Working in the Kingdom

So many people have expressed their congratulations to me for my new position at the Church here in UT.  I am so very thankful for all of the support and prayers that were offered on our behalf.  I have a lot of passion for what I do and think there is a lot of good work I can accomplish in the world through technology and the Internet.  I am so thankful to be able to apply my experience to the various Church websites in an effort to spread the Gospel.

Everytime someone asks me what I do for the Church and I tell them "SEO" I always get the question, "what is that?"  So I started saying "I do internet marketing for the Church."  And the response is sometimes "really?! why does the Church care about internet marketing?"  So I wanted to answer those questions on here.

So first of all, SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization.  It is the art and science of increasing the reach and visibility of a website.  Every day more and more people turn to search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing on the internet to find answers to questions.   Not many people use phone books, encyclopedias, or library books any more.  Here's an example:

This week our dishwasher started making a terrible rumbling noise.  It was later in the evening so we couldn't call anyone.  Jen opened up the Internet and searched Google for the phrase "rumbling dishwasher".  She found a bunch of websites that had answers or information on "rumbling dishwashers."  We scanned the sites and found one that answered our question and I was able to fix the noise very easily.  Lucky for us, the person who owned the website about noisy dishwashers had organized their information on the page in a way that allowed me to see it when I searched for the answer.  Also, there were a lot of other people who also found valuable information on that site and they linked to the site in their blogs or websites.  Or maybe the made a comment about the website on Facebook or Twitter.  There are over 200 different "signals" that a search engine looks for when determining which websites to show me in a search result.  And those "signals" are confidential and not entirely known.  So "SEO's" like me try to use science to figure them out and organize our websites so that Google or Bing will show them in search results and favor our sites.

So why does the Church care about this?  Well, it turns out that many people who are interested in learning something about the Church are searching Google for answers.  And the Church's websites don't always come up.  So it's easy to find misinformation on the internet about the Church.  Part of my job is finding those holes where people are finding incorrect information about the Church on sites that are against the Gospel Message and optimizing our pages to show up in those searches.  The other role has to do with missionary work.  There are more and more people out there looking up information relating to Christ and other Gospel topics like marriage, after life, heaven, hell, The Bible, etc.  These topics aren't necessarily only targeted to the Mormon Church.  For example, someone might ask Google in a search "Will I see my family in heaven?"  or "what do people do in heaven?"  Our Church has the answers to these questions, yet nonmembers don't find our websites when they look for this information.  Or here's a good one:  "How do I get a free bible?"  (or some variation of that phrase).  http://www.mormon.org/free-bible/ is where anyone can order a free copy of The Bible.  So we want to make sure that non-members are able to get access to the most correct translation of The Bible.

I've only been working here for a couple weeks and I'm already working on several projects.  One of the biggest ones is adding all of our individual Chapels and Temples to Google Maps.  That way when anyone is searching for a Church near their address or in their city, they'll see in Google where our closest chapel is.  Test this out in your own city.  Go to Google and search for "church in (your city)."  Church in Littleton, or church in mesa, etc.  You may or may not find an LDS Chapel listed for your city.  In the near future we'll have that fixed!   

We are also working on the Church's "Vineyard" project where we are developing a network of bloggers and volunteers who want to spread the gospel online.  We will then use a few strategies to direct and coordinate the efforts of these folks in a way to support the spreading of positive Church content online.

So I hope that helps answer some questions relating to what I'm doing for the Church!  It's very exciting work and I work with great people as you can imagine.