Every company needs a strong marketing strategy — even nonprofits.
However, most nonprofits haven’t considered investing in search engine optimization (SEO), even though it can have one of the highest returns on investment.
SEO, specifically for nonprofits, is the process of optimizing your website to increase organic visibility when people search for topics like education, fundraising opportunities, volunteer opportunities, or other aspects that promote your mission.
Let’s dive into what SEO is, how it works, and SEO best practices for nonprofits.
What is SEO?
SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is the process of driving users to your site from search engines organically. This means you aren’t paying for ads, using social media, or placing sponsored content to attract new users.
The goal of SEO is to help your site rank as high as possible for target keywords and phrases relevant to your website and mission.
For example, if your nonprofit is geared towards wildlife conservation, you would want to rank high organically for terms related to wildlife conservation. The higher your website or pages rank in the search engine result pages (SERPs), the more likely users will see it and click on it. Studies have shown that the higher you rank, the higher the average click-through-rate (CTR) is.
If you’d like a full rundown on SEO, take a look at The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2022.
How does SEO work?
There are hundreds of factors that Google and other search engines take into account when ranking your site or content. These factors come from the three different pillars of SEO which are the following:
- Technical optimization
- On-page optimization
- Off-page optimization
Search engines are powered by people when they have a query and search for answers. Search engines use algorithms that decide what content and websites best fit the answer for the query. There are three steps that search engines take when assessing a site: crawling the site, indexing the site, and lastly, ranking the site.
Crawling, also known as the discovery stage, occurs first, then search engines decide if the pages should be indexed or shared on the search engine result pages and available for users to see and find. Lastly, the algorithm ranks the content in the search results, which is how users find your website or web page.
SEO for Nonprofits
So why should nonprofits invest in SEO? Well, SEO is just as important for nonprofits as it is for other companies. It is an affordable and effective long-term marketing strategy.
Investments you make in SEO today may take a while to pay-off, but they will continue to do so for years to come. SEO can take awhile to see the results due several factors, such as keyword difficulty, competition, domain age, and to trust of search engines and users. In general, it can take four to six months to see some movement in rankings and site health.
Increasing organic visibility of your nonprofit also increases the visibility of the mission you stand for while growing your brand awareness. Using SEO will help your pages move up in search engine rankings, creating a higher click-through-rate, more impressions, and overall, more traffic.
How to Measure SEO Success
Depending on your goals and what you want to accomplish, there may be multiple aspects you’d like to measure and evaluate for success, such as:
- Keywords
- Organic traffic
- Market share compared to competitors
- Conversions
- Backlinks
- Page rankings
Some goals for your nonprofit might include having more priority keywords move into the top 10 positions, increasing organic traffic on specific pages, or increasing organic conversions.
SEO Best Practices for Nonprofits
If you’re confused or intimidated by the idea of becoming discoverable online and creating a successful SEO strategy, we’ve got you covered.
Here are the five best SEO practices to focus on for your nonprofit this year.
1. Keyword research should create your content strategy.
It’s important to know what your prospective and ideal customers are searching for and what their journey is. Search engine rankings are determined by algorithms that use quite a few factors to decide how well a webpage answers a query.
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as throwing keywords into your content, so here are a few things to consider.
Search Intent
A query or keyword can have multiple meanings depending on the person or where they are in the user journey. They might be looking for more information, directions, or to make a purchase or donation, and each of those actions would need a different query. It’s important to make sure that the right keyword goes with the right piece of content.
Relevant Keywords
If you’re a nonprofit that works with homeless communities, a long-tail keyword you might want to focus on could be “how to help homeless communities”. Knowing this, you can create content and resources that will drive users to your site. You should avoid keywords that don’t truly represent your brand or what you offer.
Long-tail keywords are keywords or phrases that are more specific, and usually longer than common keywords. An example of a long-tail keyword might be “light blue beach hat” and a short-tail keyword would be “hat” or “beach hat”. Shorter-tailed keywords are usually harder to rank for, but have more traffic. Longer-tailed keywords have less traffic but a higher conversion rate, which is ideal for most nonprofits.
Additional thoughts:
- It can often be easier to target long-tail keywords (a phrase vs. a one-word term), which drive more qualified traffic
- There are different keywords targeting users at each part of the sales funnel
- Keyword research takes time and evolves as well
Google offers a great free keyword research tool that can also be used for SEO. If you’re looking for a more SEO specific platform, MOZ and SEMRush are two great platforms that both offer nonprofit pricing.
2. Create high-quality content.
Content will always be one of the most important ranking factors. Not only is it essential to have SEO-optimized content, but the quality is important, as well. Google wants to ensure that you’re publishing content that follows their E-A-T standards.
