going to talk about Google search and why it's so important for you to understand Google search for your church or your ministry. Are you ready? Because it's time. You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network.

Hey, heroes. I am Tom Pounder, and this is the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. This is the podcast where I bring on ministry leaders and we talk about how you can be more effective in doing ministry in this very digital and online world. And today, I have Mark McDonald on. I love having conversations with Mark McDonald. He is the Be Known for Something guy, and I've got all his links in the show notes. But he joined me today and we talk about Google search and why it's so important for your church to want to be on the front page of Google, how you can get on the front page of Google and why search is so important for your church to be reaching out to your existing community. So I'm really excited to have Mark on the podcast.

But before we get into that, I do want to just highlight the Church Digital and stuff that we're doing at the Church Digital today. The great thing that's happening at the Church Digital right now is that we have a ton of voices coming on, sharing blog posts and sharing podcasts about how you can be more effective in your ministry and in your personal life. Talk about mental health issues as well. And so it's really important for you to check out thechurch.digital. We've got a ton of great content every single day throughout the weekday, blog posts and podcasts that will encourage you every single day. So make sure you check out that. But also, if you want some coaching or you want to be a part of a cohort that will help you with a digital community or a digital community or even a metaverse community, go to the equipping page at the Church Digital and you can find out all the information you have on that.

All right, heroes. Well, I'm really excited again about this interview I have with Mark McDonald. So without any further ado, let's get into the conversation right now. All right, with me right now is Mark McDonald. Mark, how are you? I'm doing really good. It's always fun just to meet up a little bit and just, I mean, everyone always doesn't know what happens just before we press record, but we always have a good time. Yeah, you're, I mean, again, one of the things I really like about you, you're really easy to talk to. And so, I mean, just having a free-flowing conversation before we hit the record button was really good. I'm in just such a better mood right now. Well, that's good. I don't think I've ever seen you smile this much.

Oh, oh, good. That's, that's always a good thing. That's always a good thing. All right. So, hey, Mark, I know you. We've known each other for a while, but some people on my podcast may not know who you are. So share with them a little bit about who you are and what you do. You know, it's just so crazy. I think every day I try to have an attitude of gratitude. And when I have my quiet time, oftentimes I think God just hears it over and over again. I, I can't believe that I get to do what I get to do. I'm, I'm a little kid from East Coast, Canada, and I, I serve an amazing king who allows me to work with churches. I guess the, the path that got me here was, you know, I'm a graphic designer by trade.

That's what my degree's in. I started working for one of Eastern Canada's largest ad agencies, became senior creative director. And, and out of all of that, I just kept thinking the church needs to know this stuff and started working with churches, moved to North Carolina. And, and started, we kind of became the national voice of, of church communication and, and started speaking at, at conferences. Out of that, I started writing articles, written over 800 magazine articles. And then I wrote a book called Be Known for Something. And it became an Amazon bestseller. And from that started working with Florida Baptist Convention. They moved me to Jacksonville, Florida. And I love Florida. And as a Canadian, it's like, I never want to go back to the weather that they're experiencing right now.

And, and, and now I run an agency called Be Known for Something. And we work with all kinds of denominations. And I'm also executive director for Center for Church Communication, which is about 10,000 churches across the country. So you're, you probably sit on your hands pretty regularly with nothing to do, right? I mean, you've got nothing really going on. You know, every day my, I'm a to-do list guy. I don't know. Are you a to-do list guy? I am. Yeah. So I have, you know, I, I work with things, which is an amazing app. If you guys are, you know, are interested in, in a to-do list app. But I'm also a little old school. I'm a whole bunch older than you. So I, I always have my post-it notes, which are almost embarrassing.

