Article Outline:
Start with a Strategy
Find the Right Keywords
Create Winning Content
Optimize for Search Engines
Build a Strategy Over Time
Recap: SEO Basics + Checklist
If you run a small Catholic business or ministry, SEO may be one of those things you know you should be doing but never quite have the time to figure out.
We get it. There’s a seemingly endless list of SEO tactics out there, and most small teams don’t have hours to spend deciphering Google’s algorithm.
So forget about mastering it all. Let’s focus on the SEO basics that can make the biggest difference for your content and help more people find you online.
Before you begin your SEO journey, have a roadmap for where you’re going. This will save you from spinning your wheels and spending time and resources creating content that may not ultimately serve your goals.
Start by asking:
Once you have a basic plan in place, you’re ready to figure out what your audience is actually searching for through keyword research.
A keyword is simply a word or phrase someone types into a search engine. Before you create a piece of SEO content, do some research to identify keywords that are relevant to your audience and realistic for your website to target.
Let’s say you’re a small Catholic business that sells handmade rosaries, and you’d like to increase your website’s visibility. You decide to do this by offering helpful articles that answer questions people ask about the Rosary.
If you start your research with the broad keyword “rosary,” you’ll quickly see why you need to get more specific. Search results could range from the actress Rosario Dawson to churches named Holy Rosary, along with people looking for prayers, sacramental gifts, or information about the Rosary.
Instead, you might find more specific searches such as “how to pray the rosary,” “sorrowful mysteries,” or “rosary beads.”
As you consider which keywords to target, look at a few key factors:
For example, let’s say “how to pray the rosary” has a high monthly search volume but is difficult to rank for, while “how to pray the rosary PDF” has a lower search volume but is much easier to rank for.
Would you rather have a small chance of reaching a large audience, or a better chance of reaching a smaller, more targeted one? This is where the strategy you established earlier can help you decide.
There are plenty of SEO research tools available, both free and subscription-based.
Free tools include:
Subscription-based tools include:
If you’re just starting out with SEO, you may want to begin with one of the free tools and upgrade when you’re ready to dive deeper. You can also take advantage of a free trial of a paid tool to see if it’s the right fit before committing to a subscription.
Once you’ve chosen a keyword that fits your audience, goals, and ability to compete, it’s time to create content around it.
In a sense, you’re writing content for a search engine to rank. But your content should always be written first and foremost for the human being who searched for it.
The most important thing is to create high-quality, useful content that gives the reader what they were looking for when they searched for that keyword.
Make your content helpful, valuable, and relevant to your audience. If someone searches “how to pray the Rosary,” for example, your article should clearly answer that question rather than use the keyword as an excuse to talk primarily about the rosaries you sell.
However, there is an opportunity to hyperlink text within your content, e.g., “rosary beads,” to product pages. But your content should not become a sales pitch. (See the next paragraph for an example!)
Keep your audience in mind as you write, and speak to them in your organization’s natural brand voice.
Some SEO tools may also recommend a specific article length based on other pages currently ranking for your keyword. Those recommendations can be helpful, but focus on quality first. Don’t “fluff out” your content simply to hit a recommended word count.
For longer content, use descriptive subheadings and bullet points where possible to break up the text and make it easier for readers to find the information they need.
Include your primary keyword in the body of your content where it makes sense, along with related words and phrases that naturally come up when discussing the topic. These are known as semantically related keywords.
For example, an article about “how to pray the Rosary” would probably also mention phrases such as “Sign of the Cross,” “Hail Mary,” and “mysteries of the Rosary.” You don’t need to force these terms into the article. If you’re covering the topic thoroughly, many of them will appear naturally.
Keyword stuffing is the outdated practice of repeatedly using a keyword in an attempt to improve a page’s search ranking. Today, this can hurt your content more than it helps.
The solution is simple: Write for a human and naturally include your keyword wherever it makes sense.
Search engines are sophisticated enough to understand variations in wording, too. You don’t have to write “how to pray the Rosary” verbatim every time. Variations like “a guide to praying the Rosary” still communicate the same basic topic.
Ultimately, good SEO content should serve both audiences: It should make the topic clear to search engines while providing genuinely useful information to the person reading it.
Once you’ve created useful content for your reader, there are a few basic elements you can optimize to help search engines understand what your page is about.
Include your primary keyword in the title tag and H1 heading when it fits naturally.
The title tag is the title that lives in the HTML of your webpage and may appear as the clickable headline in search results. Your H1 is the main visible heading a visitor sees on the page, such as the title of a blog post.