The concept of E-A-T, which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, is considered an SEO best practice when creating content. These factors help Google avoid sharing and feeding inaccurate or misleading information. You can follow these factors from Google by:
- Updating old content to make sure it’s relevant
- Ensuring the content is accurate
- Allowing experts or other writers to create content for you
Along with E-A-T, make sure that your content follows the best on-page practices. This includes focusing on a primary keyword, adding metadata, using proper headings, adding alternative text (ALT text) to your image, and using internal linking, to name a few.
3. Make sure your site is mobile-friendly.
A majority of users across all industries use their phones instead of desktop computers as of 2022.
Additionally, Google crawls sites using a Google phone bot to make sure your site is mobile-friendly. This means your site is able to shrink down and fit on any screen while still allowing users to access your content as easily as on a desktop.
Mobile-friendliness is a ranking signal in both Google and Bing’s algorithms when a user is searching on a mobile device. If your website is mobile-friendly, it generally will outrank non-mobile-friendly sites.
There are several tools available to test you website’s mobile-friendliness:
Google’s results via Page Speed Insights
4. Link-building is crucial to create brand awareness.
Nonprofits can struggle with getting donations due to lack of overall brand awareness and organic visibility. Link-building relies on creating authoritative content that other sites will want to link share with and link back to. A great example of this is allowing your annual reports to be sharable for others to see.
One strategy to consider would be to reach out to partners or sponsors and see if they will link back to you on their site and in their content. This is especially important for pages you want to drive traffic to.
5. Local SEO is very relative for most nonprofits.
Local SEO is very beneficial for nonprofits because it can help bring people to a fundraising event or even attract volunteers. For example, if you search “food drive near me” on Google, local listings will pop up. This is because they have focused on a local SEO strategy by utilizing their Google Business Profile.
Google Business Profile allows you to gather reviews, add images and videos, and ensure that your information is up to date for users. You can also add FAQs with answers for users to see as well. All of this helps organizations land on the top of Google listings for this query.
Megan Brooks
98.5 KTIS strives to point people in the Twin Cities to Jesus on the air, online, and on the street. Through remarkable service projects, 98.5 KTIS listeners are the hands and feet of Jesus to multiply the KTIS impact in our community. The first Friday of each month was 98.5 KTIS Drive-thru Difference Day, as listeners shared God’s love by paying for the order of the person behind them in the drive-thru. Moms overcame health, financial, and family difficulties through 98.5 KTIS’ Heart of a Mom initiative; meeting needs for a kitchen update, fulfilling a missed honeymoon with a cruise to Alaska, securing a reliable vehicle, and more. 98.5 KTIS’ Christmas Blessing resulted in remarkable stories of goodwill in the community, meeting needs by blessing people battling cancer, overcoming miscarriage, and recovering from financial devastation. Collecting thousands of Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes filled with toys for kids around the world, the 98.5 KTIS Shoebox Showdown shared the hope of Jesus from the Twin Cities to children around the world. Listeners continued that generosity by working together to collect over 11,000 pencils for boys and girls in the Dominican Republic. 98.5 KTIS listeners ‘Shared the Warmth’ as a local business paid listener heating bills during the cold winter months, and listeners used those funds to bless their favorite Twin Cities nonprofits. 98.5 KTIS’ Ministry of the Month connected listener passions and talents to local ministries, highlighting the good being done in our community by these organizations on-air and online.
Through intentional, community focused service initiatives, Spirit 92.9 partners with listeners and businesses to help make their community better, together. The station’s first “Community Spirit” project in 2022 focused on showing God’s love to children entering foster care in the area after the ministry learned that there were more children than ever before in the system. During a weeklong collection drive, Spirit 92.9 listeners and business partners generously helped provide a new pair of pajamas and a stuffed animal for over 1,100 kids. Hoping to lead by example through serving, the Spirit 92.9 team helped prepare over 800 free meals for individuals and families in need for Easter, prepared and served a meal at the local homeless shelter, and helped clean up trash at an abandoned property near their studios. Hundreds of women in the community were served and uplifted in January at the station’s first Ladies’ Night Out-an opportunity to worship, laugh, receive support and prayer. In the fall, listeners and business partners joined together to help three local organizations provide free homemade, holiday meals to those in need. This ‘More Than A Meal’ on-air and online fundraiser helped feed over 3,000 in Central Minnesota. At the end of the year, Spirit 92.9’s “Share The Joy” promotion offered listeners the opportunity to nominate someone to receive a financial blessing. Single mothers, elderly homeowners, and the family of a father badly injured and hospitalized out of state were among the 12 people granted a $500-$1000 gift.