So I have my, my master list over here on this computer, on this monitor. And, and then every day I have, okay, so here are the five things that I absolutely have to get done today. That's awesome. Okay. That's cool to hear how you function on this. We're not going to talk about to-do lists today, but I do have to share with you. I go back and forth. I have a, a notepad that I write my to-do list kind of for the week. I talk about, do some things. And then I've, I've learned to really, because we're so digital these days, I've set up reminders on my iPhone that kind of go over all my platforms, you know, with the Mac and the iPad that just set up key reminders for key days so that I don't, if I, if I miss my notepad for some reason, I'll still have some kind of reoccurring things that I need to be focused on and not lose sight of.

So that's really cool to see how you do. I love your, the, the, the post-it notes. I have one post-it note in front of me every day and it has the things that I have to get done. And there is a euphoria when I get to check off a post-it note and it doesn't have that same feel like I, they need to gamify the, my digital list so that when I click off something like, you know, fireworks need to shoot a screen, you know, I'm all in it for the gratification. Like there just needs to be something that says, you're the greatest person ever. Yes. Yes. No, that, and I like that idea. Maybe you should create that app. Yeah, no. Okay. So somebody who's listening right now should create that app and maybe call it the Mark McDonald list.

The Mark McDonald. There you go. There you go. Or list by Mark McDonald. Exactly. But, you know, being, you know, all about being known for something, I think, and because I am a to-do list guy, anyone who sees me at a conference, I usually in my, in my, uh, uh, briefcase, that sounded very old. I, in my, my backpack, I usually have notepads and the notepads are to-don't lists because as much as it's important for what we actually do, there's some things we just shouldn't do. And that's, I do not develop apps. So that's on my to-don't list. There you go. There you go. I love that you hit briefcase. I, now I just want to go down the rabbit hole of just all the old school stuff that we used to do.

Because even though you are a little bit older than I am, not that much where I wouldn't know some of these things. I remember when my dad had the briefcase and he would take it into work. So I remember when I had a Rolodex that I, I, I guess I remember I thought, okay, so my Palm Pilot allows me to have an, an address book. So maybe I should transcribe, oh my goodness, there's like a hundred things on my Rolodex. And I think my contact list now is like four or 5,000 people. So I'm glad that I switched to digital. Digital is the way. I'm glad we also don't have Palm Pilots. God, I love my Palm Pilot though. My Palm Pilot was so, I loved it. Okay. Okay. Now people are probably going to get annoyed with us right now, but this would be good an offline conversation.

Okay. So the reason why I have you on today is because we're going to talk about Google search. And we're going to talk about how that applies into our churches and our ministries, but just to kind of get the ball rolling a little bit, you know, we, most of us use Google basically every day and we're searching stuff. So why is it important for us to understand how Google search works? Wow. Mainly because as much as we probably understand it, but don't want to admit it, Google runs the world. I mean, like talk about old school stuff. I mean, it used to be if a church wanted to be known in their community, they had to have their yellow page ad or their yellow page listing. You know, the listing was free, but you can have an ad and everybody and their dog who wants to go to church will find you just by your ad.

Yes. Well, Google is the new yellow pages. And I shouldn't even say the new yellow pages because yellow pages have long since died a very good death. Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord. I know. Because it was far too much money. And then Google, when they first came out, it was all about and we're doing this for free. Yeah. But what we know is that it really wasn't free. What they've done is they put their tentacles out and they own so much information that now they're kings. Yeah, they're really all over the place. It's really funny because, again, you and I grew up when the internet really kind of came about. We knew it before. We knew the world before the internet. Now we know very well. And I would always just search on Google.

I'm not Google, Yahoo. And then all my friends would be like, why are you using Yahoo? Just go to Google. It's so simple. It's so plain. And they give you all the right information. And I'm like, oh, okay. So now I use Google most of the time. Well, and you point out a really good thing. I mean, the thing that Google did, like you think AOL and Yahoo and MySpace and like all of that customization that it allowed you to do. And Google came out and said, we're going to be simple. We're going to be easy. There's going to be nothing else on the screen. It's just going to have that little bar and you're here for a search. Here's what we get. We do search. And it was kind of like McDonald's when they came along and said, you know what?

