Does your church have a community center? A Family Life Center is a fantastic ministry to your city and church members who want to exercise and gather safely. It is also an opportunity for your church’s local SEO! Let’s look at how we can improve your presence online through this departmental Google Business Profile (GBP).
Where Is Your Community Center?
First, you’ll need to determine how your listing will populate in Google Maps. You can start by searching your community center’s address and looking for an existing listing to claim. If it doesn’t exist, you will need to create one. You can do this through Google’s Add A Location feature. No matter if your community center has a separate building and address or is an extension of your main church building, the listing should exist separately from your primary listing.
If your venue is part of your main church building, you will want to nest your community center listing as a “department” of the primary GBP listing. This will show your community center is “Located In” your church.
Having this first step knocked out will allow users to find your venue easily. You’ll even be able to drop a pin on its exact placement in maps to ensure that Google shows users the most accurate location. Now we can focus on bigger optimizations.
Optimizing Your Listing
The next step in optimizing your community center listing is by updating the different sections of your listing. Here are the sections to prioritize:
- Business Name
- Business Categories
- Description
- Phone Number
- Website
- Hours
- Additional Information
Business Name
For the business name, I recommend keeping it short and sweet: name it what your members call the venue most, and include your church name at the end. If you call it the “Family Life Center” or “Activities Hall”, then use what’s familiar. For Example, “Family Life Center – Church Name.” While this is a top LSRF signal, be honest in your business name section. No matter how much you want to stuff this with keywords, we can optimize for that in other areas!
Categories
For Business Categories, start your primary category with “Community Center.” Next, you will have an opportunity to add up to 10 secondary categories. Use these to populate the activities your venue offers. For example, you can use categories like gym or fitness center. If you have any areas for sports, you can also add these. Choose categories like volleyball court or pickleball court. If you host a basketball league, you can add the category basketball court.
Try and use as many categories as you offer! This will help your listing rank for topics like where to find a local gym or sports that local users are interested in playing.
Description
This section is where you should write a summary of what your venue offers. Include information here about how long it’s existed, the available amenities, or how it benefits your community!
Avoid putting hours of operation or details that your categories and NAP cover elsewhere in the listing. Google won’t give you extra credit for having those details here. They are looking for an authentic description of your “business” in this space.
Phone Number
If you have a separate phone number for this community center, use it here. If not, you can put your church office’s phone number. Keep in mind to use a real number here as visitors might use it to get in touch with genuine questions! It’s also a way that Google can verify ownership of this listing.
Website
This section is a great place to add a link that differs from your primary listing. If you have a landing page dedicated to your community center, you should use it here! Not only will this show Google that they shouldn’t mark this listing as a duplicate, but it also helps users navigate to parts of your website that are relevant to what they are searching for.
A very important note to add here: Google’s business attribution is broken! You need to include a UTM code here that tells your analytics where users are coming to your website. If you don’t include it, Google attributes this traffic to direct or unassigned traffic!
Here are the parameters I like to use:
- Source: local
- Medium: organic
- Campaign: community-center
Hours
Be sure to update your hours according to when this venue is open. If users see it’s opened on certain days and show up, it might lead to frustration or even a lack of trust.
If you are closed on certain holidays, you can also update special hours in this section, too!
Additional Information
These attributes are great for allowing you to share the accessibility features of your community center. Be sure to update these sections as accurately as possible!
Keep Your Reviews And Media Fresh
Finally, I want to encourage you to keep your reviews and media as fresh as possible. As events take place, take lots of photos and upload them regularly when people are using the venue for exercise or events.
Reviews are a top-ranking signal. Ask your members to review the listing and make it easy for them by adding QR codes around the venue. If they already have a review, ask them to add photos to it. This allows your listing to be full of media that isn’t only owner-added.
Finally, when anyone adds a review, respond immediately. Even if it’s negative, you should give a response. Not only does this engage users, but allows your feedback to be seen by your community and is a space for you to love your neighbors well.
Closing Thoughts
In closing, your community center is not only a great venue but also an opportunity for your church to improve its local SEO. As you begin optimizing your venue’s listing, take into consideration how this space can be used by the ministries your church offers to the community! This is a great way to bring neighbors in who might be less inclined to first visit a church service.
This is a simple online tool that many churches might overlook. Take advantage of a free opportunity to improve your online presence and reach your local community for the sake of Christ.
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