From entertaining the airwaves on KFRC-FM in San Francisco, to dancing away the late 90s on WKTU-FM in New York City, to encouraging and uplifting Atlanta on WFSH-The Fish every afternoon, Beth Bacall’s three decades on the air have had a lot to say. In 2003, she embraced CMB and the CCM sphere when she started working at Star 99.1 FM in NY/NJ. Since 2005, she has served on the Momentum Leadership Team while also offering mentorship to CMB’s Women in Radio community. Beth is a champion for others, taking a sincere stance of integrity and leading by example with her on air work, community engagement, and show prep. As a top talent coach, she equips multidisciplinary broadcasters and artists to embrace their authentic self, grow awareness, share stories effectively, and create meaningful Christ-centered content with all audiences. Beth specializes in moments that matter and is a driving force behind The Fish Christmas Wish Program and Fish Acts of Love. Working on all aspects of creating promotional, reward-based content, including research and execution, Beth is a dot connector that the Lord uses to bring joy and experiences into the lives of others. Even after these promotional seasons, she’s always looking for the next opportunity to be a blessing.
For over four decades, Rick Dunham has been at the forefront of marketing and fundraising for Christian nonprofits. In 2002, he founded Dunham+Company, which has become a global leader in providing multi-channel strategies across some of the world’s most influential sectors. Through radio and television, local churches and overseas missions, medical relief and philanthropic initiatives, Dunham+Company is multiplying the reach of the Gospel. The company currently serves nearly 100 clients in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand – whose collective effort is reaching nearly every corner of the globe. Rick is the author of Secure: Discovering True Financial Freedom and If God Will Provide, Why Do We Have to Ask for Money? He serves as a member of the board of The Giving Institute and is a former chair of the Giving USA Foundation, which publishes the most widely respected annual report on giving in the U.S. He has been published and quoted in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post and more. From devotionals to blogs, webinars to books, Rick’s personal faith in Jesus and his Biblical training are the driving conviction of his communication.
Over the decades, Jacobs Media has become known for advising broadcasters on strategic planning and digital transformation, championing forward thinking of the in-car audio experience, developing its innovative Techsurveys, and driving research initiatives with some of the most influential companies in media. In partnership with Radio Ink, the Jacobs duo created the DASH Conferences in 2013-15, bringing together leadership from both automotive and radio broadcasting industries. Working with CMB, Jacobs Media launched the first of its annual tech surveys for Christian music radio in 2014. Working in collaboration with the NAB’s Connected Car Committee, they developed the original “Best Practices” report in 2017. Fred Jacobs, a 2018 Radio Hall of Fame inductee, is credited with the creation of the Classic Rock radio format in the mid-80’s. Paul Jacobs specializes in revenue generation for Jacobs Media’s clients including heading up jācapps – the industry’s first, and now largest, mobile application development company with more than 1,300 apps worldwide. In 2022, Fred and Paul were recipients of the National Radio Award, the highest honor from the National Association of Broadcasters. They were the first duo to receive the award as well as the first consultants.
Jim Leightenheimer has passionately pursued the mission of teaching, mentoring, and preparing college students to serve Christ in radio since 1982. A 30-year radio veteran, Jim implemented and developed a student radio station that started as an AM carrier current, transitioned to a low power FM, and is currently streaming as Resound Radio. Under his leadership, student radio has served to jump-start the careers of many current leaders in Christian radio stations and networks across the United States. His students, both past and present, credit Jim for being the catalyst in building their love for radio. Throughout his career, Jim has enlisted graduates and other professionals to serve as mentors to his student radio staff. He has introduced scores of students to CMB by bringing them to Momentum and, more recently, CMB University. Jim currently serves on the board of directors at WCVO (104.9 The River) in Columbus and continues to be a resource not only for his current students, but for those who are living out his legacy in radio.
Joe Paulo has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hope Media Group since 2018. With an extensive background in media and leadership, he began at KSBJ (now Hope Media Group) as Vice-President of Operations in 2017 after serving at Educational Media Foundation (K-LOVE/Air1) as the Director of Donor Stewardship and Communications. Prior to that, he led a division of Columbia International University as Director of Broadcasting until 2014, overseeing the growth of successful radio stations in Charlotte, NC and Columbia, SC. Joe has also provided volunteer leadership at the board of directors and advisory levels for other nonprofits such as Youth Commission International, CMB, and Crime Stoppers of Houston. In addition to speaking on leadership, fundraising and media, Joe and Kelly, his wife, have spoken at marriage and parenting events to share their passion for marriage, parenting and adoption.