We're going to be, we're going to, we're going to do hamburgers really well, but you got to do it the way we do hamburgers. And it just became a very simple system so that you can get what you're looking for and you love our hamburgers. I do. I still go to McDonald's and I'll get the cheeseburger meal because I just like their cheeseburgers. But we digress, right? Yes, we do digress. Okay, so, but here's the deal. Okay, so say for my church or my ministry, like, you know, there's that coveted first page of Google. Now, when you search something, you can get hundreds of pages of stuff, but really, you want to be on the front page. Why do you want to be on the front page? Well, how many times do we search for something and ever go to the second page?

In fact, I'll say to somebody, so how many things are on the first page of Google and they're like, oh, I don't know. I don't even think I scroll to the bottom. And it's true. I mean, we don't even scroll to the bottom anymore. That's why Google allows you to buy your yellow page at your Google ad at the top and they put it at the top because, and that's going to go to what we're going to talk about today, the importance of the top. And so Google knows whatever's on top or whatever's on the first page is so much more important than anything else. So that is the coveted spot you want to, when someone Googles for you, you need to be, you need to master Google and that's what we're going to talk about today, mastering Google to the point that you get served on that first page.

So are you saying that if I'm a church of under 100 or even 200 that I can still get on the front page, the first page of Google? Absolutely, possibly. Absolutely. Okay, so let's digress. Let's go into this. Do I have to pay for it? Is it something that I have to pay for? So, yes. What we just talked about is if you, if you absolutely, like you're, you know, if someone's Googling for you, whatever your keywords are, like when someone's there Googling and you're hoping that you get served on that first page, whether that's your community churches or your community denominational churches or I need God and, and it's like, I, I would love to be there. I, like, why is it always the big guys that are there?

Well, you can, you can kind of get around the whole amount of work and pay for it so you can get, you can buy Google ads, just Google, Google ads and they will love to tell you how you can pay to, you know, to buy certain keywords to say, if someone's searching for this, then you get put at the top. But it, I mean, it's a fair amount of money and, and I think we've all been there, like we all get spammed. I get spammed every day with these emails where people are, it's like, all you have to do is just pay us a thousand dollars a month and we'll guarantee that you're on the first page. Well, I would, I wouldn't do them. Like, go around them and just pay direct to Google and you can get to the, the top, you know, top of the first page of Google.

Okay, so that's, that's one way to get on the kind of front, front page of the top. but there, there's an organic way too. There's stuff that you can be doing as a church. So let's talk about that. What can you, What do you mean, especially by saying organic? What big words you use? What do you mean by that? Well, organic, I just attribute to as free. It's a free way. There's the word. There's the key word. No pastor is saying, how can I organically get on the first page? But if it's like, how can I get to the first page free? For free, yes. I think every seminary, that's, that's like the, there's like a, a full course on how to get as much stuff for free as possible. That's, that's awesome. I got to go to seminary for that then.

Okay, so let's break it down. What, what is it, the stuff that you can do to optimize your site so that you do show up on, on Google search? Okay, so there's essentially just three things and, and the only reason why I say three is because again, that's another course in seminary that you have to break everything into three. There is a fourth one though. So if we have a little bit of extra time at the end, I'd love to share with you that fourth one, but it's a little bit harder and especially it's harder for, for people who create content. But let's talk about the three things first. Okay. So, so number one, I mean, we've already, we've kind of shared a little bit back and forth. It's about keywords.

So these keywords become king and, and you and I, we struggle staying on, on topic sometimes. I don't know whether anyone else has noticed that before, but that this whole idea of staying on topic is, it would be like you, you saying, you know, I want, I want to reach the world. I'm trying to think of any keyword for a sermon, come up with a key. Well, like it's, what's a really good sermon title, right? That pops into your mind there. I'm challenging you as. How to grow in my faith. Oh, how to grow in your faith. I thought maybe because we're in February that you might've had love in there. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Let's talk about love. Okay. Let's go. Let's go. Let's talk about love would be an awesome thing.

