Local SEO for Nonprofit Organizations
1. Claim Local Business Listings
The first thing you need to do is check online on popular business listing websites for your name entries. This is nothing to be alarmed about, and it is common when you’re a growing business. What you need to do is to claim these listings as your own.
You might have to communicate with the webmasters of those websites. They might want you to furnish proof of ownership. This is important because local business listings improve citation opportunities.
It gets your nonprofit popular with more people, which is a great move to get more awareness. And for a nonprofit, it is critical to engage as many people as possible. Before you do this, prepare your website for increased traffic.
Getting a customized landing page can help you get more people interested in your cause.
Related: Benefits of Creating High converting Landing pages for Ecommerce
2. Optimize Your Website Metadata
Website metadata should be on every website SEO checklist. Metadata like description, titles, and headings need to be optimized to ensure you rank for the relevant terms. These are commonly called the on-page elements.
These on-page elements form a critical part of the local SEO ranking factor package. It helps search engines determine what niche your content falls under. And when you do this right, you’ll find that you get a lot more relevant traffic.
The point here is to find out the right keywords that can get you ranked. It’s one reason why companies should spend more time in the research phase for any SEO campaign. It ensures the right selection of keywords and without having to go back and forth with changes.
However, keyword stuffing is the wrong way to go about it. Ideally, you should keep intentional keyword usage to a minimum. The focus should be on creating value for your visitors.
3. Ensure Website Is User Friendly
This is a ranking factor that keeps growing in importance as time goes by. Earlier, you could simply create a simple website, add in keywords, and it would rank. Today, it’s not so simple. User-friendliness is a metric by which your website is measured and ranked on search engine results. And even without including search engine metrics, a user-friendly website encourages more donations from your patrons.
There are several ways to ensure that your website ticks boxes when it comes to user-friendliness. The first thing to keep your eyes on is your website loading speed.
A slow website not just affects people visiting your website but also your rankings. Google always emphasizes the importance of a quick-loading website. Another factor is website design.
Make sure that your website is aesthetically pleasing with pleasant colors and easy navigation. Finally, make sure you don’t have “walls of text” syndrome. Break up content into smaller chunks for better readability.
4. Create Your Google My Business Page
Getting your GMB page should be a top priority, especially for a nonprofit organization. A Google My Business Page is quite similar to a business listing. But the key difference here is that it's on the Google platform, which makes it as important if not more.
Research shows that Google is used for 86.6% of all searches online. This makes it a great platform to build your business credentials on.
The first thing to do is check for a GMB listing under your name. If it’s available, you can claim it the same as with the earlier business listings.
If not, just create one - it’s simple and free to do so. When you create a GMB page, several things happen.
First, your nonprofit has better chances of being displayed on the local 3-pack. When people search for nonprofit organizations in your area, the chances are that your brand might figure in the top 3 local listings.
Secondly, because you are listed on the GMB, your website gains much better exposure on search results. Finally, it integrates with Google Maps, which means your donors can find you a lot easier.
5. Outreach Campaigns On Social Media
In a niche where visibility is critical, outreach campaigns are an aspect that you should focus on. And something that can help you amplify your reach is social media.
With more than 4 billion people on some form of social media, it’s a great idea to invest time into it. Any nonprofit that has a significant social media presence usually does well when it comes to generating interest.
Another thing to note is that social media has come a long way from just being able to post statuses and share pictures.
Today, platforms like Facebook and Instagram have integrated several business functions into it. They have “Donate” buttons which can encourage patrons.
Together with the share feature, you can get your word out to a lot of people. And research shows that social media generates the highest word-of-mouth marketing results than any other platforms.
6. Improve Website Backlink Profile
When you’re looking to strengthen your local SEO, one thing to look at is your backlink profile. Search engines today have a complicated algorithm that is difficult to decipher. But what is clear is that website backlinks are critical to performance on search rankings.
This is because of the flow of link juice from more authoritative websites to the linked website. This is why you need to make sure that you include relevant and powerful websites in your linking profile.
There are several ways to improve your backlink profile. You could do your research manually and find the right websites to link. This might take time, but it ensures that each of your links is curated and high-quality.
There are also tools, both paid and free, that can help you improve your backlinks. They can list the highest authority websites in your niche with which you can connect.
7. Create High-quality Content
Compared to earlier, content plays a much more critical role with SEO campaigns today. In the beginning, the content did not have many restrictions that are in place now.
All you needed to do is create a sizable number of words and stuff in keywords. And you were done. This led to several problems later because low-quality content is something that is of use to no one.
The focus now is on creating content that is engaging and relevant. Businesses spend over 30% of their total marketing budget on content that helps them sell. Content is the vehicle that brands use to transport ideas.
A new philosophy with content creation is E-A-T. It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It was introduced through a Google search engine update highlighting the focus on content quality.
Here, search engines would rank pages based on how effective their content is for helping people.
8. Optimize Your On-page Images
With the internet focused more on speed, it has become important to optimize images. In fact, this is so important that it forms part of content strategy today.
Google ranks websites with optimized images higher on searches. And this is especially because the badly optimized images affect the website loading speed.
Optimizing images is a necessary step to more traffic and better search rankings. In an ideal world, every website image should be less than 200KB in size.
