Five fixes for churchonthedrive.org

Why this matters

The I'm New page carries a hidden summary that Google shows in search results. That summary currently says Wednesday service is at 5:00pm. Every visible page on the site — including that same page's own body text — says 6:15pm.

So a family that searches for your service times can read 5:00pm in Google, show up an hour and fifteen minutes early, find the building quiet, and leave. It is happening on the one page named for first-time visitors.

Do this

1. Open the site editor and go to the I'm New page.
2. Click the gear icon for that page to open its settings.
3. Choose the SEO tab.
4. Find the Description field. Delete what is in it.
5. Paste the replacement below, then save.

New to Church On The Drive? Here's what to expect, what to wear, and where to park. Modern worship Sundays at 11:00am, traditional worship Wednesdays at 6:15pm.

How to know it worked

The field saves immediately, but Google takes a few days to a few weeks to pick up the change. To check later, search Google for churchonthedrive.org i'm new and read the grey text under the link.

Why this matters

The worship video playing behind Welcome Home is a 45 megabyte file. For comparison, that is about the size of a full music album. It looks like the original camera file was uploaded without ever being compressed for the web.

Every phone that opens the homepage begins downloading it. On a cellular connection that is a real chunk of someone's data plan, and it is the main reason the homepage currently takes 3.3 seconds to show anything at all. Google considers anything over 1.8 seconds slow. Most people who leave a website leave in the first three seconds — which means the site is losing visitors right at the front door.

Part A — Turn off the video on phones

This is the quickest and most valuable half. SnapPages lets you show a still photo on phones instead of the video, so mobile visitors never download it at all.

1. Open the homepage in the editor.
2. Click the top section (the one with the video) and open Section Options from the right-hand menu.
3. Go to Background.
4. Look for the mobile image option and set a still photo — a good frame from the same video works well.
5. Save.

Part B — Replace the video with a smaller one

1. Go to freeconvert.com/video-compressor — free, nothing to install.
2. Upload the current video and compress it with these targets:

3. Back in Section Options › Background, replace the video with the compressed file.
4. While you are there, set a poster or fallback image if offered. Right now the hero is blank while the video loads.

How to know it worked

Go to pagespeed.web.dev, enter churchonthedrive.org, and run it before and after. The mobile score should move noticeably.

Why this matters

There is currently no analytics of any kind on the website. No Google Analytics, no tracking of any sort. That means nobody can answer basic questions: how many people visited last month, whether anyone reaches the giving page, whether the Christmas service page got read, or whether people find you on a phone or a computer.

You cannot improve what you cannot see. This is free and takes ten minutes.

Do this

1. Go to analytics.google.com and sign in with a church Google account — ideally a shared one, not a personal login, so access survives staff changes.
2. Create a property for the church. When asked for a platform, choose Web and enter churchonthedrive.org.
3. Google gives you a Measurement ID that looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX. Copy it.
4. In SnapPages go to Settings › Code and find the Header Code box.
5. Paste the code below into Header Code, replacing both copies of the placeholder with your real ID.
6. Click Save Settings in the upper right.

<!-- Google Analytics -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XXXXXXXXXX"></script>
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());
  gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX');
</script>

How to know it worked

Open the website on your phone. Then in Google Analytics look at Reports › Realtime. You should see one visitor — you. It can take a couple of minutes to appear.

Why this matters

Two separate things are missing, and one paste fixes both.

First — when someone shares churchonthedrive.org on Facebook, or texts the link to a friend, it shows up as a plain grey rectangle with no picture and no description. There is no share image set anywhere on the site. Every share a member makes is quietly landing weaker than it should, and shares from members are how most people first hear about a church.

Second — Google has no machine-readable record of who you are. Your address, phone number, and service times exist on the page as ordinary text, but not in the structured form search engines look for when they build those information panels on the right side of search results.

Do this

1. First you need a share image. Use a photo of the building or a worship gathering, sized around 1200 × 630 pixels. Upload it to any page in the editor, then right-click it on the live site and choose Copy image address. That web address is what you need.
2. Go to Settings › Code › Header Code — the same box as step 3. Add this below the analytics code.
3. Replace the image line with your real image address.
4. Click Save Settings.

<!-- How the site looks when shared -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Church On The Drive">
<meta property="og:description" content="A church in College Park, Orlando. Modern worship Sundays at 11:00am, traditional worship Wednesdays at 6:15pm.">
<meta property="og:image" content="PASTE-YOUR-IMAGE-ADDRESS-HERE">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://churchonthedrive.org/">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

<!-- Church details for search engines -->
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Church",
  "name": "Church On The Drive",
  "url": "https://churchonthedrive.org/",
  "telephone": "+1-407-843-0140",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1914 Edgewater Drive",
    "addressLocality": "Orlando",
    "addressRegion": "FL",
    "postalCode": "32804",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Sunday",
      "opens": "11:00",
      "closes": "12:15",
      "name": "Modern Worship Gathering"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Wednesday",
      "opens": "18:15",
      "closes": "19:15",
      "name": "Traditional Worship Gathering"
    }
  ],
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/churchonthedrive",
    "https://instagram.com/churchonthedr",
    "https://www.youtube.com/c/ChurchOnTheDrive"
  ]
}
</script>

How to know it worked

For the share image, paste your website address into Facebook's Sharing Debugger and click Scrape Again. You should see your photo. For the church details, use validator.schema.org and enter your web address — it should report a Church with no errors.

Why this matters

Right now the Give page, the Connect Card page, the Live Stream page and the homepage all share the exact same description — the mission statement. That is the sentence a person reads in Google before deciding whether to click, so four different pages are all making the same pitch, and none of them is answering the question the searcher actually asked.

Below are ready-written descriptions for the eight pages that matter most. Each one is the right length and mentions College Park and Orlando, which helps local searches.

Do this, one page at a time

1. Open the page in the editor.
2. Click the gear icon, then the SEO tab.
3. Paste the matching description below into the Description field. Save.
4. Repeat. You do not have to do all eight in one sitting.

While you are in there

The site's keyword field currently lists Hillsong. That is another church's name, and search engines have ignored keyword fields since about 2009 anyway. Worth clearing out.