So it's kind of like, you know, I, I'm a huge saddleback Rick Warren guy, you know, purpose driven was talk about old school writing that. I mean, that I read it in my mind exploded. It's like, he said it. And that's really what I, I mean, be known for something is really just retelling you at purpose driven. And the, the thing is, is that I, I finally made the Mecca tour to California and I got to go to saddleback and I was like, oh man, I'm going to hear purpose driven. I'm purpose, purpose, purpose, purpose. Like that's what I was searching for. And then I went and he talked about weight loss that day. And I thought, I'm here for purpose. Like you could have at least tied, you can be purposeful longer if you don't weigh as much.

Like, I mean, like he could have tied it together somehow, but in the same sense, like if, if here we are around, you know, Valentine's day and love, and if let's talk about love, it would be like you saying, let's talk about love and then people in your community going, wow, I wonder what the church would have to say about love and then arriving and then you not staying on topic. Yeah. So Google is really, really interested in, in people understanding what people are searching for and then staying on topic and, and what I off and what I struggle with, even on our website, you know, something.com. I mean, I, it's hard for me, like I'll start a page and then I'll go, oh, but I should go, and then I, oh, I probably should talk about, and I get off topic.

And what, what Google says is that understand your keyword and stay on topic. That's the number one thing. It's like, you've got to come up with for every page, you need to have a keyword. And, and when I say a keyword, and this is the, my frustration of spell check, spell check likes keywords, but key phrases, they don't like that. They make, they, they do it as a two words. So I, I always have to auto correct and then like change it, but it's really a key phrase. So a keyword is no longer like, it's really hard to own. Like if you are, if you decided, you know what, love, we're going to be all about love and you try to own love, you're not going to be able to own it. So Google says, so you need to have what they call long tail keywords.

So it's like you have love there, but what kind of love? is this Christian love? Is this biblical love? Is this love? I don't know. You could come up with it, whatever. So every page of your website that you want to be discovered in the community or in your congregation, you have to know your key phrase and that phrase should never be more than four or five words. If I could try to own shirts, but blue shirts, adding a tail to it allows me to have a little bit more of an opportunity to own it. But if I said men's blue shirts, then all of a sudden the group of people looking for it, it gets smaller and smaller so that I can really target and you target through the key phrase. And then those key phrases, I'm sorry, I can almost see you trying to ask a question in between.

Did you have a question for me? No, no, no, go. Keep on going. So those key phrases, Google just wants to say, okay, you can't say this page is all about this key phrase and then not use it. So we've all been there where we've Googled something and then you get to the page and it's like, where the heck is, like, where's the word that I was just searching for and I sometimes find myself and then it's like, oh, I can search command F and then it brings up the find window and you search for it and it's like, it's used once and it's like, wong, wong. so they actually want you to use it and that four or five word key phrase needs to be used intact at least two to three times on that page and therein lies half the battle is that it's got to be used in such a way so that it feels natural and it doesn't feel like you're just repeating it over and over and over again, but people who create sermons know how to do that and they do it really well.

Well, and one of the things I think about when as you're talking about key phrases, someone doesn't know what we're talking about, like how do we make sure that it gets lined up and everything like that? I know our church uses WordPress and I actually am very comfortable with WordPress and it's one of the bigger ones out there for sites and you can download a plugin called Yoast SEO which will allow you to type in your keyword or key phrase and then it will check for you so you don't have to worry about it and then they'll tell you before you publish the page whether or not it's a good thing or not. See, and you dropped our keyword of the day. It's a free WordPress plugin. So free WordPress plugin will get more attention than oh yeah, how much do I have to pay for that.

Yoast is an amazing plugin because what we're talking about today all it does is it just tells you did you do it or didn't you do it? And so what it does is it puts a green light, a yellow light, or a red light. If you get a red light, that means you suck at everything you're trying to do. This content will not be discoverable by anybody and then when you get a few of the things right and it gives you a yellow and that's where the drive of gamification comes where I'm like, I gotta get the green light. And like everybody in my office knows when I get the green light it's like, I got the green light because I struggle trying to get all of these things right. No, you're exactly right. I'm like that too.

