And while there are a lot of online marketing tactics <\/a>you can employ to promote your website, one in particular is widely considered the best for making your website more discoverable: search engine optimization (SEO)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want your non-profit website to show up in the search engines when people are looking for the kind of work you do, there are a few main steps to take. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For several years now, mobile use has surpassed desktop use. A significant portion of the people coming to your website will be doing so on a smartphone or tablet. Does your site work well on the small screen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it\u2019s been a few years since your last website redesign<\/a>, you may not have treated mobile use as a top priority. But now it\u2019s non-negotiable. Update to a responsive website<\/a>-that means one that automatically adapts to the screen size, while keeping all the page elements the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Building a website that\u2019s mobile friendly<\/a> may sound like a big project, but it doesn\u2019t have to be. Because of the prevalence of mobile, any good website builder<\/a> will now include responsive templates. You can get a responsive website up fast, without having to spend much at all. Our Gator Website Builder only costs a few bucks a month and makes editing your website a breeze: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your visitors care about speed. We\u2019re no longer in the days of bandwidth connections, when slow-loading times were the norm. If your non-profit website takes too long to load, your potential donors will click away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main priority that Google and the other search engines have is to provide the best results possible in every search. Because visitors care about speed, the search engine algorithms do too. Google has been upfront about using page loading time as a ranking factor. If your website is at all slow to load, there are a number of steps you can take to make it faster<\/a>, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n That may sound confusingly technical, but most of these steps can be completed by anybody with a little time and willingness to look up instructions on how. We’ve linked each tip to a blog resource on the topic - just click each step to access it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any time you visit a website, you can tell if it\u2019s an HTTPS based on two things: <\/p>\n\n\n\n When visitors see that, it signals to them that the website is secure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Websites that have these visual cues have taken the step of investing in an SSL certificate<\/a>. That adds an extra layer of encryption, which means that any information a visitor shares with the website-including (and especially) payment details-will be harder for hackers to access. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The search engines care about security, so give HTTPS websites more weight in their rankings. But it doesn\u2019t just matter for SEO. Potential donors that come to your website will be far more likely to feel comfortable making online donations if they see that your website\u2019s secure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Luckily, this step is extremely easy. Check with your web hosting provider, and you can usually add an SSL certificate to your subscription for a small fee, or sometimes even for free<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you get beyond the more technical aspects of SEO, most of the other steps depend on keywords. Keyword research<\/a> is how you learn what your audience is searching for, and the specific language they use when doing so. You can tap into a wealth of keyword data using SEO tools<\/a> that show you how often people are searching for relevant phrases, how competitive they are, and provide suggestions for related keywords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Use these tools to put together a list of keywords that relate to your non-profit\u2019s mission. Your list will include two types of keywords:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keywords are valuable because they help you craft a strategy for visibility based on relevance. You don\u2019t need to be found by any or everyone, but you want it to be extremely easy for the people who care about your cause to find your non-profit website. By choosing the right keywords-the ones they\u2019re searching for-you can ensure the right people find your website when they have issues related to your mission on the mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For each page on your non-profit website, select a relevant primary keyword from your list. To optimize the page for that term, make an effort to include it in a few key parts of the page:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever you do, don\u2019t force it. Only include it where you can do so naturally. You don\u2019t want any use of your keyword to look weird to human visitors to your site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you can\u2019t work your primary keyword into the page without it making things awkward, chances are, you picked a keyword that wasn\u2019t actually relevant to the page. Go back to your keyword list and find a better one. Relevance is more important than search volume. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to optimizing the specific page for your chosen keyword, look for other places on the site you use that term or a similar one. Those are opportunities for internal linking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Google pays attention the anchor text used to link back to a page-that\u2019s the words that are hyperlinked, the ones that usually show up in blue with an underline. Every link back to your page that uses your primary keyword in the anchor text signals to the search engines that\u2019s what your page is about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can\u2019t control the anchor text used on other websites linking to that page, but you can for any internal links you add to your own site. So every time you use your target keyword elsewhere on your own website, link it back to the page you\u2019ve optimized for that term. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Create a non-profit content strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Content marketing is a really important part of SEO because it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Use your keyword research as a starting point to build out a list of topics related to your non-profit that you can cover in your content. Supplement that by brainstorming any questions you regularly hear from donors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Create an editorial calendar that clarifies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Content marketing does require time and resources, so don\u2019t expect this step to be easy. But if you want to be more competitive in the search engines and reach more of the people who care about your cause, it\u2019s a big part of effectively doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t skimp on the content itself. In the early years of the internet, websites could game the system and get rankings by publishing a lot of low-quality content stuffed with target keywords. Now Google\u2019s worked to crack down on that and ensure only high-quality sites show up in the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For your content marketing to pay off, it needs to provide accurate, helpful information in a way your audience finds engaging. Try out different content formats to see what they respond best to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And test different approaches. Some examples could include how-to posts and videos, interviews with the people your work helps, and infographics that collect relevant stats that show the breadth of the problem you\u2019re working on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When you\u2019re trying to reach potential donors or volunteers who have never heard of your organization before, you can\u2019t count on them to find your content on their own. Over time, as you build up your SEO authority, people will start to find it via the search engines. But that doesn\u2019t happen overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To get your first viewers, you need to give it a boost. A few content promotion strategies to consider include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of the metrics search engines use to determine a website\u2019s authority depend on getting traffic to begin with, so your content promotion strategies are important to boosting your SEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The hardest part of non-profit SEO is link building. Many of the steps on this list require work, but you have control over getting them done. Link building depends on convincing other people to update their websites to include a link back to yours, which is a whole other level of challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But non-profits have something going for them businesses don\u2019t in this area: you\u2019re doing something good for the community! <\/p>\n\n\n\n People are more likely to respond well to requests for help from a charity doing meaningful work than a company trying to sell products. Here are a few strategies you can try to build links to your non-profit website:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Link building is challenging, but links play a huge role in how Google decides how authoritative a website is. Every link you build on a reputable site makes your own website much stronger in terms of SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least once a year, do a review of your site to look for opportunities to improve your on-site SEO. Check your analytics to see which pages are performing the best<\/a> and which are underperforming. Identify content that would benefit from an update to make it current or otherwise more valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"drag](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/470x60-Blog-DragNDrop.png\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n10 Steps to Improve SEO for Non-Profit Websites<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Make sure your website works on mobile.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"responsive](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/responsive-web-design-01.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"add](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/add-text-and-customize-design-with-gator-website-builder-1024x650.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n2. Improve your website speed.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. Switch your website to an HTTPS.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"example](\"https:\/\/lh5.googleusercontent.com\/ZT5eBZm1JscCRN5eL5DiUqMkwjK7c1q7e0Qun3PMlUj4yQiHvCRSU5YWkgcVIL_U42yos_yLecgczdlCVHHT9zXNNPBEsSeXKJtXX4101RJoLIOEWj0ETiI9Gv4PTERa8uJuh4z-\")
4. Do keyword research.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The people searching those terms aren\u2019t thinking about donating or volunteering at the moment they\u2019re performing the search, but they\u2019re highly likely to be the kind of people who care about the work you do. Creating content that targets those terms will help you get onto their radar, and seeing the helpful content you\u2019ve provided may inspire them to learn more about your organization and get involved. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n5. Optimize each page on your website for a relevant keyword.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
7. Create high-quality content.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
8. Promote your content.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
9. Build links.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
10. Perform regular SEO audits.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n