Website audit · 17 October 2026 · GOC Studios

The homepage is serving ads for tobacco.

A full crawl of themount.net, all 194 pages. Every number below was measured rather than estimated. The headline finding is a security problem, not a design one, and it is the reason this audit is dated today.

Site audited

themount.net

Pages crawled

194 of 194

Method

Full sitemap crawl, asset weighing, headless render

2

Spam injections

Hidden links to outside sites on the Mount's homepage

10.4 MB

Homepage weight

A well-built church homepage lands near 1 MB

194/194

No description

Every page lets Google invent its own search snippet

16 mo

Sermon archive age

Newest sermon is June 2025. Preaching never stopped

themount.net
eighteen findings

Ordered by what it costs the church, not by how hard it is to fix. The first one is the reason this audit became urgent.

CriticalMT-01

The homepage is serving hidden spam links

Two blocks of text have been injected into the homepage content and hidden off screen with CSS. One advertises a German shisha tobacco shop. The other points at a replica watch site. Both are inside the WordPress page content, which means somebody reached the admin or a plugin wrote them in.
<span style="position: absolute; top: -14155px;"> Experience the ultimate pleasure with our premium <a href="shishaspace.de/.../shishas-tabak-200g/">200g shisha tabak</a>... <p style="position: absolute; left: -14246px;"> Readers looking for additional information about watch styles... <a href="watchesbuy.to/">watches buy</a>
Why it matters. Google treats this as a link scheme. The church is lending its 125-year-old domain to a tobacco seller, and a manual action would take the site out of search entirely.
FixEdit both blocks out of the homepage today. Then change every admin password, turn on two-factor, update WordPress and all nine plugins, and run Wordfence or Sucuri to find how they got in. Check Search Console for a manual action.
CriticalMT-02

The homepage weighs 10.4 megabytes

Measured across all 71 assets the page loads. 8.4 MB is photographs and 1.8 MB is JavaScript. Several newsletter covers are sent at full scan resolution into a box 580 pixels wide.
page01-5.jpg 885 KB 2100 x 2550 shown at 580 px page01.jpg 828 KB 2100 x 2550 shown at 580 px page01-1.jpg 749 KB 2100 x 2550 shown at 580 px rs6.min.js 403 KB Slider Revolution TOTAL 10.4 MB 71 files
On a phone off wi-fi that is most of a minute of blank screen, and the service time sits below all of it.
FixGenerate 580-wide thumbnails for the newsletter grid. That one change removes roughly 5 MB. Drop one of the two slider plugins.
CriticalMT-03

A clothing store nobody opened is still running

WooCommerce is active and selling the theme's demo products. The cart and checkout pages are live, indexed, and 292 KB each.
/product/t-shirt/ /product/crop-top/ /product/tank-top/ /product/eco-bag/ /product/sweatshirt/ /product/zip-case/ /product/cup/
The same is true of the donation campaigns. Build a 21st Century Church and Renovating a Historic Building are the theme vendor's sample fundraisers, not the Mount's. Six pages still link out to my-religion.cmsmasters.net, the demo site the theme ships with.
FixDeactivate WooCommerce and delete the demo products, the demo events, and the demo campaigns. If a church store is wanted later it can come back deliberately.
HighMT-04

Not one page has a meta description

All 194 pages. Google writes its own snippet from whatever text it finds, which on the homepage means it may pull the injected spam paragraph.
FixInstall Yoast or Rank Math and write descriptions for the twelve pages that matter: home, I'm New, service times, sermons, give, contact, each ministry.
HighMT-05

There is no structured data anywhere

Zero application/ld+json blocks across the whole site. Google has no machine-readable record of the address, the service times, or the phone number, so none of it can surface in a local result or in an AI answer above the map pack.
FixAdd Church schema to the homepage with name, address, phone, geo, and openingHoursSpecification for the 11:00 and 7:00 services. Add Event schema to the events, VideoObject to the sermons.
HighMT-06

The title tag does not say Austin

The homepage title is Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church and nothing more. There are Mount Sinai Baptist churches in a dozen states. Nobody searching for a church in Austin will see this one.
FixMake it Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church | Austin, TX. Then give every ministry page the same treatment, for example Youth Ministry in Austin | The Mount.
HighMT-07

The sermon archive stopped sixteen months ago

45 sermons, the newest dated June 2025. The church has preached every Sunday since. The newsletter is current through July 2026, so somebody is maintaining the site, just not this part of it.
FixPull titles, dates and thumbnails from the YouTube channel automatically. Sermons are the one page type that brings in people who were not already looking for this church.
HighMT-08

On a phone the first screen is a logo and a cookie banner

At 375 by 812 the seal fills the opening screen on its own. The service times appear after scrolling, and a consent banner covers the lower 40 per cent. There are two consent banners in the page markup, not one.
FixPut the service times, the address and a Plan Your Visit button above the fold. Shrink the seal to a header mark. Keep one consent banner.
HighMT-09

Pinch zoom is switched off

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">
maximum-scale=1 stops a visitor magnifying the page. In a congregation with older members this is the accessibility failure most likely to be felt. It breaks WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.4.
FixDelete maximum-scale=1. One line.
HighMT-10

The church's own history is locked inside a JPEG

MSBC-Pastors-scaled.jpg is a scan listing eleven pastors going back to the founding, three of them with the note "photo not available". Every name is invisible to search. The contact graphic hides the phone number and email address the same way.
Earl Harris F. C. Ransom L. V. Ates T. E. Marshall J. H. Scott S. L. Evans J. H. McClain H. W. Randle Albert Shelburn Gilbert Fuller A. W. Anthony Mays (since 1986) 512-451-0808 info@themount.net P.O. Box 144163
FixSet the lineage as real text with the portraits beside it. This is the strongest thing the church owns and no other church in Austin has it. The mockup shows what it looks like.
MediumMT-11

