Christian writers often write for years without ever telling a friend or family member about it. We write for the glory of God, and sharing our written words with the world leaves us vulnerable. But we also rightly recoil at prideful self-promotion.
Writing for God’s glory and the good of others can be a fulfilling and fruitful endeavor, but without readers who connect with our words, fulfillment and fruit seem elusive. Eventually, we become discouraged after pouring our hearts onto a page nobody reads or cares about. We try connecting with readers on social media but become frustrated by the lack of engagement. We believe that if God has called us to write for his glory, he must have some readers in mind for our words. Yet, we’re uncomfortable with marketing methods and the idea of constantly promoting our work to reach an audience.
The Story of My Struggle
About a decade ago, I was diligently writing for my own blog. I published new content weekly for over a year, yet my writing wasn’t gaining traction. It was so disheartening to put so much energy into sharing the message God gave me only to have it sit there unread.
The advice I read online about growing a writing platform frustrated me because much of it seemed to contradict my convictions as a Christian. Building and maintaining a social media following was exhausting and pitifully unrewarding. Paid options didn’t fit my budget, and most marketing methods made me uncomfortable because it felt like prideful self-promotion.
I wanted to write for God’s glory, not my own, but I also didn’t feel motivated to persevere in writing if no one would read it.
During this time, I was working as a marketing director for a local small business. My boss sent me to a networking event where a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant presented an overview of SEO techniques. It was all new to me and sounded highly technical and intimidating, but it was clear that a proper SEO strategy could improve our marketing success.
Over the next couple of years, I learned on-page SEO, and it became my full-time job. Day after day, I used SEO to help business clients connect with the people who needed or wanted their products or services.
SEO: An Ideal Solution for Christian Writers
You may be asking, “What is SEO?” SEO is search engine optimization. It’s the process of developing or improving your website (or blog post) to increase its visibility in search engines (like Google Search). A website optimized for search engines is more likely to appear in search results than a website designed without any thought of SEO.
For example, imagine two websites designed to sell pens specifically for Christian writers—one developed with SEO and the other without SEO. Both attractive, professionally-designed sites sell the same competitively-priced, high-quality product that meets a real need in the Christian writer’s market.
When a Christian writer searches online for “pen for Christian writers,” the SEO site ranks in the top spot on the results page, but the site without SEO is nowhere to be seen, despite selling the same product at the same price.
After a few years of implementing SEO in the workplace, it occurred to me that I could use those same SEO skills for my own writing platform. My readership grew almost immediately.
Here’s a screenshot from Google Analytics, showing a comparison of the number of readers my website had before I implemented SEO on my website and the number of readers two years later. My words reached over 20,000% more readers after using SEO.
With time, experience, and practice, optimizing my website and blog posts for online searches became second nature. My SEO knowledge actually inspired many of my blog posts, and implementing a few simple SEO strategies seemed to put my readership growth on autopilot. I felt such relief when I began to see that people were actually reading my words, even though I hadn’t directly shared them with anyone or engaged in active promotion.
Writing online became a joyful endeavor again. I could focus on sharing the message on my heart and honing my writing skills without the distraction of striving for engagement.
I quickly realized the many blessings SEO offers—not only for the writer but for the readers who want the kind of content you’re writing. You can hear a bit about that in a 2024 Writers’ Bloc interview about the Benefits of SEO for Christian Writers here. I’ll summarize them for you:
- SEO allows us to make Jesus known to more people.
- SEO is one way to serve our readers well.
- SEO enables us to build a platform without prideful self-promotion.
- SEO can be free!
- SEO can be easier and more effective than social media.
- SEO can bear lasting fruit.
- SEO reaches more people when and where they need us.
I felt like I had discovered a priceless treasure, and I simply could not keep it to myself.
Simple SEO for Christian Writers
The challenge was that SEO can be highly technical. If you’re like most Christian writers, when someone starts talking about SEO, your eyes glaze over, and you shift your attention elsewhere. I used to respond the same way!
That’s why I created Simple SEO for Christian Writers—a simple course to help Christian writers like you:
- Understand what SEO is
- Implement basic on-page SEO techniques through your writing
- Start seeing some fruit from your writing efforts
Simplicity was a top priority in developing this course, along with presenting it all from a biblical perspective. (One lesson even includes a mini Bible study!)
Whether or not you try my course, I encourage you to learn some basic on-page SEO skills to help you connect your God-glorifying message with the readers who need it. In my experience, it’s a fruitful endeavor I can invest time and energy into without feeling I’ve compromised my Christian values. For me and other Christian writers, SEO is a powerful tool that helps me to steward my writing for God’s glory.
“I feared the technicalities of SEO and felt it wouldn’t make a difference. On my first attempt at using Jana’s simple strategies, my post ranked #4 on Google. Six months later, my site traffic has increased by 500% My prayer continues to be that as bloggers, we will continue to use our gifts for the glory of God and the good of others, and I’m so grateful for Jana showing me how SEO helps me steward well my gift of writing.” —Amber Thiessen
Learn more about Simple SEO for Christian Writers.