Update 6/13: The conclusion of this blog post below - that Google loves blogs - couldn't be more ironically accurate.  Amusingly enough, Google decided to list this page when people search for "Olathe Website Design" instead of our actual landing page for it over here.  We're also now result 16 when people search for Olathe Churches.  Oops!

Today I was browsing through Olathe-related search phrases (using the incredibly powerful Google Keywords Tool) and found something shocking: every month over 6,500 people search for "Olathe Churches" - yes that was six-thousand people!

More shocking yet: no Olathe churches are actively targeting these folks by doing search engine optimization.  Growing up as a pastor's kid, I know communicating the need for a website can be challenging, but this time it should be a no-brainer.  The argument goes something like this...Six...Thousand...People.

I thought it would be interesting to do a quick review of the top ten sites that turn up when you search for Olathe church websites.  I was curious to see which sites used what website content management systems (CMS), how well they were designed (always a subjective thing to measure), and if they were search engine optimized or not.

I present, the Churches of Olathe Website Design Round-up Results (rank based on their Google placement)!

Rank	Preview	Church	CMS	Design / Usability	SEO Optimized	Designers
1		Indian Creek Community Church	Custom			Shockra
		Comments: Great initial impression, but confusing to navigate beyond the homepage.
2		Olathe Christian Church	Custom			Unknown
		Comments: Demonstrating the power of regularly updated blogs, Olathe Christian Church's Google result actually links to their missions blog, not their homepage.
3		Heartland Community Church	Dreamweaver (?)			Jason Stirnaman (ish?)
		Comments: Again showing off how much Google loves fresh blog content, this Olathe church has several blogs going which gives them four stars for SEO.
4		LifePointe Church	Custom			Chitwood Graphics
		Comments: Kudos to LifePointe for including a block at the bottom of the homepage with the phrase "Church in Olathe Kansas" included a couple times. That was enough to bump LifePointe into the fourth website result on Google!
5		North Pointe Baptist Church (ish)	None			Unknown
		Comments: Fascinating SEO study since this isn't actually even a church website (anymore), it is simply a list of other churches with links, but still picked up by Google.
6		College Church of the Nazarene	Online CMS			SiteOrganic
		Comments: Regular blog updates moves this Olathe church's website (a church I've been to many times) into the top ten.
7		Christ Family Church	Dreamweaver			Internal
		Comments: Christ Family Church in Olathe does a good job of keeping their website up to date. One easy improvement would be to simplify the site to only have one set of primary links (right now there are four altogether).
8		First Christian Church Olathe	None			Internal
		Comments: While the design is simple, the amount of text and mentions of Olathe on the page and in the domain work in First Christian Church Olathe's favor.
9		IgniteKC.tv	Contribute			Unknown
		Comments: Similar to a couple other sites higher up on the list, having the word Olathe sprinkled throughout the site and especially in the domain did the trick for Olathe Covenant church's website.
10		Mercy Church	Dreamweaver (?)			Unknown
		Comments: Regular updates (in this case sermons) win the day once again!

A few conclusions:

• As I've told clients for a long time, websites that get regularly updated (especially with blogs) get lots of Google love.
• When there isn't a lot of competition, just having the key words in a couple places on your website and especially in your domain URL makes a big difference.
• The phrase is wide-open!  Anyone could move to a top spot which is pretty worthwhile when there are six thousand plus folks searching for this phrase each month.

Does your church have a website?  Is it optimized for Google?  Should it be?