How Mormons Use The Internet To Spread The Good Word
This article was originally written by Joshua Steimle for Forbes. The following is an excerpt:
We tend to think of religions as being conservative, stodgy, or lagging when it comes to anything that has to do with technology, and especially online technology. Therefore it may come as a bit of a surprise to find out that at least one religion,Ā The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are commonly known by the abbreviation āLDSā or the nickname āMormons,ā is one of the most advanced large organizations in the world when it comes to SEO, content marketing, and the use ofĀ social mediaĀ [Full disclosure, I am an active member of the LDS Church].As a member of this religious community and someone who makes his living from consulting with businesses regarding digital marketing, I have been more than curious to learn from the campaigns the LDS Church has engaged in to get their message out. Here are some of the lessonsĀ entrepreneursĀ and businesses can take from the Mormon way of doing digital marketing.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, includes all activities that influence the ranking of a website on a search engine for a given keyword search. The higher a websiteās rankings, the more traffic it gets. Digital marketing consultantĀ Justin BriggsĀ analyzed the SEO efforts of the LDS Church in 2010 while working for SEO consultancy Distilled and published his results inĀ a well-read blog post. Given the time that has passed, I decided to revisit a few of Briggsā findings when it came to the LDS Churchās SEO tactics and results.
First, I looked at rankings for non-branded, generic keywords. Although exact results may differ from one personās computer to another, when I used the SEO software toolĀ SEMRushĀ to analyzeĀ GoogleĀ rankings for the following keywords for desktop users in the United States, I found LDS.org rankings in the top five results for these searches:
- bible
- bible dictionary
- christ
- church music
- holy bible
- holy ghost
- jesus christ
- king james bible
- new testament
- old testament
- scriptures
It is not easy to rank for these keywords. Using SEMRushās competitive analysis tool, the only website that outperformed LDS.org on these searches was Wikipedia, and this doesnāt take into account the fact that LDS.org is only one of the more than 100 websites the LDS Church maintains. Others includeĀ Mormon.org,ProvidentLiving.org, andĀ OvercomingPornography.org.
But the name of the game isnāt just to rank for highly competitive, simple keywords like those above, but to also target a large number ofĀ long tail searches, or keyword phrases that are more specific. The number of searches for āholy bibleā is certain to outnumber those for āisaiah let us reason together,ā (LDS.org ranks fifth on Google for this search) but when you add up the aggregate visitors from millions of specific searches they outweigh the visitors searching for a handful of generic terms. The LDS Church appears to have mastered both. Perhaps this shouldnāt be too surprising coming from a religion that hasĀ an official statement on SEO, in which it says āWe view SEO as a method to spread the gospel onlineā¦ā
Read Steimle’s full article at forbes.com.Ā
