SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the discipline in website maintenance that handles how you look to search engines. It is important because it directly translates to where you show up in a search engine when a person searches for something your site offers.

It has been one of my objectives to get FIM's SEO improved. A metric I've been using for this is the percent of traffic driven to our website from search engines as opposed to directly typing fim.org into your browser or links from other websites.

Today, I was looking over the stats and was pleased at the results. Since beginning to track fim.org with Google Analytics in June of last year, we've seen the traffic from search engines increase by just over 52%.

Another metric that is a big deal is the increase in referring sites. That has increased 115%. An important part of this has been the opening of Gospel.com. They've driven a lot of traffic to our website. Our Director's Blog is also a new site that has pushed traffic to fim.org. Christian Answers for the New Age is another FIM-related site that had a major face-lift and has driven traffic to the main FIM.org site lately. In addition to these, we have a variety of other churches, partner ministries, missionary blogs and the like who have also begun to link to us.

It is exciting to see FIM grow on the web. The more we are available for people to learn about the more opportunities we will have to serve God by facilitating the exciting calls he has given to people around these United States, Canada and the world. Can God be glorified in Search Engine Optimization? I think it's safe to say YES!