When I get done writing a piece of content on WordPress and I see that the light is still red, I am racking my brain. And then I switch it to yellow and then I'm like, okay, I'm closer. And then when I get the green light, it is like, oh my gosh, this is great. I'm ready to go now. The Tom Pounder podcast is brought to you today by Yoast. No, we're not paid by Yoast. We love Yoast because we become evangelists for it mainly because it keeps us on track and it keeps us centered so that we understand what Google is looking for. And that's what we're going to talk about. There's three or possibly four of the things that Yoast will keep you on track. Yeah. Okay, so you highlighted the one about keywords and key phrases.

What's the second one? Yeah, the second one. So there's hidden stuff that Google gets to see and it's called metadata. And we've talked about the metaverse to the nth degree because Facebook brought meta to the surface. So it's kind of like the, you know, behind the scenes digital glue that holds everything together. Well, there's a metaverse, there's a metadata area that's on your website where you have that secret wink-wink with Google and you've got to make sure that you've created a really good short paragraph. In fact, here's the key to this is that keep it less than 155 characters. We're not talking words here and it's not a lot. And what you want to do, anytime you get to see it, every time that you Google something.

So when you Google something and you are looking for Christian love or what the church says about love or whatever, all you need is love. All the songs popping through my mind, whatever you're Googling, when it gives you those search results, there's always that little paragraph right underneath the link. And that sometimes you don't see, like you'll get to it and it's like, no, I wanted what was in the paragraph, but it's not there on the page. Well, that's because it's part of the metaverse. So the metadata has been, somebody has shown control that not only do I know my key phrase, but I've used my key phrase two to three times. And, you know, what we talked about about being at the top of the page, it also should be used in the first paragraph.

They'll give you bonus points if you put it at the beginning of the first paragraph. and you've probably used it in the headline so that when you Googled it, you get the link that you're going to be using and that link probably uses the thing that someone's just searched for. and then you see it in that metadata area. And that metadata area just needs to be very actionable. It can't be, whereas like the philosophical understanding of blah, blah, blah, this is like, click here in order to get your like, I mean, it just needs to be very action oriented and that metadata is very important because it does show up in your Google search. I like how you said it needs to be very action oriented. And so, again, a lot of what we do with church communication stuff or any kind of communications is we want them to be pointing them to do something with that.

And so, the fact that you just highlighted it should be action oriented is a really good tip there. Absolutely. And the thing is, is that the more you stay on track for something that somebody's looking for and the more you use it on your actual content and in the metadata, you just slowly rise to the top of Google because Google knows I can count on this link delivering what you're looking for. Yeah. Well, it's really interesting too. Now that you're saying some of the stuff, you know, you know Jay Cranda, right, from Saddleback? Yes. Yeah. So, Jay, one of the big online ministers, and he's been doing this for a really long time, one of the OGs, I like to say. But he actually tweeted something out fairly recently about how he was searching for something on Google and actually one of my things came up.

And it was something I did years ago about how to create an online Bible study with You version. But again, it popped up towards the very beginning because of how I used Yoast SEO to write on the metadata and also using the keywords because what my keywords was what exactly he was searching for. And oh my goodness, so that's like the fifth thing. So this is like a really bonus bonus. But the fifth thing is longevity. So the more it's there and and the dates say that it's been there for quite some time, that gives you a little bit more power to rise to the top. So if you're just starting this, do not lose hope, my fellow brethren and sister. And you will eventually have longevity to get there, but it might take some time.

