Come Up First in Search

People search for just about everything imaginable on the Web, including information on the causes they’re passionate about. More than 80 percent of people without a predetermined site in mind start at a search engine. And once a term is searched, people typically look at only the first 10 listings generated by the search engine before either making a selection or refining or broadening their search.

Are you missing out on opportunities to raise awareness about your organization or reach potential donors because you’re not included in the top organic rankings of the major search engines?

You don’t have to be a Web expert to make a difference in organic rankings, but you do have to know a little bit about what it takes to get there. These tips not only will help you ask the right questions of the people who manage your site, but also will guide you in updating content, planning a redesign or even reviewing proposals from vendors.

Understand your keywords
If you were to search for your organization online, what keywords would you use? Are there terms you use again and again in your marketing materials? Relevant keywords that are used in searches and then used in the appropriate context on Web sites are how search engines begin to organize the trillions of pieces of information available on the Internet, and then begin to rank sites in relation to each other.

Understanding which keywords best represent your organization helps provide a framework for thinking about how to optimize your Web site for search engines. This, in a nutshell, is search engine optimization.

Have a content-rich Web site
The buzz term “content-rich” means your Web site is full of information that attracts interest from your target audience, and the information is updated on a regular basis. For some organizations, these updates are nonstop. For others, it is less frequent. In either case, understanding what your audience expects from your Web site is critical.

Build mechanisms for feedback, such as page ratings or comment-submission forms, into your site, because they not only engage the visitor but also help you determine what content hits the mark and what is missing. The more visitors who go to your site via a search engine and find what they’re looking for, the higher your search engine ranking for that particular term or key phrase.

Include interlinking pages within your site
One of the goals of a Web site is to have visitors find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Structuring the navigation of a Web site to give access to other pages within a few clicks not only helps accomplish this task, but also increases your search engine rankings.

When you strategically link Web pages within your site, you are providing yet another way for the search engines to find your relevant, rich content. Including a site map of your Web site also can further enhance rankings. The links will help both users and the search engines find the content they want on your Web site.

Have inbound links from relevant Web sites
Search engines have programs that “crawl” the Web looking for content and relevant links. Just as linking pages within your Web site can help your rankings, so can having inbound links from relevant third-party sites. Ask national affiliates, partners and grantors if they would be willing to put links on their Web sites to the appropriate pages of your Web site. Also, make sure your organization is listed, with your Web site link, in appropriate directory listings and membership pages. These third-party links will help boost your search engine rankings.

Label your graphics appropriately
When search engines crawl the Web, it is on a text-only basis. Thus, Web images that contain text cannot be searched. However, images on the Web have a property called an ALT tag. The ALT tag contains the short description that appears when you mouse over an image, and can be defined and customized for each image on your Web site.

By using keywords or phrases that relate to the content on your page in the ALT tag, you give search engines yet another way to determine the relevance of a page and then match it to a searcher’s results.

Pay attention to what is put in your metadata
This sounds a little (OK, maybe a lot) geeky, but metadata is an important part of SEO. Metadata is information used by search engines for both the description and page link that shows up in search results. It is in the coding of your Web page but not visible to your Web site visitors. Because of its importance in SEO, you should customize this information for each page and use the description metadata to really explain what the page is about. Ask your webmaster to use different keywords and descriptions on each page.

Write for humans, not search engines
Although obtaining higher search engine rankings is an important part of Internet marketing, it should not drive your Web site copy, design or Internet strategy focus. Using overoptimized Web copy, inappropriate keywords or misleading links will decrease your rankings over time, and could leave visitors confused about your organization.

Your Web site should educate, engage and compel visitors to take action. Using the above SEO tips will help increase your organization’s Web presence and, as an added bonus, your organization could gain valuable supporters, too.

Heather Burton is marketing manager for Sage Software Nonprofit Solutions. Josh Yeager is senior account strategist for Sitewire Marketspace Solutions, a Tempe, Ariz.-based interactive advertising agency.