Webinar follow-up: SEO Best Practices

In May, FundRaising Success conducted the webinar “If You Optimize It, They Will Come: SEO Best Practices for Fundraisers,” featuring Todd Whitley, vice president of e-marketing at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; Farra Trompeter, vice president of client relationships and strategy at Big Duck; and Rob Yoegel, vice president and online publisher, for the Target Marketing Group.

Our panel was able answer many of the audience’s questions, but not all. Here, our experts address those questions that we couldn’t get to.

To view this webinar, go to www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com/story/story.bsp?sid=96827&var=story. For a look at all of the archived FundRaising Success webinars, go to www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com/docs/webinars.bsp.

Q. Is it possible for another site to link to our company site without permission?

Todd Whitley: Yes, it is. In fact, if you look at your Web logs you should be able to see all of the sites that link to yours and, with an analytical program, which [of them are] driving traffic. Look at the reference to your organization on Wikipedia, which is a big driver for LLS.

While it’s great that most organizations that link to you today do ask, I’m not bothered by any site linking to an LLS property online. Linking back is another matter. You want to make sure, since linking to a Web site other than your own is akin to an endorsement, that the site and page you are linking to is truly providing helpful and relevant information for your visitors.

Farra Trompeter: Yes, technically anyone can link to your site — all they need is your site’s address or URL. Your organization can post a policy about links and permission. In the meantime, take a look and see who is already linking to your site by going to any search engine and typing: link: http://www.YOURURLHERE.org.

Q: What would you consider the must-haves for our organization’s homepage in order to capitalize on SEO efforts?

TW: Page content that reflects the strategic goals of your organization or references them in some way, images tagged correctly in your page code, and metatags (again, page code) that are descriptive of the content and services your organization provides.

Q. What is cross promotion? Does that mean linking to a page within my site or linking to other sites?

TW: I generally refer to cross promotion as both linkages within an organization’s Web network and with outside organizations that are partnered in some way with the organization.

Internally, if you have more than one office, this is where your structure can really work for you. Externally, with corporate or nonprofit coalition partners, cross promotion serves as a way to engage these contacts as marketers and holds the potential of providing them with relevant content about your organization. Getting third-party partners to send out a link via one of their e-newsletters is a secondary goal — and something that’s often easier for them to orchestrate.

FT: Yes, cross promotion refers to listing related resources within your site on each page (consider Amazon’s recommended reading list). Listing these internal links not only helps keep visitors on your site longer, but is often valued by users if the recommendations are relevant and up-to-date.

Q: LLS, can you talk a little bit about the different tools you used to track return on marketing investment on SEO efforts and what your ROMI was for this campaign?

TW: Our Web analytics program (Omniture) provides traffic reporting that shows where the traffic sources are coming from. For specific initiatives, you can track for conversions. That, used in conjunction with any paid or Google Grant reporting, draws a clear picture on the impact of any given search effort.

Q: LLS, is your fundraising centralized for your chapters or do they all do their own campaigns?

TW: We are one 501(c)3, but fundraising goals are established for each of our 68 local chapters. National determines the priority campaigns; local chapters are encouraged to supplement those initiatives with local campaigns, as well.

Q: My Web site uses image maps to navigate through the Web site but has text links at the bottom of the page. However, we don’t show up very high on Google. We also have Flash on our main page only for pictures. Any recommendations?

TW: Perhaps your site needs to be formally submitted to the major search engines (and the folks at Google). Also, Flash does present a challenge. Generally, you should provide a static version of the site, as well.

Rob Yoegel: The spiders/bots that the search engines send out to index your site may never get past the image map, but the text links at the bottom are good to have nonetheless. You could always try moving the text links in front of the image map but, honestly, I’d ditch it altogether. Image maps are so 1998 … this is 2008, and things like CSS {Cascading Style Sheets] are they way to go.

As for Flash for pictures, you can definitely include Flash elements on your home page (as opposed to a Flash “splash” screen that includes nothing else), but remember that the search engines ignore Flash. Images with descriptive “alt” tags might be a better alternative. Try building your main page with key text elements that are more search engine-friendly before things like Flash and images, and I’m sure you’ll be more successful. Also, check your html “title” tag and make sure it has the keywords people are using when they try and find you.

Q: When launching a paid search campaign, should the landing page include a donation form (under the fold) or a splash page with an option to donate with another click? Which works better in getting donations?

TW: To me, it depends on the campaign. If the campaign is fundraising focused, you’ll want a donate button and a text link above the fold, along with text that clearly states the ask.

However, at LLS we also conduct search initiatives to get people to sign up for an event — and for a number of patient-service programs. The needs for those initiatives are slightly unique and not directly tied to giving. In those instances, the donate feature is secondary. But generally, whatever your goal for a search campaign, optimizing it above the fold with a strong image and a clear call to action with a link is a best practice.

Q: Todd mentioned planning ahead by updating content on the Web site before a direct-mail campaign. Would this hold true for an e-newsletter? Should the e-newsletter content be posted on the Web site four weeks before it is e-mailed out?

TW: That’s an interesting question — I still struggle with whether we should have our e-newsletters available from the site at all (as making them available only via subscription is a better way to grow your list). As a page, that e-newsletter page won’t likely be crawled in time for any significant ranking. However, the fact that you’ve been posting editions online will, and that page is likely to be ranked well.

Back to your question … I’m not sure if you’re also sending this e-newsletter out via e-mail. If you are, as an online guy, I would encourage you to side with the interests of your online subscribers first (send it to them and then post). With the mailed version, I would ask those print subscribers to consider subscribing online to help with costs, and de-dupe the mailing list accordingly.

Q: Can you give us good tips for increasing inbound links to your site?

FT: The best way to increase the number of links to your site is by finding sites that offer similar content and asking them directly. I recommend being specific. Tell them about the resource on your site you’d like to get listed (e.g. a specific article or page — not just your homepage), give them the URL and a description they could easily copy/paste, and suggest which page on their site the link might belong. This approach demonstrates that you’ve done your homework and that a link might be a good idea. If you’ve already linked to their site, let them know.