And the problem is that if you're doing this correctly, it's a lot of work and it takes a lot of time. I waited a little long, a little farther into this to actually talk about this, but it's free. And the thing is, is that you just have to work hard at it, stay on topic, stay on key phrase, and then allow it to just chill there. And if it's a keyword that people are looking for on a regular basis and you've had content up there for a while, Google knows that it's going to be deliverable and you'll just slowly make your way to the top. Yeah, I think it's awesome. Okay, so you've given us some really good tips so far, whether it's two or three of them so far, because you included that fifth bonus one, we won't go there, but let's talk about the third one.

Okay, yes, we'll ignore that fifth bonus bonus. So the third one is just play nice with the internet. So just connect yourself. So it used to be that Google would serve people to your homepage and then what they found out was that people don't want to take the time to figure out how to get from the homepage to the right content. So Google went, oh yeah, that's stupid. Why would we create keywords for a whole website when it's really the individual page? So that's why every individual page needs to have its own unique key phrase. So then when people are looking for information, they go to that direct to that inside page. Oftentimes, people don't even get to the homepage unless they want to back out of it.

It's like, this is really good content, so I need to go back to the homepage. But most people don't do that anymore. So what they want you to do is, okay, so if you are really good at what you do, you should lead them around your webpage or website by using links. And those links need, I'm amazed at how many, I'm working with the church right now, I called up their website yesterday, we walked through it, and I said, so this page has no links on it. And they're like, yeah, well, we pretty much say it all. Really? So everything that anyone would ever need to know is right here. Or since you know your content so well, lead them to another place. It would be like somebody knocking on the front door of your church.

You unlock the door, you say, yes, can I help you? And they say, yes, I'm thinking about bringing my kids here. So you go, okay, do not look at anything else while we walk through the church. I'm going to show you the kids ministry. No, no, don't look over there. We're in the kids ministry. Here's the kids ministry. And then we just stand there. Like, we all know it's like, okay, well, if they're a parent, they might need some help. What about our adult ministries? Did you know you can come to a church service? Did you know you? So it's like, you know, everything that's going on, or you should, and you need to link to some of those other things. So those are called internal links, and you want to have on every page, two to three internal links.

And then, because you're a really, really good internet dweller, you probably want to have one external link on every page. Well, again, just highlight real quick for me, what's an internal link and what's an external link? Yeah, internal link is connect with other content that's on your URL, like on your website, in your domain. So, you know, I'm the king of my domain, you know, that I understand everything that's in my website, so you're probably thinking, if you're talking about kids, you probably want to know about our security. Here's a link to our security. Don't put it all on your page, because then you get too much content on your page. Instead, you want to link to other things internally within your URL, but you also want to have one external link, if at all possible.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. And again, as you're explaining this stuff, it makes me think about like Facebook. Facebook wants you to stay on their site. Once you're on their site, they want you to stay. So, you know, if you upload a video on Facebook to YouTube, Facebook's not going to promote that so much, but if you upload that natively to Facebook, they're going to love it because it keeps them on their site. And again, like what you're explaining, you want to keep them on your site because they may not go back to the homepage and discover things. So again, if it's something about children's ministry, have that thing about security or student ministry because maybe they have a teenager that is in student ministry.

You want to keep them going in that thing. And I think that's really important to highlight because again, the more they can learn about your church, the more comfortable they're going to feel about your church, more likely they're going to come and visit your church. Well, and we've all been there. We Google something. Google delivers you to that page that you're looking for and then you get lost in the website. It's like, oftentimes I'll find myself saying, what was I here for again? Yes. Amazon is one of those things. Like I'll Google Amazon. I need a new bathroom fan right now. So I was looking for bathroom fans. I ended up buying toothpaste dispensers and it was like, wow, there I got what I, oh man, I didn't even order my bathroom fan.

Like, I mean, it's just, it's so crazy. And that's what Google, they know a good website, you'll get lost in the website because if you're really good at this key phrase, you're probably good at other key phrases and then it will attract the same audience for various needs. Yeah, I think that's awesome. That's great. You've given some great tips here. Now I'm very curious about this fourth one that you were kind of teasing early on. What is this fourth one that you can share with us on? Okay, so really quick, you need to use signal words. Wait, what? Signal words. S-I-G-N-A-L. Signal words. I am awful at signal words. I have not used one signal. Well, I kind of used a signal word during our podcast, but pastors are really good at signal words.