With today’s high-speed internet, this would make sure that your website loads almost instantly. The website's search spiders also measure this loading speed. Another thing to note is the naming convention.
Make sure that the names are relevant to the subject. It helps search engines categorize images better. Also, make sure you have informative alt text filled on your website. Search engines use Alt-text to determine relevance.
9. Work On Your Off-page SEO Metrics
When people say Off-page optimization, they mean factors that aren’t directly on your page that still influence rankings.
As with most other metrics, this has gained considerable importance over the years. This makes ranking for searches a more cohesive effort. And for local reach, off-page is extremely important to rank higher. And it’s not just about ranking.
When done right, your website will be more credible to both search engines and people. This is also why you should reach out and post on other more authoritative websites.
The off-page SEO phase, in some ways, is the most difficult part of the SEO campaign. You need to take several things into account, like getting backlinks, guest posting, and making business connections.
In a way, everything you do affects the website’s off-page metrics. This makes it difficult to quantify what exactly entails off-page SEO.
10. Look For Local SEO Opportunities
When it comes to nonprofits, a majority of the leads are going to be local. This is why you should leverage local authority websites and opportunities. Ideally, you should make an effort to use trending local topics to get more coverage for your brand. This includes their online dailies and digital newspapers.
Getting better local exposure means more people will notice you.
You could also partner with local broadcast influencers on social media for collaboration. This can get your nonprofit a lot of traction, which can help to get your name in front of local residents. Not to mention, when people see your brand, there are chances that they tell other people.
Word of mouth is a powerful medium to get people more aware of your website. The key is to build a considerable local presence through the right channels.
11. Focus On Current SEO Trends
SEO is an always-changing landscape, and as time goes on, it becomes even more dynamic. Brands need to keep up with the trends to maximize their rankings on search engines.
However, this is easier said than done because, often, changes are hard to keep track of. But getting this done will ensure that you have an advantage over other entities in the niche.
Several changes are part of the current SEO trend.
Accelerated Mobile Pages are one of them. It is aimed at the increasing number of mobile users. It has protocols that load pages quicker on mobile devices. It gives websites a distinct advantage compared to non-AMP websites.
Switching to HTTPS is also another distinct ranking signal. Being a more secure protocol, it gives your website credibility when users or search engines go through it.
12. Consistent SEO Reporting
When running any SEO campaign, it is important to have a strong reporting protocol.
It ensures that you have all the important data that you require. And considering how evolved SEO is today, any bit of data will be critical to maximizing performance. And it is also important to learn what metrics are important to your SEO campaign.
When it comes to reporting, you need to opt for tools to handle large amounts of data.
Related : SEO Data: What is it? And Its Importance for Your Business
If you are just starting and are looking for a no-frills tool - Google Analytics is your best bet.
It has powerful features that can be scaled up and integrated with other SEO packages.
It’s also free and makes choosing it an even easier decision. There’s also a lot of documentation available on the tool online.
13. Analyze & Respond To Reviews And Ratings
One of the biggest changes to search engine rankings has been the inclusion of user reviews and ratings. Your GMB listing has a place where people can rate your business and review it. This lets other users know what people think of your service.
The better the reviews are, the more people are going to trust you. However, this is not going to be easy.
As a business, when you receive reviews from your customers, you need to respond to them. Good reviews are easy enough to respond to.
Related : Reviews & Its Role in Local SEO
Just thank them for their review and ask them if they would like to get on your mailing list. But sometimes, this might be difficult given that there are going to be negative reviews.
Make sure that you handle bad reviews professionally and aim to solve their problem. Aggravating it will only make it worse for your business.
14. Improve Trust-building Techniques
Every business today has to focus on building trust for its brand.
It is the same with a garage startup and multi-billion-dollar businesses. In fact, the bigger a brand is, the more effort they need to put into getting trust values up. But unlike the last few years, trust is not just restricted to good reviews and backlinks.
Today, trust is a much more complex metric.
It permeates into everything a brand does online. It depends on how a brand communicates with its followers.
An example is the kind of messages they share on their social media profile. People also take note of how a brand responds to current trending topics that are potentially divisive.
Trust-building is a tough part of SEO campaigns. But if you need to rank higher, you need to improve your trust scores.
Speak with our Local SEO experts, If you are looking to promote your non-profit website to your local audience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joseph Schneider
He has spent more than 12 Years in strategising and executing SEO campaigns. He is interested to writing Digital-marketing, PPC and Social Media Marketing related topics.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joseph Schneider
He has spent more than 12 Years in strategising and executing SEO campaigns. He is interested to writing Digital-marketing, PPC and Social Media Marketing related topics.
Related Post
Local SEO for Nonprofit Organizations
Local SEO for Multiple Locations
Local SEO for Appliance Repair Companies
Local SEO for Pest Control Firms
Local SEO for Flooring Companies
Local SEO for Roofing Contractors
Local SEO for Auto Repair Shops
Local SEO for Landscaping Companies
Local SEO for Personal Trainers
Local SEO for Ecommerce Websites
Local SEO for Enterprise Firms
Local SEO for Asphalt Paving Contractors
Local SEO for Small Businesses