SEO for Charities & Non-Profits: 12 Tips for Greater Digital Impact
Having a robust online presence is crucial for charities, non-profit, and not-for-profit organisations looking to increase their visibility, attract supporters, and further their mission. Search engine optimisation (SEO) plays a pivotal role in making your website more accessible and appealing to both search engines and potential donors. However, SEO can often seem daunting, especially for organisations with limited resources.
In this article, we’ve provided 12 practical tips tailored specifically for charities and non-profits. These strategies will help you enhance your online presence, drive more traffic to your site, and ultimately, amplify your impact!
What Is SEO & Why Is It Important for Charities and Non-Profits?
SEO involves optimising your website and online content to improve visibility on search engines like Google. This process includes using relevant keywords, creating valuable content and ensuring a mobile-friendly design.
SEO is a powerful marketing tool for charities and non-profits/not-for-profits because, other than your time, the results are essentially free as you don’t have to pay for each click received. This is one of the key differences between SEO and PPC.
Effective SEO helps charities attract more visitors, increase awareness, and engage potential supporters, ultimately enhancing your ability to achieve your mission and goals.
12 Top SEO Tips for Your Charity or Non-Profit
1. Understand Your Charity Goals
You’ll likely know the goals and objectives of your charity, but how do these fare alongside your online goals? Having an online presence is important, but knowing why you want this is crucial. What do you hope to achieve through your website, and how does this align with the main aims of your charity? Is it to find a wider audience, or perhaps to raise awareness for a cause?
2. Know Your Audience
Charities and SEO often go hand-in-hand because both rely on the need for a targeted audience. Search intent is important for a successful SEO campaign; this means that your content is tailored towards the right people to gain the most engagement. Therefore, ensure your content is aimed towards the most relevant audience for your charity.
3. Keyword Research
If you happen to know anyone knowledgeable about SEO, you’ve most likely heard them mention “keywords”, and for good reason, too. Keywords help you understand what people are searching for within a specific field, so integrate keywords naturally into your website content. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find the high-traffic keywords which relate to your cause
4. Quality Content Creation
Produce valuable content that is informative, engaging, and relevant to your audience. Blog posts, articles, infographics, and videos about your cause can attract and retain visitors. For bonus points, share success stories, volunteer experiences, and case studies; personal stories can resonate more with readers and encourage engagement. Oh, and don’t forget to naturally integrate keywords into your content, and remember your user intents!
5. On-Page SEO
Time to get a little more technical. Try to write compelling and keyword-rich title tags and meta descriptions for each page. Title tags and meta descriptions are found on a search engine results page (SERP), so ensure they are unique and accurately describe the page content. Use header tags (H1, H2, H3) to structure your content. This helps search engines understand the hierarchy and main points of your content.
6. Technical SEO
Ensure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly. Many users access websites on mobile devices, and Google prioritises mobile-friendly sites! Security is a must, so ensure you purchase an SSL certificate to secure your website. Security is a ranking factor for Google and builds trust with your visitors. Optimise images to improve your site’s loading speed; the probability of a bounce (people leaving the site without taking action) increases by 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds!
7. Local SEO
Ensure your charity is listed in local directories and online databases - consistent information across all platforms helps with local SEO. One way in which people can discover local charities is through a Google Business profile, so create one if you haven’t already. Ensuring your contact information, address, and operating hours are up-to-date is also important.
8. Link Building
Backlinks are crucial for successful SEO. A backlink is a link from another website or source to your website, so seek high-quality backlinks from reputable websites. You can do so by partnering with other organisations, bloggers, and media outlets. Your own linking structure is important too, so use internal linking to connect related content on your website. This helps search engines understand the structure and improves user navigation.
9. Social Media Engagement
In current times, social media is more important than ever, so maintain an active presence on social media platforms relevant to your audience, such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Share your content and engage with followers, encouraging supporters to share your content too. Social signals can indirectly influence SEO by driving traffic and engagement.
10. Consider PPC Campaigns
Pay-per-click advertising, known as PPC, works very well alongside SEO. Google offers an advertising grant for non-profits, known as “Google Ad Grants”, where each qualifying charity has access to up to £7,000 per month in search ads to fund campaigns. At Beyond Your Brand, we’re official Google partners, offering Google Ad Grant support and Ad Grant training. We’ve achieved some amazing results for the charities we work with!
11. Monitor & Analyse Performance
Monitoring your SEO progress is integral to understanding where you’ve been successful (and less successful). Set up and regularly review Google Analytics to understand your website’s traffic, user behaviour, and conversion rates, and use Google Search Console to monitor your site’s presence in search results and identify any technical issues that need fixing.
12. Regular Updates & Maintenance
Your website may look like a piece of art, but unlike art, a website is designed to change. Regularly update your website with fresh content, as this signals to search engines that your site is active and relevant. Regularly check for and fix broken links on your site. Tools like Screaming Frog can help identify these issues.
How Do Digital Marketing Agencies Support Charities?
Some digital marketing agencies specialise in helping charities and non-profits, combining expert SEO knowledge with the specific needs of charities. At Beyond Your Brand, we offer digital marketing packages aimed at charities and non-profits, which involve activities such as setting up and managing Google Ad Grants, creating tailored, engaging content with researched keywords, and designing stunning websites.
We have a proven track record in helping charities boost engagement, such as when we increased Google Ad Grant clicks by over 300% in just 16 weeks for one of the charities we support! Our experience in working with charities with a range of different themes and goals demonstrates our versatility, and our dedication to the success of those we work with is unparalleled. So, if you're a charity and want to increase your presence online, get in touch with us!
Does Your Charity or Non-Profit Need SEO Support?
At Beyond Your Brand, we enjoy helping charities work towards their goals and aspirations through strong SEO and PPC campaigns. Please contact us to discuss the ways we can support your charity online.