When it's like, so today, initially we need to discuss. So initially is a signal word. What it says is, I'm setting up a framework for understanding all of this content. So initially, or foundationally, or the first thing that we need to do, our one, two, and three, and four bonus, and five bonus, bonus, like all of that stuff are signal words. So along the way, if you say, so secondly, thirdly, fourthly, and every pastor loves this, so finally, or in conclusion, what that means is that we're about a third of the way through the service. That's right. That is right. But what it says to Google is, if I scan a page and I see signal words, it means that you know how to lay out content so that someone can take that scannability and quickly be able to not read all the content, but get it as fast as possible.

And that's what Google just knows. Everyone wants to get what they're looking for as quickly as possible, and signal words will allow you to do it. I mean, it's just tough. I don't write that way, so I usually write content and then go back and add all the signal words. And if you just Google signal words, it will tell you all of the consequentially or initially or firstly, like all of those things foundationally or in conclusion or at the end, like all of those things just need to be added in. And weirdly enough, I always think it's just adding a complexity to what I'm writing. Like I just would rather just tell them and watch when you go to really good websites. They use them and we just ignore them now.

Like it's just like we ignore when a pastor says in conclusion. Yeah. Well, this is really informative because I did not know about signal words. And so this is now I'm going to go back and rewrite some content. So, but seriously, I think that's really important. And I think as you're telling me this stuff, I'm like, okay, so we naturally, we just probably don't think about this as we're talking and as we're writing. But if like what we say is if you just write your content, go and check out what some signal words are and then place them, are there a minimum number you should have or? Google wants to see signal words in place so that it's enough that it feels organized. Okay. So if it's a small amount of content, then you probably don't need that many.

But, you know, leading the first, like the first or second word with a signal word of a paragraph, like that just all of a sudden, you know, they're looking for scannability. So when you're looking down across the content, just very quickly, you'll be able to know what skeleton that organizational outline is of the page. That's really good. That's really informative. I think of it too on the lines of, you know, a lot of my blog posts I'll write, like I'll use bullet points because I think a lot of times people read with scannability. And so I think having these signal words, if you're skimming through the article, you can look through in conclusion or secondly or thirdly, I think that helps the reader and then it helps your SEO.

Absolutely. It's kind of like, where am I in the middle of all of this? And it's why we do it in sermons. I mean, when we deliver a sermon or a large amount of content, oftentimes it's like to give people hope, like we're almost there. Yeah. And obviously, I mean, you've lived for the bonus of this podcast, like I feel fulfilled because we've, I've actually given you something that you didn't know, which is like, I would never happens. So, um, I mean, maybe the, the title of this needs to be free things, but wait for the bonus. I'm writing that down right now. It needs to be free SEO. I don't know. Like you just have to think. So what would, like, this is a really practical way to, to implement everything we just talked about.

So what would people be Googling that this is a really good podcast for, and then come up with the key phrase, add your long tail to it. And then, and then how do I work that into the actual title? And then once you've worked it in the title, okay, so how can we work it into the metadata? If you're going to post this on YouTube, which a lot of people are probably watching this on YouTube, and in the non metadata, which is the actual title descriptions, how many times do you use it? If there's a couple of paragraphs, do you have a couple of signal words there? And then you just want to make sure that there's some links. It's like, how do you subscribe? Subscribe right there to this gentleman's podcast.

He's the greatest ever. And the thing is, is that you also want to have some external links too. Oh, be known for something.com is the way that you would probably get a hold of me. Yeah. Okay. This is awesome. I love this. And that's why I love talking to you because you're very practical and you talk in really good terms of what we can understand and directly apply. so these give some people some really good opportunities here to make some quick, even they can go back to old content and just re-change some things and see how that impacts your optimization in the analytics and stuff. As we kind of wrap up though, any final thoughts, any other free type of insights you can share with us? Well, exactly what you just talked about.

