Church: First UMC – Mt. Ephraim, NJ
URL: http://www.njfaith.com/
Note: At the webmaster’s request, this is a follow-up to a review I did for this website back in January, 2007.
Initial thoughts
Since my previous review, the site has gotten a complete facelift. I thought the old design was pretty good, but this one is great! I like it very much. Bright colors, smiling faces, and obvious navigation.
The title tags are much better. I first thought they were perfect, but now I think you might need to tweak them some more. I always advise churches to spell out their entire name, which you sort of have done. However, the word “Methodist” isn’t in there anywhere. Maybe break “First Church in Mt. Ephraim” into “First United Methodist Church – Mt. Ephraim”. Something like that.
Browsing around
Most of the rest of my suggestions have been implemented very well. Two things stand out, though.
First, what happened to the nursery page? Based on my review, it seems that the old site had a page dedicated to the nursery, and now the only place I see the nursery is a brief mention on the “visitors center” page.
In fact, it seems that you have virtually nothing for children at your church. Going to the children’s page tells me about VBS, but then it’s just a bunch of generic talk at the bottom. You mention “child comes on a Sunday morning”, “a weekday evening” or “any of our special events”. I don’t see information about any of that stuff. The leads me to the other thing I think still needs a boost – links.
Those terms I just mentioned should all be linked to pages with more information. Even if you don’t have a special event coming, you can tell me about what they are. A special events page could say “throughout the year we have many special events for children, such as a carnival in the spring, a petting zoo in the fall and a huge Christmas party each December. The petting zoo will be on October 23rd this year. Please come back soon for more details”. As it is now, it seems that you talk about stuff for children, but offer VBS and nothing else.
The same goes for pages like “Our Service Times“. Those area great, but tell me about them. I’m guessing the 9:15 service is contemporary and the 11:00 is traditional, based on their locations, but I have no clue. Also, is the fellowship hall attached to the main church building? As a first time visitor, I have no idea. I should be able to click on each service for more info about them (and hopefully a photo or two), and click on the buildings for info about those. Even if you’re a tiny church, you can still have a page for your fellowship hall with a photo and some brief text about it. Anything you can do to make first-timers more comfortable before they actually arrive at the church, the better.
Search engine optimization
You do a great job with this. Your titles are solid, your HTML code is very clean compared to last time, your page URLs are great and you use H1 tags the way they were meant to be used. Also, your navigation uses plain-text links (rather than images), which is beneficial. The one suggestion, of course, is more internal linking.
You rank first for mt. ephraim church, which is great. How about some long tail phrases, though?
- mt. ephraim vbs — Oddly enough, this site ranks first for that. Your site isn’t in the first 100 results. For many churches, I suggest you create a permanent vbs page, similar to the “special events” page I mentioned above. This way it can begin to rank better throughout the year and will be in good position when VBS rolls around. For 10 months of the year, you can talk about what’s coming up, dates, photos from last year, etc. In the month or two leading up to it you can add more specific details, registration forms, etc.
- mt. ephraim worship — First!
You tend to rank well for most terms (likely a combination of good SEO and small “Mt. Ephraim” area), but look for other holes like VBS that might exist.
Conclusion
It’s obvious that you’ve done a lot of work since my review back in January. Pat yourself on the back – you’ve done well. Just add a bit more content (service details, facility details, nursery, etc) and link internall a bunch more, then I’ll have nothing else to be able to suggest! 
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