4 SEO TIPS YOUR FREEMASON LODGE NEEDS ON ITS WEBSITE!

The Freemasonry Report

4 SEO TIPS YOUR FREEMASON LODGE

NEEDS ON IT’S WEBSITE!

Learn the ways you can quickly build or rebuild your Masonic Lodge’s Website.

My goal with this section of the Freemasonry Report is to help brothers make their lodges thrive!  The only way to do that is by sharing tips and tricks that actually matter for creating a healthy Masonic Lodge. Now, be aware, I have been building business brands for over ten years in my entrepreneurial endeavors outside of Freemasonry and I am glad to have the chance to help you now.

This information is totally free to take and use in because I have years of experience helping local Florida Lodges create a community awareness for themselves. Believe it or not, I am often referred to other lodges because I do this as my passion project.

Being a Freemason for many years, I know every dollar counts and I want to make certain if you have spend even a penny it is money well spent.

Here is my SEO Tip that actually works – #1 Use Heading Tags Throughout Your Content

Once again, I am so glad you are reading this ‘SEO tips that actually work’ blog article to improve your Masonic Lodges website or possibly to start building it correctly. While a website’s sitemap is useful for helping search engine crawlers see how your site is organized, it doesn’t help them make sense of the individual content.

Individual content – what is that?  Good question. It is the written text inside your website’s page or blog post.  Generally, it is explaining something relevant to your Masonic pursuits in your local area.  Sometimes, it could be a small passion project that the Worshipful Master has set for the year or maybe it is a local project your lodge has committed to for some special reason.

Wordpress logo

For that, you’ll need to use heading tags. Okay, Mr. Freemasonry Report Content Creator – Ed Pisani Jr, what is a heading tag exactly?

Great question!  These are formatting options that you can apply to section headings within your lodge’s website pages and posts. Simply stated, a heading breaks up your content to into manageable chunks for the reader and the web crawler to determine how it important to the page’s topic.

If you have a WordPress website building software it is standard with any version. You can see these settings in your WordPress editor, listed as Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on. This can be found under the “Add Media” button, you will see “Paragraph” with an arrow pointing downward. Click on it and you easily find the Heading Tags starting from 1 in large font to 6 in a much smaller font size. Not all website builders come with this – which is unbelievable to think about!

Headings tags – let’s dig deeper to understand why this SEO tip works so well.

Using these headings to structure your content accomplishes two things.

  1. It provides a visual benefit, by breaking up your text and making it easier to read. Also, crawlers pay a lot of attention to headings, using them to understand how your content is organized and what it’s about. Okay, you might be wondering, ‘why am I catering to a web crawler?’ It’s actually really easy to explain, a web crawler visits your website on a monthly basis to see what is new about it.
  2. While, the web crawlers are going into your website, it determines how you should be found online. Furthermore, it looks at how important your content is the search engines visitors and how high you should rank in a search result. So when creating posts and pages, don’t forget to use the heading options often and consistently.

Another one of my SEO Tips that actually work 

#2 Build Your Content Around Key words, Key phrases, or A Niche Idea

Chances are you’ve encountered the concept of keywords before. It is a really popular talking point in the internet marketing world. But if you are totally new the worldwide web, have no fear, I can help you understand what they are. A Keyword is exactly what it sounds like. It is a word you want to found for. An example would be “Fraternity”; “Freemasons”; and etc. But this really is not good enough.

Why, well a key word is just a word. Alot of people are looking for things online these days in terms of phrases. Such as “Freemasons near me”; “Your City Name Masonic Lodge”;  and so on.   These are short phrases that describe your content’s topic.  It is really important to define what the website’s target is. Is it men?;  Is it Dads or Granddads; or is it young professionals?

But you might choose a niche key phrase to really impact your potential audience. This niche key phrase should dig deeper into who you really want to target on online, here are a few examples to think about “social young professionals fraternity” or “Active Dads that need an evening off from everything” for a blog post that shares simple reading options for beginner readers.

By doing this, you’re predicting that a lot of people will type a related term but your niche key phrase will be shown because it goes into a more intensive web page which Google or Bing thinks their user is looking for. Understanding what a search engine is trying to share is critical and building a website that hits all the check marks helps to show you are the right fraternal organization which should show up when people are looking for this type of post.

Yoast SEO

4 SEO TIPS THAT ACTUALLY WORK FOR A FREEMASON WEBSITE!

 Choosing a ‘niche key phrase’ for each post or page and using it in various places — such as the title, the headings, and the content itself — is a common way to communicate your topic to search engine crawlers and increase the chances of showing your content in relevant searches. I strongly recommend to if you are using WordPress for your website, download the Yoast Plugin.  Yoast SEO is simply one of the strongest search engine optimization tools and I used it for all my clients. If you are a newbie and don’t have a ton of money to invest in a website – Yoast SEO offers a free version.  But, I highly suggest looking at investing in their premium version if possible. Please note, I am not making any money from Yoast SEO when recommending this plugin, so if your budget is tight – don’t buy it.