The two often use the same copy, but they don’t have to. Aim to keep your title tag concise and descriptive, generally around 60 characters or fewer.
Create a short, user-friendly URL that describes the page and includes your primary keyword when appropriate. Use dashes to separate words.
For example:
yourwebsite.com/how-to-pray-the-rosary
is much more helpful to both users and search engines than:
yourwebsite.com/blog/post-12345
Use headings such as H2s and H3s to organize your content and make it easier to scan.
Your H1 should clearly communicate the main topic of the page, while your subheadings should help readers navigate the information beneath it. Include keywords in headings where they make sense, but don’t force them in simply for SEO.
For accessibility and readability, keep your heading structure logical. An H3, for example, should generally fall beneath an H2 rather than appearing randomly within the page.
Write a clear, compelling meta description that summarizes what the page is about and gives searchers a reason to click.
Meta descriptions don’t directly improve your search ranking, and Google may sometimes display a different snippet from your page instead. Still, writing a useful description gives search engines a strong option to display in the search results.
Aim for roughly 150–160 characters and include your primary keyword naturally when appropriate.
Add descriptive alt text to relevant images. Alt text helps people using screen readers understand the content of an image and can also provide search engines with additional context.
If your keyword genuinely describes the image, you can include it. But don’t add keywords simply for the sake of SEO.
Include links to other relevant pages on your website whenever they would be helpful to the reader.
For example, a blog post about how to pray the Rosary might naturally link to a product page using descriptive text such as “handmade rosaries” rather than generic wording like “click here.”
Internal links help visitors explore related content on your site and help search engines understand how your pages relate to one another.
You don’t need to force a certain number of links into every page. Focus instead on linking naturally to useful, relevant content whenever it makes sense.
SEO isn’t just about optimizing one page or blog post. Over time, you can strengthen your website by creating multiple pieces of useful content around the topics most relevant to your organization.
Let’s go back to our example of a small business that sells rosaries. If the Rosary is central to what you offer, you’ll probably have plenty of opportunities to create content around that topic.
One way to organize that content is through a topic cluster.
A topic cluster typically includes one broad, central page, sometimes called a pillar page, along with more specific pages or articles that explore related subtopics.
For example:
Main topic or pillar page:
What Is the Rosary?
Related content:
Linking these related pages together helps visitors easily explore more of your content and helps search engines understand how the different pages on your website relate to one another.
As you create more content around the same general topic, make sure each page has its own clear focus.
Too much of a good thing can become a problem. If you create multiple pages targeting essentially the same keyword, you may run into keyword cannibalization. In other words, search engines may have difficulty determining which page should rank for that keyword, and your pages can end up competing against one another.
Before creating a new article, check what you already have. If an existing page already targets the same keyword and search intent, you may be better off optimizing that content rather than creating a new page.
The goal is not to publish as much content as possible. It’s to build a useful collection of resources that covers the topics your audience cares about without unnecessarily duplicating what you’ve already created.
SEO is a long-term strategy, so once you publish a piece of content, give it time and keep an eye on how it performs.
Go back to the goals you established at the beginning of your SEO strategy and track the indicators that matter most to your organization. Depending on your goals, that might include:
Two free tools can help you monitor these results: Google Search Console shows how your website is performing in Google Search, while Google Analytics can help you understand what visitors do once they reach your website.
And remember: SEO doesn’t require you to publish new content every week. Focus on creating high-quality content at a pace your team can realistically maintain.
That also means SEO isn’t always about creating something new. Review your existing website pages and blog posts from time to time. If a piece of content is no longer performing well, has become outdated, or could better answer the searcher’s question, consider improving or expanding it rather than starting from scratch.
Over time, use what you learn from your results to guide your strategy. Keep creating what serves your audience, improve what could perform better, and focus your time and resources on the SEO efforts that are helping you reach your goals.
This article covered a lot—and there is even more to SEO research, strategy, and content creation! But don’t let that overwhelm you from focusing on the basics.
These five key principles will provide a strong foundation for your SEO strategy.
Once you have a piece of content you’re proud of, have someone on your team proofread it before publishing. Then, if you really want to optimize your content, follow this brief checklist:
Final Optimization Checklist
You don’t need a complicated SEO strategy or a steady stream of new blog posts to make progress. Focus on creating useful content around the right searches, optimize the basics, and learn from your results.
A few intentional improvements over time can make your website a stronger tool for growing your reach and serving your mission.
Ready to up your SEO game, or need help getting started? Get in touch with our team!
