Improve Your SEO in 5 Easy Steps
We live in a digital age. If you want your charity to succeed, you have to hold your own in virtual spaces. This is where SEO comes in.
SEO, or search engine optimisation, is all about improving your website to get search engines to rank you higher in their results. In the example below, Mind is the first result to be displayed, and so on.
You might think that the only way to get the top spots on Google or other search engines is to pay for them, (which takes money away from your cause). But that’s not the case.
There are some simple things you can do to boost your position. Read on to find out how:
1. Create content people want
This one might seem obvious, but a surprising number of people skip this step.
Ask yourself, why should people visit your site? What are you offering them?
Dogs Trust is a charity that does this well. They have a section on their website called help and advice for current and prospective dog owners. This means that anyone looking up phrases like ‘how to get a dog’ or ‘enrichment for dogs’ will be directed to them.
Another way to add value to your website and boost your SEO is with a blog. Blogs (with keywords/phrases) can boost SEO quality by positioning your website as a relevant answer to your questions. Take our blog for example. We post two blogs a week covering a range of topics on recruitment and fundraising that offer advice on topics that jobseekers and charities may be looking for. We also post topical news and advice that may be useful for charities to know.
Creating added value content will not only help more people discover your charity, it’ll help them form a positive opinion of you. And that’s a recipe for more donations and supporters.
2. Use effective titles
The way you use header tags and title your pages makes a big difference to SEO, especially your H1 tag. This is the largest heading on a web page, which tells Google what your page is about. This is the title that shows up for people to click on through the search engine, making it the first thing people see. There should be just one H1 tag on each page and it should accurately describe the content on that page.
To find out more about tags, check out this article by Social Media Today.
3. Be local
A lot of charities operate in small areas. Not everyone can – or wants to – be international, so why would your SEO strategy be so?
One easy way to increase your local rankings is to set up a Google My Business page. It’s free, helps you show up higher in searches from your local area, and shows people you’re a legitimate organisation.
4. Make it mobile-friendly
Did you know that 4 billion people use the internet on their phones?
Google knows this, and if your site isn’t going to give those visitors a good experience, it’ll rank you lower. Plus potential donors are turned off by sites which don’t work well on mobile, so it’s doubly worth investing time in optimising your mobile site.
If you don’t yet have a website, you can design it to be mobile-friendly, (there’s further advice here), but if you already have a website that isn’t mobile-friendly, this is the one area where you’ll need to invest.
5. Include keywords
Keywords are words and phrases which people search for when trying to find a service, product or advice online. Having keywords on your site means that it stands a chance of showing up in those search results.
For small charities, long-tail keywords (three or more-word phrases) are best to use because they bring back fewer search results. For example, ‘disability charity’ will bring up more results (making it harder for you to appear high up) than ‘children’s diabetes charity’ or ‘support for diabetic kids’.
It can be tempting to put as many keywords in as possible and repeat them as often as you can, but that will actually hurt your rankings.
To figure out which keywords to use, you need to carry out some ‘keyword research’. This is the process of finding and analysing search terms that people enter into search engines.
It’s important as it provides valuable insight into the queries your audience is searching for on Google. The insight you can get from it can help inform content strategy as well as your larger marketing strategy.
If you’re baffled, don’t worry, there are tools out there to help you with your keyword research:
Are you looking for help with your SEO? We can help. Give us a call to find out how on 0203 750 3111.