Nowadays, nearly all charities and nonprofits rely on SEO (search engine optimization) in some way to assist their fundraising efforts.
What’s SEO? A practice for stimulating traffic from search engines organically, SEO for nonprofits seeks to optimize a site’s marketing practices by using strategic keywords and phrases to boost rankings on SERPs (search engine results pages). By doing so, charities and nonprofits can convert increased website traffic into paid donors or volunteers, spreading further awareness of their cause and, ultimately, generating more traffic.
Further benefits of implementing an SEO strategy include:
- Maintaining a competitive edge against bigger names online
- Helping the right donors find your site
- Generating more local attention
- Working effectively with social media platforms
This guide will help your charity or nonprofit maximize your budget by showing you how to implement an effective digital marketing strategy that’s sure to get your name ranked on Google’s first page. Here are the 5 best SEO practices for nonprofits and charities.
- Let Keyword Research Guide Your Content Strategy
Whether you’re new to SEO or an expert in the field, you probably already understand the importance of quality content when it comes to content marketing strategies. But with Google algorithms in charge, high-quality content won’t necessarily improve search engine rankings unless you’ve tagged strong keywords.
Unsure which keywords will work best for your content? There are plenty of SEO tools available to help you find and prioritize the search terms that’ll translate to better rankings. Start by brainstorming some keywords relevant to your organization and potential donors. Then, using the SEO keyword research tool SEMrush, you can search each keyword and identify which ones give you the best opportunity to rank.
- Generate Brand Awareness Through Link Building
It’s important for nonprofit organizations to prioritize familiarity in order to grow donor support. If your SEO strategy doesn’t include ways to promote your organization in front of new eyes, your content will be forgotten. A great way to continually promote your content online is through link building.
Effective link building happens when other sites want to share and link back to your content. An easy place to start within the nonprofit world is to repurpose annual reports to make them shareable. Another great content promotion strategy (especially if your content includes infographics, videos, and other hard data) is to reach out to publishers within your organization’s industry who’d find your content informational and authoritative, earning your nonprofit’s website some valuable backlinks.
- Make Sure Your Site is User-Friendly
In addition to ensuring the technical SEO aspects of your site are optimized, it’s also important that your site offers an all-around enjoyable user experience. Below are some simple yet effective ways to enhance your site both aesthetically and functionally.
- Optimize page speed for user convenience. You can check your site’s speed by using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool.
- Use thoughtful and specific anchor text for links. It makes things much easier for users when anchor text accurately indicates the topic of the content linked.
- Work with a design team to ensure your website’s design is consistent, aesthetically pleasing, and matches the tone of your brand.
- Content structure is another element the Google search algorithm ranks, so make sure to break up big blocks of text with images or bullet points, as text-heavy pages aren’t optimal.
- Prioritize Local SEO Strategies
Oftentimes, charities and nonprofits may need to tailor their SEO strategy to get results in specific geographic locations. For instance, a local animal shelter in Denver would benefit from including “Denver” as a primary keyword since nearly all visitors to the shelter are going to be local. Some easy ways to optimize local SEO for nonprofits include:
- Creating a listing on Google My Business
- Adding your center or branch locations to Google Maps
- Listing your nonprofit or charity in local directories
- Establish a Strong Social Media Presence
Since social media pages tend to land higher on search rankings, the final (and perhaps most important) SEO strategy for you to consider is your social media presence. Virality happens across all social media platforms, and can be an effective way to spread awareness of your cause. Beyond shares and retweets, some social media platforms even have features tailored specifically for charities and nonprofits, such as Facebook’s “Donate” button. Overall, the more social media platforms you get on, the more awareness you’ll spread.
Finding ways to improve your Google ranking can be a difficult task, which is why many companies turn to business partners like KitelyTech for help. At KitelyTech, we stay up-to-date on the latest trends and changes in the Google search algorithm so that we can help companies maximize their search engine rankings. Call us at (800) 274 2908 to get help reaching the top of your search engine results.
