This year, search engine optimization (SEO) is more critical than ever for the website of your nonprofit. What does it take to be on the first page of Google? What algorithms have changed in the past year?
SEO is an active and ever-evolving practice that involves optimizing the pages of your website to increase their visibility organically in search engine results pages (also known as SERPs). If done correctly, it takes time and effort. It’s not that difficult to learn the basics of web design.
Here’s a list of tips to improve the SEO of your nonprofit:
Content is King.
You must produce high-quality, engaging content that people will want to read to rank well on Google. Content marketing is increasingly becoming the norm. This can be planned by creating a news, articles, or blog section on your website. Create a plan of content that addresses the questions and concerns your audience faces every day. This blog post is a great example. Use their words. Demonstrate that you understand your industry. You can build trust by helping others and creating advocates for your brand.
Humans are the priority, not robots.
Google August 2022’s “helpful content updates” has been released, as they say.
Search results should include more helpful, original content created by and for people.
Google will now use AI and Machine Learning to rank pages based on content quality and relevance. Focus on creating valuable content for humans, rather than stuffing your articles with keywords to impress bots.
You should only rank one keyword phrase on each page.
If you want to achieve high rankings, it is important to use only one keyword phrase on each page or post. You will compete with yourself for the top search result spots if you use the same keyword phrase across all pages. Use a primary and secondary phrase for each page and include the keyword in (ideally)
- The URL itself
- The meta title of the page (50-65 characters).
- Page description (120-160 characters)
- The H1 title
- Another headline in someplace
- The content should be bolded at least once.
- Alt-tags must be used at least once on each page.
- Low competition and high results.
It is difficult to rank any keyword phrase with “medium competition”. Even if the keyword phrases are niched, you should still aim for those that have low competition and high results.
Avoid AI-based writing tools
We were also excited when AI writing tools appeared. This is against Google’s “helpful Content Update” standards. Google will no longer accept content generated by AI tools. Instead, you should spend more time creating original content.
Target Google’s zero-click pages.
Google Zero-Click is the page you see when you do a search and find an answer instantly without having to open any web pages. You may want to focus on other SEO aspects if your keyword phrase has already been associated with a SERP (Search Engine Results Page, or SERP for short). If not, you can try adding specific content that addresses user needs.
Find out what keywords are trending.
Google Adwords Keyword Tool lets you know about trending keyword phrases. This tool can provide great insight into how to create blog posts, landing pages, or campaigns.
Link building.
Link building is the process of obtaining quality backlinks. Search engines use a (quality) link to determine how your website’s content is related to other websites and its quality. Link farms and people who sell links cheaply should be avoided. They are usually low-quality or blacklisted websites that can damage your website’s image. For healthy links, build relationships with sites that are similar to yours, offer to be a guest or exchange links between your blog and the other site.
Remember that it’s a long race.
It will take months to optimize your website for SEO. The situation will change as time passes. You might be #1 one week and #10 another. Be patient and work consistently to adjust and improve your pages. You should see more traffic to your website as you optimize it for SEO. This will help you make a bigger impact on your cause.
