Increased visibility can go a long way in ensuring non-profits and charities remain sustainable over time. This is more perceptible in today’s digital age in which a lot of people have embraced flowing with trends across social media/online channels.
As such, it has become expedient for administrators or managers of non-profits to be strategic in their communication, making sure they go where potential donors are.
One of the measures to adopt in this regard is search engine optimization (SEO). This is simply about having a prominent presence on search engine result pages (SERPs) – Google search outcome, for instance. In this vein, we have chosen to shed light on five tips you can use to generate more traffic to your website – through SEO.
Invest In A User-Friendly Website
Non-profits or charities intending to get the most out of SEO have to invest in developing a high-quality website. This would mean building a user-friendly website to prevent a high bounce rate from visitors. The layout and design have to be up to scratch and responsive. Optimizing the website for a mobile device is also very important for actualizing SEO objectives.
You should ensure that the content on the website is optimized. In optimizing the written content, you must provide the appropriate title tag, meta descriptions, and meta keywords. The content must be unique, plagiarism-free and ooze out high quality. Videos and images should also be appropriately optimized.
Inserting internal links to the pages or website content will boost your ranking on SERPs. Furthermore, you have to make sure the speed/load time is satisfactory to enhance user experience. The website’s URL must also be properly structured to help indexing on search engines. Use WordPress plugins and themes to easily create a user friendly website.
Maximize Guest Blogging Opportunities
Guest blogging opportunities abound for non-profits to take advantage of as they aim to drive more traffic to their virtual spaces. You can simply run a check through the internet to see the third-party sites you can write for. Guest blogging helps raise your stakes as an authority in the non-profit sector.
When writing as a guest blogger, it’s crucial that the text is long – a thousand words, at least. Also, you should see to it that short sentences, with the words and paragraphs being easy to assimilate.
More importantly, you will be able to insert links to your site or other articles – that is, backlinks – to the new article. You shouldn’t just add the links for the sake of it; they have to be related to the content of the new article. Again, the link to your website can be added to your bio on the site where you guest blog.
Focus On Educational/Statistical Keywords
Keywords have been so overused that many writers do not even ponder on their significance. But keywords are not to be thrown around just anyhow, and this is why some writers will always take their time to research keywords. And if there is a set of keywords non-profits should pay utmost attention to, it is those with statistical and educational elements.
You should search out educational keywords and develop high-quality content around them. Such keywords will always attract people who are interested in the topic being discussed. Likewise, statistical keywords can inspire the writing of informative or data-centered articles on non-profits.
Consider Multiple Languages
You don’t have to be stuck with the English language when it comes to content on your page. There is a host of audiences out there waiting to read in other languages. Reaching out to this set of people can bring massive traffic to your non-profit’s site or social media page. And this could give your fundraising campaign the required boost.
You must not compromise quality while providing content in multiple languages. An article produced in multiple languages will likely not have the same ranking on the SERPs of different countries.
So, for example, an article in English may not rank among the first ten [articles] in the U.S. but then gains ground among the ten in Spain – after being translated to Spanish. This shows that translating content to different languages opens up more room to be well-ranked on SERPs.
Don’t Overlook Google Knowledge Panel
You must have come across some uniquely crafted information about certain things after entering a query into the Google search bar. This information is displayed on a knowledge panel – a portion of a SERP. With the knowledge panel, individuals and organizations have stood out from the rest.
Having your website or content on Google knowledge panel is a tremendous boost for your SEO goals. It will, however, take some intentional efforts to achieve this, as Google is mainly responsible for determining what makes it to the knowledge panel. Approval has to be sorted and given by Google before content can make it to the knowledge panel.
To put it more succinctly, getting a placement on the panel is based on status or reputation. Non-profits can move towards this by making their impact felt – as a (non-profit) industry leader. To start with, you can build your Wikipedia profile while consistently sharing informative and high–quality content.
It is worth noting that there are two types of Google knowledge panel – local panel and branded (personal) panel. Local panels are created to display information about local businesses that have distinguished themselves in any sector.
To explore this opportunity, you have to first sign up for a Google business account and have it verified. On the other hand, having a piece of information on the branded panel is solely up to Google. It is meritoriously accorded as Google might deem fit – having considered specific parameters.
Final Thoughts
Visibility is probably the most ‘underrated’ quality in the non-profit world. However, any non-profit organization that gives uttermost attention to it will make a huge difference as the probability of drawing in more donors increases. And one of the surest ways to command appreciable visibility is through SEO.
Reading this article, you would have gotten an idea of how effective this can be for raising your reputation as a non-profit organization. Nothing will be more rewarding or fulfilling than implementing some ideas you have taken note of to set your SEO ball rolling.
