6 ms·

Mormon Church website a good example of SEO

• deleted 16y ago
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• ambitious 16y ago
  The backlink profile for the church site must be pretty impressive as well. There must be thousands of LDS bloggers out there, not to mention Deseret News etc, etc. But yeah, in terms of site architecture, it's an impressive website.
  • phuff 16y ago
    Yeah, there is no doubt the LDS blogosphere linking back to the site gives it a mighty boost in pagerank.
• deleted 16y ago
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• js2 16y ago
  While working for an enterprise server management startup, I met with some of the LDS folks and was impressed with how well they know technology and IT across the board. http://tech.lds.org/ http://tech.lds.org/
  • pchristensen 16y ago
    Their maps app is especially great - makes it so easy to find where and when the closest meetinghouse is, anywhere in the world. http://maps.lds.org http://maps.lds.org
• rmc 16y ago
  The linked article just states "Yes the mormon church know SEO". Does anyone know what techniques they use? How do you know they "know SEO". Details please!
  • phamilton 16y ago
    see the embedded video
• deleted 16y ago
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• darkhorse 16y ago
  the fact that a multinational organization with revenues in the billions can do SEO is not at all impressive to me. furthermore, you really need to question your belief system and analytical processes if you follow a church founded by a guy who thought he could find treasure by looking at a rock in a hat (he was also a convicted fraudster).
  • bry 16y ago
    You made a valid argument with your first comment, but your second comment ("furthermore...") has nothing at all to do with the article or SEO. Go troll somewhere else.
  • tjarratt 16y ago
    I'm having trouble finding any other churches that exhibit good SEO practices. The catholic church doesn't have such a strong presence, the closest I can find is the westboro baptist church.
    • ugh 16y ago
      It’s quite funny to me that the Catholic Church (of all churches) has a very decentralized internet presence. Every church, every diocese, is responsible for their own website. They each have to find someone who does it and they have to pay. The Vatican’s website doesn’t seem so much like website for the whole Catholic Church, it’s much rather all about the Vatican and only about the Vatican. What you find on the internet is very much patchwork. This is a church: http://www.st-elisabeth-bonn.de/ http://www.st-elisabeth-bonn.de/ A diocese: http://www.bistum-regensburg.de/ http://www.bistum-regensburg.de/ The Conference of German Bishops: http://www.dbk.de/ http://www.dbk.de/ One of the many German Catholic portals: http://www.rpp-katholisch.de/ http://www.rpp-katholisch.de/ All German but the content isn’t important here. I think the patchwork is obvious.
  • phamilton 16y ago
    2nd comment is incorrect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith,_Jr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith,_Jr.
  • 16y ago
• gchucky 16y ago
  The article's site is being pretty slow, but it's been cached at http://kyleclouse.com.nyud.net/mormons-lds-church-seo/ http://kyleclouse.com.nyud.net/mormons-lds-church-seo/.
  • dabent 16y ago
    That's odd with it being mid week. The traffic to LDS.org is the opposite of most sites - it actually peaks on Sunday with lulls during the week. There are two significant peaks during the year, one the first week in October, the other the first week in April, when the church holds it's semi-annual General Conference for all members to see. Edit: to note that I eventually realized that it was the article, not the LDS.org site that was slow. I'll leave my notes in place, because it's an interesting traffic pattern to see.
    • pchristensen 16y ago
      semi-annual General Conference for all members to see which is video streamed in several languages and audio streamed in many dozens of languages. It has been getting better every year for at least 7 years now. It's now to the point that it doesn't really matter whether I'm watching it on my TV through satellite or over the internet.
• sjs382 16y ago
  I think they just hire great people and trust them. The designer of the LDS website is someone who I look up to, wrt/design: http://www.cameronmoll.com/portfolio/ http://www.cameronmoll.com/portfolio/
  • telemachos 16y ago
    Moll's comments on his porfolio page: > While overseeing the redesign of LDS.org, the LDS web team asked me to step in towards the end of the project to add my take on the visuals, resulting in a few comped ideas within a very short timeframe.[1] That sounds like he did just a bit of work late in the game. (Maybe you meant that, but my first take was "designed the whole site" from reading your "The designer of the LDS website.") [1] http://www.cameronmoll.com/portfolio/ http://www.cameronmoll.com/portfolio/ [2] The comparisons: http://www.cameronmoll.com/projects/lds/ http://www.cameronmoll.com/projects/lds/
• SoftwareMaven 16y ago
  The UX team at the LDS church is second to none. They made a concerted effort several years ago to hire the best (within certain ecclesiastical constraints) and I think they've succeeded. I would hire any of them. They have a strongly, user-driven dev process that brings high fidelity mock-ups into the process well before development starts. UX works directly with the customers (different organizations in the church) to make sure they get what that want, leaving the program managers to ensure delivery. The underlying CMS (which I worked on), on the other hand, is something else. :)
  • charliepark 16y ago
    Their tumblelog (http://northtemple.com/ http://northtemple.com/) is also really great. I'm consistently impressed with the links, quotes, images, and other stuff they post there.