Okay, so here's what we do. We watch our Google analytics. We always know what the top pages are and we know what the top posts are. And so if, so our number one top post is always the exact same one that has nothing to do with anything that we do, but it's about church aquariums. Like, I mean, seriously, I know there's a key word, but obviously people are looking for church aquariums or church with the aquarium. There's a big church in Texas that has a monster aquarium. It's the, it's the largest, what, the largest non-public or privately owned aquarium, whatever. So anyway, people are looking for it. So it's always our number one post. What, what that information does is, okay, so that's what people are appealing to.

it has nothing to do with what we actually do. So I went into it and then added some really key links to say, so here's why this aquarium works. It works as a thread to what they are known for. And if you're interested in a thread, so I just added some salesy oriented stuff into it, added some links, added some external links, so that if people are looking, you know, possibly for a great aquarium show, there's a Discovery Channel show about aquariums, so I link to it. So all of that stuff gets put into it. But what you just said about go back to old stuff, like things that are really important that aren't rising to the top, go back in and change them. And that actually helps with Google as well, because the more you change and update and add new stuff to your posts and pages, it actually Google goes, oh, well, they're keeping up with their stuff and they're making sure that it's the correct information.

So that all works as well. That's awesome. That's very encouraging. So I expect a lot of people to be going back to old content, myself included, and adding some different things to this. Mark, it's always great having you on the podcast, always great talking to you, tons of insights. If someone wants to connect with you, how can someone connect with you? Again, give me your website again, too, and also the information about your book, because I bet you your book would be really applicable as well. Well, I mean, it is on Amazon. You can get it there. If you're thinking about reading through this book, because it has like a workbook section at the end, it's like, before you go to the next chapter, make sure you understand this for your church.

I mean, if you want to go to benownbook.com, you can actually get some packages. So it's like, if you want to order several at a time, you'll get a break in the price, and Amazon does not offer that. But also, be known for something, be known for something.com, and you click on the book tab, it will take you to the same place. And then if you're looking for me, you can either look for Mark MacDonald, with an M-A-C in there, or look for Mark Mac 1023, and I'm on virtually all the social media platforms. I really would love to talk to you and help you in whatever your church is going through on the communication side. There's a lot of know-it-alls out there in the communication side, and Mark knows a lot, but he's a very humble man and a very great person to talk to.

So I would highly recommend, if you're looking for someone to connect with, connect with Mark immediately. Again, he's on Twitter all the time because I'm on Twitter, and I see him posting stuff, so connect with him there. I'll have all his links on the show notes, so make sure you take a next step and really connect with him today. Mark, as always, it's great talking to you, so thanks so much for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Tom. All right, so what did you think? Now, again, besides the fact that we were talking about old-school stuff, about briefcases, post-it notes, and yada, yada, yada stuff, what did you think of the conversation? Listen, I love talking with Mark because I learned so much stuff that I may not have thought about before the conversation happened, so Google search is really important, and Mark shared a lot of different tips that you can implement in your church really easily, so I'd love to hear what you think of it.

What stood out to you? What encouraged you? What challenged you? What other questions do you have? You can either put it on the comment section below, or you can start a conversation with me on Twitter. At TAPounder is my Twitter handle. I would love to keep this conversation on going with you and see what you're learning. We can grow from each other. All right, heroes, well, that wraps it up for another episode of the Church Digital Sidekick podcast. As always, thanks so much for joining me. If you'd like to subscribe to this, you can subscribe to it on YouTube. We've got a YouTube channel with lots of different videos on it, but you can also go to Spotify and iTunes and subscribe to this podcast, and make sure you check out thechurch.digital for different blogs, podcasts, and coaching, and cohorts that are happening right now.

We'd love for you to be a part of that. All right, heroes, well, thanks so much for being with me today. Hope you have a great rest of your week, and until next time, have a great one.