From SEO to AI: Optimizing Your Digital Front Door

By Emily Heck, President & Founder, Evergreen Strategic Communications

President & Founder of Evergreen Strategic Communications, Emily Heck, was recently featured in Lake Institute on Faith & Giving’s Insights Newsletter. 

Alongside Meredith McNabb of Lake Institute, Emily explores how an organization’s “digital front door” shapes giving and engagement. This resource provides actionable ways to ensure your organization’s digital presence reflects your mission and connects with donors. 

Read the full Insights article or explore Emily’s excerpt below. 

---

I often frantically hear from organizations that they need to spruce up their website. They’ve squeezed every ounce of use out of it, and it’s become outdated, lacking functionality, and sometimes on the verge of crashing. It’s a common problem, especially when there are so many other needs rising to the top of the priority list of a religious organization. 

However, when the time comes to build a new website, search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be as high of a priority as selecting the image at the top of the home page. Simply, when someone searches a term on Google or another search engine, you want your website to rank as high as possible in the results to increase the likelihood that a user will visit. 

There’s so much opportunity for your organization to rank well on search engines by being intentional with your website content, and with the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI), there are more sources than ever that are gathering information about your organization and you need to make sure they are accurate. So while tidying up your digital front door may mean a fresh coat of paint, it’s also ensuring people can find you on the street. 

Planning Content for Search Engines 

Search engines use the words and terms a user enters to scan millions of websites in order to provide the most relevant results possible. If your website utilizes the keywords and terms well, you will rank higher in the results. While you're planning your color palette or menu layout, it’s also important to intentionally plan your content and identify the keywords users are likely to search for when looking for content, services, or resources you provide.

A simple start to using keywords is ensuring your page titles, subheadings, and body copy include your selected keywords. The key is identifying words and terms that users are most likely to search—which could be different than your own internal language. For example, an organization may identify itself as working with congregations, but keyword research shows that users are more likely to use the word churches. It takes finding a good balance between your own brand messaging and meeting the needs and expectations of your current and potential audience in order to meet SEO best practices and accurately portray your organization. 

To take SEO one step further, adding a meta description with keywords enhances ranking results by offering more content for the search engine to scan. A meta description is a 120-160 character description about the content of the webpage and can be inserted in the SEO section of the webpage editor. 

The Role of AI in Today’s Websites 

We’re stuck in an in-between world right now where websites must be optimized not only for search engines but also for AI. Unfortunately, the two formats use different elements to identify information. SEO is more data focused on the quantity of keywords to pull results while AI uses context and quality of content to gather responses. 

To use an old-school example, I like to think of the difference between SEO and AI as locating a book in a library. Think of SEO as using the library’s computer to look up the book’s call number whereas AI is asking a librarian and you get not only the book’s location, but also recommendations for similar books. 

The balance is developing content that uses keywords while also establishing expertise on your content. This can include Q&A lists, thought leadership blogs that explain the “why” behind topics, and gathering reviews and testimonials on the strength and benefits of your organization. 

Paid Versus Organic Search 

Digital advertising is a great tool in your marketing toolbox for enhancing your visibility directly to your audience. However, whenever a client brings up the option of paid search, my response is typically the same: we need to get your organic house in order before we can get the most out of paid sources. 

We can garner major website views by pouring a lot of money into paid search, but if users come to the site and there’s no way to engage or reason to return, we’ve wasted that money. In addition, if we can elevate search rankings through organic tactics, paid search can only elevate the website even higher in search results. In preparing for paid search, your focus should be on the user experience, navigation, content and messaging clarity, and SEO and AI best practices.  

Ensuring your website serves as a welcoming digital front door can seem like an overwhelming process. However, the same intentional care should be taken with developing your website as you would with developing programs or ministries. Mindfully taking the first steps so that users may easily find your website followed by keeping it accurate, up to date, and attractive will ensure your website continues to work effectively for your organization.