3-Step Guide to Nonprofit Website SEO
The acronym “SEO” or search engine optimization of your website content is pretty much guaranteed to make most small nonprofit directors throw their hands up in the air. We’ve all heard of SEO. It’s supposed to be good for our website. But for most of us it’s a mysterious process best left to web nerds, isn’t it?
Nonsense! You can make your website stand out using a few basic search engine optimization practices – without the help of an SEO expert.
Keywords
When you write an article for your website blog or compose the contents for a page on your site, think about a keyword or keyword phrase. Sort of like a very short version of that “thesis statement” your 7th-grade writing teacher taught you about. What would someone type into Google or Bing if they were curious about your article/page subject? Once you come up with that word/phrase, be sure to use it in the article title and at least a few times in the body of the article. If you include an image with your article, use the word/phrase in the “alt-text” for that image.
Internal Links
Inside your article or page, link to other relevant articles and pages on your site that talk about the same subject or a related subject. Don’t overdo it, but try to include a few internal links to other pages on your site.
Title Tag and Meta Description Areas
Your website may have a content management system (CMS). That’s a dashboard or administrative area where you enter your articles and pages. If you have a CMS, make sure you have some way to access the Title Tag and Meta Description areas of your page – those sections are hidden to your web visitor but visible to search engines. Use your keyword in both those areas. If you don’t have a CMS, ask your web developer or web manager about implementing those important elements for every article and page you publish.
There are many other things you can do to enhance your website’s search engine page rank including some local SEO basics every nonprofit should know about. Make your organization stand out using these simple tactics. Visibility = donor acquisition = donations!
This guide is meant to be a simple look at a complicated subject. For more in-depth information about search engine optimization strategy, consult websites like Moz.com or Quicksprout.com.
