Pearce Church
Pearce Church, located in Rochester, NY, is a historic Free Methodist Church in the midst of an evolution. They recently rebranded and created an entirely new web presence, but lacked search engine optimization or a strategy to guide their SEO efforts.
The project
I partnered with the team at Pearce Church to create an comprehensive SEO strategy, and implement SEO best practices sitewide. Secondary goals included improving usability and accessibility on their website, and making further recommendations based on best practices.
As the church continues to evolve and attract new visitors, the church website plays an ever-increasing role for first-time visitors.
The process
We began with a team-wide intake brainstorm, discussing the goals and vision of Pearce, as well as keywords to focus on.
Armed with that knowledge, I conducted keyword research and scanned the existing website using various online tools. Based on that, I implemented tools to improve SEO, and made changes to the coding and content of the website. This included optimizing URLs, title tags, heading tags, and page content.
I also made several changes to improve the usability and speed of the web site, including troubleshooting slow WordPress plug-ins.
The results
Within weeks, Pearce began ranking higher in search results for desired keywords, and ranking for a higher number of keywords overall. As a side benefit, the accessibility of the website was improved.
Before
After
The homepage load time was drastically improved. Before the project began, the homepage loaded in an average of 7 seconds. After my work on the website, the average homepage load was decreased to 3 seconds.
I also prepared a customized SEO Guide for Pearce, to guide ongoing SEO and accessibility efforts on their website.
The team at Pearce were thrilled with the results, and felt empowered to maintain and continue improving SEO in the future.