It may sound funny, but you probably want to spy on your church's website, especially if you're in charge of it.

"So, I should essentially spy on myself?", you may be asking.

Not quite, but pretty close.  It's not really you or the content of your website that you want to spy on, but what your site is doing on the internet:

• Are people linking to your website?
• If they are, what are they linking to?
• And, what are they saying about it?
• Is your church being referenced in news or blogs, but not linking to your website?

For a church, this is all important information to have, but how can we go about acquiring it?

Google Alerts

Google Alerts allows you to have the latest new search results for a particular search term sent directly to your e-mail.  For this site, I monitor both "if jesus had a website" and "ifjesushadawebsite.net" as search terms so that I can be notified of new links to the site and any references to the site in any other manner.  For your church website, I'd recommend both the basic unit of your website URL (i.e. "abcd.com") and the name of your church as search terms.  In addition, if your church goes by any distinctive nicknames, I'd create alerts for them as well.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools can not only help your church website's presence in search engines through the use of sitemaps, but over time it will also give you a multitude of stats and information to learn how your site is referenced.  This information includes search terms used that find your site, page access errors or problems, and the types of links on your site and where they go.

While you won't have to monitor these tools a closely as the alerts above, they're good for a periodic check of where you are with your site.

Bloglines Search

For those of you who use Bloglines as a RSS reader, you can also take advantage of the Bloglines Search feature.  It is similar to Google Alerts, but it focuses simply on the content of blogs, and seems to provide more up-to-date results.

A combination of these and other similar tools can really help you understand where your church website situates itself in the great expanse of the world wide web.  With that knowledge, you can determine if you're where you want to be, and if not, a course of action to get there.

I came across a new resource for stock photos today called EveryStockPhoto.com. Basically, it is a search engine for all Creative Commons licensed images as a resource for designers, developers and other media publishers. They've already got over 270,000 photos indexed, making it a great place to start looking if you need professional looking photos for your website. Most images only require that you attribute the photo to the person who took or created it, making them easy to include in your work.

You may or may not be familiar with Squidoo, a service that allows you to create and share "lenses" which focus on information specified by a "lensmaster". They are a great way to share useful resources that you've found with the world. For you to see a lens in use, I've created the Church Webmaster Resources Lens.

You may be thinking, "Ok, neat...but how would I use them with my church website?".

Here's 3 good ways to use them:

1. Let Your Pastor Create A "Reading Corner" - There's often a lot of good information on the web, but we don't want to clutter up our church's website with 101 links to different articles. A lens from Squidoo allows you to create this collection of links and have just one link on your website.
2. Create A Community Of Sites Related To Your Church - Does your church provide services to other groups, or are associated with other ministries that have their own web sites? Do you sponsor missionaries who maintain a website? If you do, then a lens is a great way to coordinate that information into a single place for your visitors to check out.
3. Publicize Your Church - While it may be in a more indirect way, you can publicize your church through Squidoo. If you have an RSS feed for your church, you can have it displayed on your lens as well. Then you can also tie your lens in with other related sites such as the city or town website, the denomination website, or a similar churches in the area. You can even add a map to your lens to provide easy directions.
   

As you can see, a Squidoo lens can be applied in a number of different ways. On top of that, they are also extremely easy to maintain. Take some time and see how you can fit it into your website.

And if you'd like to add your website to the Church Webmaster Resources lens, please either leave a comment below or contact us.

One option for your church website that we have yet to discuss is the use of a church website design service. Normally, I'm an advocate of having a technically savvy person who can program everything needed for your church, but I do realize that many churches do not get this luxury. In fact, many church webmasters are simply the "most technical person available" and may not have a background in design and development. Several years ago, this may have been a problem, but recently more and more of these design services that can help just about anyone take a few steps towards their ideal church website.

Now, before getting into details about different service types, let me just preface this discussion by stating that no service is going to be able to give you exactly what you want over the long-term. This is because most services are designed around a framework of "most requested" features and designs. If you want to venture significantly outside of that framework in order to distinguish your church website from others who use the same service, it will either require more technical knowledge or money to pay for these distinct features or designs.

Nonetheless, these services are a great resources for churches who have not been blessed with a savvy web programmer. There are many services out there, and they run the gamut in terms of designs, features and approaches.

Some services are almost strictly web-based and allow you to make all changes to the design and content through a web-based interface (often referred to as a portal). Everything that affects your website goes through this portal. While these are often very convenient, and typically relatively inexpensive, the choices available in them are often very limited. Typically, most of the sites created through the provided portal appear very similar to one another (and can hard to make your site stand out on the internet).

Other services will communicate directly with a church through e-mail, phone or even in person to help develop a custom solution for the church. They will tailor the design and features to your needs, and sometimes even train people to use the system. While content changes can typically be done over the internet with a service like this, because of the custom design most design changes require the involvement of the design service representatives. While these types of services can often provide you with a much more distinctive and feature-rich website for you, they typically come at a much higher price due to all of the professional involvement.

Now, there are services that stretch almost everywhere in between the two I have presented here, and once again, you have to analyze the needs and resources of your church to come up with the approach that is best for you. So while God may not have blessed your church with a savvy programmer, fear not, for He has provided for your needs. You just need to know where to look!