SEO Tips for Nonprofits

1. Obstacles analysis. Make sure your page names have meaning, and use alt tags and text-based navigation when possible.
2. Keyword research and selection. Determine all the relevant keywords for your organization, i.e., words people would type in a search field when looking for your organization.
3. On-site keyword optimization. Focus on one or two keywords per page. Use descriptive page titles including the keyword phrase. In page content, repeat the keyword phrase multiple times and pull out content into bulleted lists. Use text-based navigation, not images.
4. Off-site Web site optimization. Increase the number and quality of links pointing to your Web site. Make sure keywords in links are relevant. The presenters recommended good sites on which organizations can boost links pointing to their sites, including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, LinkedIn and Wikipedia.

SEO should be an ongoing cycle in which your organization constantly re-evaluates its strategy, makes on-page adjustments and off-page optimization, resubmits the site to search engines and waits until it's re-indexed, and then measures the results. In terms of measurement, they recommended using Google Analytics to determine total organic traffic; using a keyword-ranking tool to determine ranking position for each optimized keyword; and keeping track of all data to compare and set benchmarks in future months.