Let me “start with the why”, as Simon Sinek proposes in his famous TED talk:
Why should you care about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Put simply, SEO can bring more visitors to your site. For nonprofits, more website visitors can mean more volunteer or member signups, more donations, and more evangelists for your organization and your cause.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sounds intimidating and complicated, but when you boil it down, it is much easier to digest. SEO consists of the steps you take to make your website more relevant in search results for specific terms or keywords. You may also hear this described as “ranking” higher in search engine (i.e Google or Bing) results. For a more detailed explanation of SEO, check out this brilliant blog post that relates SEO to graffiti.
When you perform a search on the web, regardless of your preferred search engine, an algorithm of that search engine spits out results based on the words, or “keywords,” that you typed. These search engine algorithms are constantly changing and evolving, but the factors that decided the ranking of the results tend to be fairly constant (i.e. keywords, page titles, credible links to and from the page, etc.).
The good news is that by making small, incremental changes to your website and the way that you develop content for your site, you can improve your website’s rankings in search results for specific keywords. And again, that means more people visiting your site, which will hopefully result in more volunteers, members, donations, and evangelists for your nonprofit.
Stay tuned for more blog posts on SEO tactics to improve your site’s search rankings... for free. In the mean time, check out these free guides to get you started:
- Google's SEO Starter Guide.
- The SEOmoz Beginner's Guide to SEO
Photo Credit: Go Local Search on Flickr
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