Fact: The lower your nonprofit’s profile the more important Google is. After all if your website is going to ‘meet’ people who don’t know your organisation exists, you’re going to need Google to do the introductions.
Your listing on the third page? If so, read it and weep.
Bad news: As this extract from Hubspot points out, people don’t exactly dig deep when searching for information online. The first three options take up 58% of the click throughs. The rest get crumbs – and we haven’t even got to the bottom half of page one. Clearly SEO needs to be a priority, yet for most nonprofits it is not.
Plug: We’ll be running an SEO Savvy webinar again later this year but here’s one consideration for those of you who are already tinkering your site for certain keywords and phrases: go long. Yep looong.
Suggestion: The theory with “longtail” key words is this: everyone is battling for good results on short, popular search terms such as “animal charities” or “animal charity donations” where the traffic is thick, the stakes are high and the competition fierce.
The longer it goes, the easier it gets.
Chances are that you will never attain a high Google result on such popular and obvious key words. But what if you optimise your site for longer search terms such as “animal charities donation Brisbane” or “no- kill animal shelters donation Brisbane”? Sure there is less traffic but the traffic that you will get is better qualified and the term is far less competitive. Try it.
The chart (above, left) shows that there are a lot of people searching variables of the most popular search terms on any given subject. How does one get this traffic? Start by adding geographies to your keywords and phrases that will draw people to the services pages of your site not the homepage – why not “cheap dentist in South Melbourne open weeknights”?
You can always test search terms at Google’s keyword tool. You can also read this article from HubSpot on the seven keyword mistakes people like us make.
Good news: The terms sought after by nonprofits are not nearly as competitive as those desired by the corporate world. Try getting to Google’s page one for terms like “gyms + Perth” “car insurance + under 25” or “hotels+Sydney”.