Get Ordained: Universal Life Church Case Study

Get Ordained is a leading authority in ordination services for individuals seeking to legally officiate weddings.

Known for their long history in this field under the name Universal Life Church, they have helped ordain an impressive number of ministers. They offer this ordination service online, as well as various guides, finding a local minister, legal information, ministry supplies, and much much more.

Our partnership with Get Ordained lasted from June 2024 until July 2025. We helped formulate and allocate their digital strategy investment, managed their website optimizations during this time, and engaged in a successful but limited PPC campaign via Google Ads.

The synergy between our teams was evident from our initial consultations, where we outlined our vision for their website improvements and enhanced lead generation through paid ads.

The Challenges

Despite their substantial history and reputation, the client’s digital footprint in early 2024 failed to reflect their industry standing.

The disparity between their offline success and online visibility presented several critical challenges:

Our main challenges were:

1. 1. Primary industry keywords were poorly optimized across the website
   2. The client wasn’t leveraging informational content in an optimal way.
   3. The website’s technical aspects were in need of attention, with more than half of the pages having crawl depth issues.
   4. A lot of effort had to be put into the Spanish version of the site.
   5. Google’s rapidly changing policies and proliferation of AI features required rapid changes in strategy to compensate for SERP instability.
   6. Conversion tracking and performance metrics were insufficiently defined or absent.
   7. With hopes for a quicker ROI, a sensible split had to be made between SEO and PPC.

Our Strategy: Tailoring SEO for the Niche Experts

While the company maintained valuable partnerships, incredible testimonials, and strong customer relationships, the lead conversion wasn’t at a satisfying level. Previous marketing initiatives had not been strategically leveraged to build digital authority.

We developed a comprehensive SEO and digital optimization strategy along with a Google Ads campaign tailored to their audience. Our approach included:

1. 1. Strategic keyword optimization focused on industry-specific, high-value search terms
   2. Enhanced content development that showcased their experience and ease of use
   3. Website design tweaks emphasizing user experience and conversion optimization
   4. Implementation of robust conversion tracking and analytics frameworks
   5. Strategic backlink acquisition to improve domain authority
   6. Quick but carefully prepared PPC campaign testing and optimizations to increase ROI as soon as possible.
      

At the middle of our SEO campaign (November/December 2024), we compiled an overview that showed a promising future. This is just one of many metrics absolved – a table showing Year-over-Year keyword changes in late November 2024:

And judging from the above, you probably already know where this went from there 😉

The Results

The collaborative partnership between our teams yielded measurable success. Hereis what their rate of referring domain acquisition looked like:

And here is how we stabilized organic traffic and prevented a downturn during extremely volatile times for Google rankings:

The client’s digital presence experienced significant growth, earning widespread recognition with mentions in The New York Times, The Guardian and The Baltimore Sun.

PPC (Google Ads) as a channel has shown a significant ROI since this niche isn’t as competitive (expensive) as some other much more mature and aggressive industries like personal injury or some healthcare providers.

After reducing the cost per click, we re-focused on the website itself and successfully stopped it from losing traffic, even reversing the loss of organic traffic 5-6 months into the campaign, which reflects in the bottom-line organic revenue numbers:

With clear objectives, dedicated execution, and mutual support throughout the implementation process, results materialized rapidly. Other success stories include rankings for specific keywords, even in the AI overviews section:

Conclusion: Conquering Digital Peaks

If you want to get ordained, give them a call!

But if you want your business to achieve this level of success in keyword rankings, and ranking in AI, call Fingerprint Marketing today! We love working with entrepreneurs, ambitious people and clients that maybe don’t have time to work on their marketing because they love their own work so much.

Let’s talk!