Nine plugins, several doing the same job twice

The homepage loads 69 script tags and 30 stylesheets. Two slider plugins run side by side and two contact form plugins are installed.
LayerSlider 7.8.0 + Slider Revolution 6.6.16 WPForms Lite + Contact Form 7 WooCommerce 11.0.0 The Events Calendar Timetable
FixPick one slider and one form plugin. Every plugin removed is one less way in, which matters given finding MT-01.
MediumMT-12

Giving is spread across four pages

/give/, /donations/, /im-new/ways-to-give/ and /next-steps/how-can-i-give-to-the-ministry/ all exist. Four pages that each raise a question raise less than one page with one button.
FixKeep /give/. Redirect the other three to it.
MediumMT-13

Five pages exist twice

Duplicate titles split whatever search authority each page has earned.
/our-journey/ /who-we-are/ourjourney/ /shop/ /shop-2/ /is-the-mount-right-for-me/ /project/isthemountrightforme/ /office-staff/ and /cart/ each appear twice
FixKeep one of each and 301 redirect the other.
MediumMT-14

The address in directories is the old one

The site says 8500 Cameron Road, 78754. Church directories and a 2007 Texas Senate resolution both list 5900 Cameron Road, 78723. Google needs the same name, address and phone everywhere before it trusts any of them.
FixClaim and correct the Google Business Profile first, then Apple Maps, Yelp and the denominational directories. This is the single highest-return hour of work in the whole audit.
MediumMT-15

Navigation runs seven items wide and three levels deep

Who We Are, How Can I Get Involved, I'm New, Next Steps, Our Events, Connect With Us, Resources. A first-time visitor has to guess whether service times live under I'm New or under Next Steps. They are under Next Steps.
FixFive items: Plan a Visit, Sermons, Ministries, About, Give. Everything else moves into those or into the footer.
MediumMT-16

Four pages carry almost no text

statement-of-faith and whats-sunday-like hold 17 words each. when-can-i-worship-with-you holds 37. Those three page names are exactly what a visitor searches for.
FixWrite them properly. What A Sunday Is Like is the highest-value page on a church website and this one is two sentences.
LowMT-17

Six broken links, all on the history page

Every one points at /about-us/historical-highlights/, a section that no longer exists. The 125-year history is the part of the site that is broken.
FixRepoint them, or rebuild that section with the lineage from MT-10.
LowMT-18

Markup from an earlier internet

25 <font color> tags in the footer, five form inputs with no label, images with empty alt text, and no skip-to-content link. The footer's "The Mountaineer" link is hard-coded to the March 2024 issue while the newsletter has reached July 2026.
FixHousekeeping, but the hard-coded newsletter link sends every visitor to an issue two and a half years old.

What to do first,
in order

Ordered by return on effort. The first three cost nothing and take an afternoon between them.

01

Cut the two spam blocks out of the Mount's homepage

Open the homepage in the WordPress editor, delete both hidden paragraphs, save. Then change the admin passwords and turn on two-factor before anything else.

Today · 30 min

02

Claim and correct the Google Business Profile

Right name, right address, right phone, both service times, real photographs. For a neighbourhood church this moves more people through the door than the website does, and it is free.

This week · 2 hrs

03

Delete the store and the demo content

WooCommerce, the seven demo products, the cart, the checkout, the sample fundraising campaigns, and the links to the theme vendor's demo site.

This week · 1 hr

04

Resize the newsletter covers and drop a slider

Roughly 5 MB comes off the homepage from the images alone. Removing one of the two slider plugins takes another 400 KB and closes an attack surface.

This week · 2 hrs

05

Rewrite the homepage so a phone shows the time first

Service times, address and one Plan a Visit button above the fold. Remove maximum-scale=1 while you are in there.

Week two

06

Write the three pages visitors actually search for

What A Sunday Is Like, When Can I Worship With You, and Statement Of Faith currently hold 17, 37 and 17 words. Give each one a proper page with a description and a title that names Austin.

Week two

07

Reconnect the sermon archive to YouTube

Sixteen months of preaching is missing from the only page type that brings in people who were not already looking for this church.

Week three

08

Add Church schema and meta descriptions

Address, phone, geo and both service times as structured data, plus written descriptions on the twelve pages that matter.

Week three

09

Set the pastor lineage as real pages

Eleven names, 125 years, currently a JPEG. This is the Mount's single strongest piece of content and it is the only one no other church can copy.

Week four

What it could look like

The mockup uses only the church's own facts, words and photographs. Nothing in it is invented. Blanks the church has to fill in are marked in gold.

Mockup · five screens

Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist

Home, Plan a Visit, Sermons, Give, and the phone view set beside the site today. Built around the pastor lineage and the one usable photograph the site holds.

Open →

What current practice says

Church SEO: The Complete Guide, ReachRight Church Website SEO in 2026, ChurchSpring 23 Best Church Websites and Designs, ReachRight Church Website Accessibility, The Church Co Finding and Removing Spam Link Injection in WordPress, MalCare

Most church SEO writing comes from agencies selling church SEO. The advice is consistent across them and matches what the crawl found, but treat any specific figure in those articles as a claim rather than a measurement. Every number in this audit came from the sites themselves.