When it comes to SEO, this is a tool (or more appropriately a collection of tools) which is commonly used by marketers to help businesses deliver their message. But what many people don’t often think about is that charities can use SEO as well. In fact, there are five simple, but effective, ways that SEO can help charities to increase their impact.
While SEO has changed over the years, a core element is helping to position a company’s website on the top of the rankings used by search engines such as Google, among others. While this sounds simple, the reality is that it is a continuous game of cat and mouse between marketers and the engineers who maintain the algorithms used by the search engines.
As mentioned, this sort of positioning is vital for businesses but how can SEO help a charity? For example, how many people are actively searching for the Charles Phillips Charity at a given time? Odds are it is dramatically less than those who are searching for cat videos, but the reality is that the work of charities like this are helping to improve the lives of the people they serve. So, why wouldn’t one want to extend its reach?
While the answer seems obvious, the reality is that few have taken the time to map out how proper SEO can improve the impact that a charity has. Sure, you need to pick the right keywords but that is just the beginning as those keywords need to help bring the charity closer to fulfilling its mission and this means either finding the people who the charity intends to help or the donors who have an interest in the same cause as the charity.
1) Awareness
It turns out there are five things you need to know about SEO and charities and the first one is awareness. In fact, this is not much different than how SEO works to grow for-profit businesses as a website has increasingly become an organization’s ‘storefront’.
As such, it is increasingly vital to a charity’s mission that its website can capture the attention of visitors. This means that it not only needs to clearly communicate what it does but also to engage supporters, and importantly to enable fundraising activities.
Given that you only have one chance to make a first impression, make non-profit leaders are starting to see SEO as a great way to drive traffic to their website. In doing so, they realize that the increased awareness will help to bring them closer to accomplishing their goals.
2) Cash is King
While charities should be all about serving the communities they are trying to improve, the reality is that a key part of the operations of any charity is that is needs money to deliver on its mission.
Increasingly, this means raising funds online. In fact, a study by Blackbaud indicated that online giving is one of the fastest growing channels for charities across the country. Given the importance of this challenge, SEO can be used to direct visitors to online donations pages. Though this is only half of the challenge and many charities are investing in tactics to successfully convert visitors into donors.
3) Build a Following
One increased challenge in SEO is that fact that so much search traffic is branded. While this can benefit established charities, it can create challenges for smaller groups. As such, good SEO for charities need to focus on ways to build a following and this means tapping into keywords which are relevant to the cause.
While these keywords can tend to bring higher volumes of searches, the key is to find ways to position the charity as being relevant to as many of these searches as possible. Doing so will not only help the brand presence of the charity but it will also help to build a following for charity by connecting it with people who have an interest in the same issues.
4) Trust
Besides delivering on its mission and raising money, one of the toughest challenges faced by every charity is building trust. In fact, this is not easy as too many bad actors have taken advantage of the laws protecting charities for their personal gain.
However, good SEO can work to increase the trust and reputation in a charity by making sure that it shows up in the first few results of a relevant search. Sure, you always want to be number one, but this can take time. As such, the goal should be search results which help to reinforce the charity’s reputation.
5) Give Voice to a Campaign
Campaigns are opportunities for charities to good work and SEO can help by promoting the underlying causes. This can include incorporating social media and optimizing content to cast a wider net. In doing so, charities can give voice to their campaign and this will help to change the lives of the people they help.