2 More Important SEO Tips to remember when building or rebuilding your Lodge’s website…

Keep in mind that these SEO tips will help grow your website’s authority online over time. Generally, overtime is 6 months to 24 months and it is based on the quality of your website overall. So really take time to volunteer to build up the website. Remember great SEO happens overtime not overnight – you can find ways to cut corners or cheat when it comes to SEO but once the Search Engine Bots/Crawlers figure it out – your website and all the work you put into it is toast. Literally, you will be on the front page one day and the 61st page the following day – be careful to do things that would not hurt your lodge’s website.

Search Engine Optimization Tip #1: Change Your ‘Permalink’ Structure

Permalinks are the permanent URLs that point to your site’s individual posts, pages, and other content. This is important because it helps your Masonic Lodge’s website visitors understand why they should visit the page.

Furthermore, it allows them to decide what other pages might be helpful for them while visiting your website. Think about it this way, they’re what people will use to reference and link back to your site.

The permalink URL appearance matters because attracts “the right” visitors to your site. Clear, descriptive links that describe the content available at the permalink. Thus it makes it easier for search engines to make sense of and tend to get a ranking boost. WordPress offers a number of automatic permalink plugins – so take time to really think using WordPress.  If you do move forward with WordPress, there are a number of website ready theme to take advantage of to help speed up getting your lodge’s web presence launched quickly.

Generally, permalinks are based around numbers (such as the Plain and Numeric). Using numbers isn’t the best way to get the attention of anyone or any bot simply because it conveys very little useful information to search engines. Instead, you’re best off with the Post Name (or Custom Name) structure since it communicates clearly what the linked content is about. You can easily change your permalink structure in WordPress by visiting your site’s back end and navigating to Settings > Permalink. Again, that is mainly for WordPress Websites and not the many other website builder programs that may or may not allow you to do this.

SEO Tip #2: Create a ‘Sitemap’ 

Why is a sitemap so important? A sitemap is a list of all the pages and other content on your Masonic Blue Lodge website. It usually is organized into a hierarchy similar to a table of contents in a book. It provides a quick way to see how your site is laid out and what it includes. While these sitemaps were once designed to help users navigate websites.

Today, they have a primary purpose to communicate information to search engine bots (also known as crawlers). The web crawlers or bots will report back their findings on to the search engine to determine your content’s value to the visitor. The less value that can reported back – the lower your search engine ranking.

While the debate rages about if a sitemap actually boosts your ranking on search engines . Most professionals building websites recommend or automatically do this step because ‘why chance it’ – they are interested in hurting your search engine ranking(s). If you are volunteering to do this for your blue lodge and are the official ‘webmaster’ – then just do it.

It’s still a valuable SEO tool most specifically with Google, Bing, and numerous other smaller search engines because they want to have it uploaded to their database to track the website’s updates and changes – Google calls this the ‘Google Search Console’ platform. It enables crawlers to see all of the pages on your site and understand how they relate to one another.

Hopefully by adding a sitemap, you and your local blue lodge are making it easier for search engines to index your site. Therefore, it helps to present relevant content in user searches. Adding a sitemap to WordPress is simple — you can do so with a targeted plugin such as Google XML Sitemaps, or through a comprehensive SEO tool such as Yoast SEO, Math Rank, or Meta SEO. But don’t worry, there are numerous plugins that offer this so select one to find easy to use.

Of course, you want to be smart about the way you use these SEO tips when it comes to your blue lodge. That is why I wanted to write this article and share the benefits it can make for your online presence. For example, it’s best to avoid ‘keyword stuffing’, or forcing your keyword into too many places so that it appears unnatural or spammy. I bet you are getting worried – don’t my brother because Freemasonry is loaded with professionals willing and able to help you out. Just take a moment to look at your lodge’s roster and find a local Mason that can help you if necessary. You never know, he may even get fired up to start attending lodge meetings more if you reach out for help.

Well, I will be writing more articles to help grow the fraternity and I hope this information was helpful to you. If you want more Freemasonry topics to read? Good news, I am creating plenty for you to enjoy! I have been spending hours creating this information, so take a moment to read each one!  Or maybe you want to find a lodge in your neck of the woods? Good news – I am creating a complete review of each Grand Lodge – it will take time but I wanted you to have this information at your fingertips!  If you want to network with other Freemasons – check out our Facebook Group / Page now!

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