As a nonprofit organization, you are working towards furthering a social cause which will benefit the general public. So, of course you are going to want your nonprofit website to reach as many people as possible. In this article, you will learn how professional website audits, on page SEO, content creation, and social platforms can help drive traffic to your nonprofit website.
Professional Website Audits
An SEO audit is a simple way to see how well your website is performing. There are many SEO audit benefits that you will learn about, below. The most obvious benefit is that you can learn from your audits where your website’s weaknesses are. Once you receive your audit results, you can see what areas are doing well and what areas need some help. Sorry, but it’s not enough to do an audit and tune-up your website once, and then sit back and relax. Make sure to periodically audit your website, in order to achieve the best results. For the best results, this should be done with some frequency. Of course you want your site to be visible to as many people as possible. If people can’t easily find and access your website, your impact business will suffer.
Benefits of Website Audits
- Increase Search Visibility
Metadata is content within HTML. That’s the language the digital devices use to communicate with each other. Search engines analyze your site’s metadata to decide where you should rank in that particular search engine. If you have a mistake in your metadata, your ranking will suffer. Routine audits will help you catch errors before they cause long-term damage. - Discover Effective Strategies
You can better understand your competition through keyword research and SERP (search engine results page) tools. Those tools will analyze your keywords and compare their rankings with the keywords of your competitors. If you understand how your competitors are attracting people to their websites, you can implement some of those strategies into your own business. - Identify and Fix Website Issues
As mentioned above, an audit can identify issues that you should fix. These issues can include broken links and spam URLs. Before these problems spin out of control, an audit gives you time to remedy them. - Optimize Content
A website audit can help you create strong content, making it more likely that you will reach the most people. An audit can analyze your website’s layout, design, and tone, showing which of your web pages are doing well and which need some adjustments. You will learn more about content creation later in this article. - Improve Keywords
Keywords are a crucial part of website visibility. It sounds obvious, but you want to include words and phrases that people are searching for in order for your website to appear in their search results. Take care not to overuse keywords. But, if you strategically place keywords throughout your website and don’t go overboard with it, you will see an increase in the number of people that visit your website. That’s the first step in more people engaging with you once they come to your site. - Identify and Capitalize on Trends
Another key element that audits reveal is trends in your website traffic. Are there certain days and times website traffic is heavier? Knowing the traffic trends of your website will help you publish content at times when people are more likely to visit your site. You can have all the great content you want, but it is useless if people are not online to see it. - Improve User Experience (UX)
Slow load times, unresponsive pages, and any other errors will drive people away from your site. 40% of people will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. You want your site to rank the highest in search engine results. Obviously, you will not rank high if people do not visit your site. You always want to have the visitor in mind when thinking about your website.
On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO is commonly known as Technical SEO. By constantly updating and maintaining your website pages, you are allowing yourself to be easily found in search engine results. Some On-Page SEO techniques include internal links, correct page format, and relevant keywords. If you choose to use On-Page SEO optimization techniques for your nonprofit website, which is highly encouraged, you will definitely see an increase in website traffic. And, I want to remind you that the improvement in your site’s traffic will grow over time.
On-Page SEO Benefits
- Local Results
If you are looking for the best results, On-Page SEO is the best way to go. You can receive high local results by including many different SEO features. Some of them are very simple, but they should be done. For example, including your address in the title of your landing page! - Timesaving
On-Page SEO techniques are easier to control than Off-Page SEO strategies. They are literally within your 100% control. On-Page SEO refers to adjustments that you make directly to your web page. Off-Page SEO refers to SEO techniques that take place “outside of” your website, for example, backlinks and social signals. That’s because they require you to have a collaborator to implement them. . Overall, when comparing On-Page SEO to Off-Page SEO, On-Page SEO will save you time and improve your website image. - Good UX
In order to achieve a high ranking in search results, you also need people to have good user experience. If people have a good experience navigating your website, you will have better On-Page SEO. Therefore, you will have better ranking and better conversion rates. In contrast, Off-Page SEO will only help you improve your site ranking and traffic. - Page Speed
As mentioned earlier, people are impatient. They don’t want to wait for a web page to load. If you increase your page speed, you will see a positive correlation with your website ranking and traffic. - Increase in Organic Traffic Sources
To improve your landing pages, you must optimize the images and videos that are uploaded on your website. Images and videos that are embedded should be placed with sizes that do not slow down page load speed. Doing so will attract visitors from Google Search results, Google images, videos, and YouTube. - Improves Click Through Rate
Optimizing of meta descriptions and meta titles is part of On-Page SEO best-practices. This optimization will lead to an increase in Click through Rate (CTR) from organic search results. Not only will your website appear at the top of users’ search engine results, but many people will actually click on your website. As a result, you will see an increase in website traffic.
Content Creation
Content creation is exactly what it sounds like. It is the process of coming up with new ideas that will appeal to your target audience. You can have all kinds of content, from blog posts to social media posts to informative articles. Whatever your content might be, make sure you produce unique content that is of interest to your target audience.
Here are some helpful tips on how to produce engaging content for your nonprofit organization’s website.
- Show What You are Passionate About
People are a part of nonprofit organizations for a reason. They are passionate about the work that your organization is doing in the world. People won’t volunteer or want to work for your nonprofit organization if they don’t know what your mission is.. Use infographics and statistics or any other kind of visual to appeal to potential volunteers’ emotions. For example, say your nonprofit organization helps poverty stricken children. A helpful statistic would be something to show how many children are affected by poverty in their communities. You want people to form an emotional attachment to your organization so that they will want to help out no matter how big or small their contributions are. - Show the Impact of Your Nonprofit Work
This point is similar to the last tip. People want to know what work your nonprofit organization has done to improve the community. People won’t just blindly donate to your organization. They want to know that their money is going towards making an actual difference in the world. You can tell the story of the work you are doing through many ways. You can post videos, images, blog posts, or any other thing you can think of that will effectively show people what your nonprofit organization is doing. - Tell People What they Need to Know to Help Achieve Your Organization’s Goals
If people are going to work with your organization, they will want to know how they can help. Potential volunteers will need to know what they will be doing and how they will be doing it. A simple way to give this information to people is through a Q&A page. There, you can answer commonly asked questions and address any concerns people might have. - Use Real Life Stories
Again, you want to appeal to people’s emotions. You can do so by publishing real life stories and testimonies of workers, volunteers, donors, or anyone who has been affected by your organization. When people read these personal testimonies, they will want to know more about the organization and maybe donate or volunteer.
Social Platforms
Social media is a great way to reach a wide range of people. If you are active on social media, people will always remember your organization because your posts will constantly show up in their feed. Some of the most commonly used social media platforms today are Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. Each social platform is good for different reasons. For example, LinkedIn is meant for business professionals to connect with each other. You will most likely not be posting the same content on LinkedIn that you post on Snapchat. Facebook is widely used by businesses, so that is always a great place to start posting content. No matter what social media platform you use, make sure you are posting content that is appropriate to the specific platform you are using.
Now that you know about the benefits of professional website audits and On-Page SEO, and how to produce effective content, apply those techniques to your nonprofit organization today.
If you want to improve your nonprofit organization website, reach out to and learn how we can provide a professional audit at no cost to your organization.