  • cookiecaper 16y ago
    I'm LDS and use the Church's site frequently. I don't like the new site. Just yesterday they fixed one thing that bothered me about it, which is that anytime you highlight, you would get a fade-in pop-up on the side of the text about journaling or highlighting it. This was pretty irritating since I am in the habit of highlighting text while I read. Now there is a constant black bar that tells me to sign in to journal and/or highlight, which is also annoying, but less so. Secondly, the new layout is not fluid horizontally -- it is horizontally centered and seems to be tailored for 1024x768 audiences. It's much worse attempting to read scriptures or articles on my 1920x1080 screen with gobs of excess space on the screen, now only occupied by blue gradient. The text used to flow well and take up all available screen space due to the simple layout of the site -- the revision not only horizontally centers everything, but even cuts the container down, with "Share" and "Download" links on the sidebar. The text is spaced awkwardly and it's just a great big waste of screen real estate. I read the print version most of the time (now I use the old one since they brought the old scriptures back), but it doesn't have footnote toggle and the spacing is still weird; at least, however, it doesn't waste 50% of my horizontal screen space. Loading footnotes can be tiresome, as the site makes an AJAX call on load; I'd much prefer preloaded footnotes. The new chapter selection page makes it harder to find the chapter you want -- you can either scroll a lot and use the same number of clicks or click on the jump menu and add an extra click in there. There are some cool things about the new site, and I like the use of HTML5 font faces and other things like that, but for the most part it's less usable for more shininess. Compare http://scriptures.lds.org http://scriptures.lds.org and http://classic.scriptures.lds.org http://classic.scriptures.lds.org and tell me which you'd rather read from.
• thirsteh 16y ago
  A Google evangelist recommends following the example of a site which pushes its page menu through uncrawlable JavaScript. I'm disappointed. And did they just reach a high rating with their front page (which is not impressive considering the tremendous backlinking they must have), or are all their pages and all the terms on all their pages ranking equally well?
• dabent 16y ago
  http://mormon.org/people/ http://mormon.org/people/ is interesting to check out. It's the LDS Church's attempt to have it's own "social" site, and add a human face to their faith.
• shawnee_ 16y ago
  I am LDS, and it's true that there are a lot of very competent techies who are members. The two major factors that likely influence the high ranking are : as mentioned. (1) the SEO is affected by links pointing at the site from external sources like LDS bloggers, and (2) the comprehensive system of cross-referencing that the site has implemented through its web-based scriptures. For example: http://lds.org/scriptures/pgp?lang=eng http://lds.org/scriptures/pgp?lang=eng because the LDS Church's major "message" is how the Book of Mormon is supplementary and complementary to the Bible, as it is a record of God's dealings with people on the American continent during "ancient" American times.
• grantheaslip 16y ago
  I know that this comment section isn't supposed to be about the church itself, but I can't help but be baffled by the way people are able to separate analyzing SEO optimization from the fact that the church itself is a fundamentally terrible organization. The church is full of racist scripture, institutionalized sexism, and dangerous sexual repression; and has been a major proponent of denying rights to gays. As long as they continue to have such regressive and backward policies, I don't care how good their SEO is. Again, it's not that I doubt their SEO prowess, but how are people able to separate what an evil organization the LDS is from their SEO practises? I don't want to side-track this thread too much, but I'm genuinely curious about the way people are coming at this.
  • bry 16y ago
    Stay on topic and take your trolling elsewhere
    • grantheaslip 16y ago
      Comment threads on HN aren't always about exactly what the article was about. I tend to see the article as a conversation starter, not a rigid, immutable topic. Sure, some people might disagree with what I wrote, but I don't think expressing a thought I had while reading the comments that isn't precisely about the article counts as trolling. Your opinion may differ.
      • bry 16y ago
        No doubt. That's the whole point of HN: Intelligent discussion. Your comments, however, are SO off-topic (SEO and how an organization like theirs has done so well at it) that it comes across as trolling.
      • benatkin 16y ago
        Please don't use HN the way you like to see it used. Please follow the guidelines instead. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The first two words of the "In Comments" section covers this thread.
• babalicious 16y ago
  Yeah, a religion that sells its product door to door like Avon probably has the SEO down, I'm telling ya. Please. Warez/malware/porn sites all have great SEO chops too. Why again are we applauding these particular moronic snake-oil salesmen?
• juddlyon 16y ago
  For the SEO nerds: lds.org 6,236 Linking Root Domains 190,722 Total Links (followed, nofollowed, 301'ing pages) catholic.org: 4,029 Linking Root Domains 61,409 Total Links (followed, nofollowed, 301'ing pages) Source: SEOmoz' Open Site Explorer