This blog is written in collaboration with Wayne Atkinson, co-founder of Ontario SEO. Ontario SEO helps nonprofits distill the growing complexity of the digital environment into strategies that work, ensuring that you can be visible to your audience when it matters. To see what they can do for you, start by requesting a complimentary audit today.  Just mention rTraction and the audit fees will be waived.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must for most businesses, and that includes non-profits. Although non-profits typically work with limited time and resources, SEO is a valuable long-term investment that will prove its worth over time. In this blog, we'll go over why non-profits need SEO as well as our top tactics to help you implement an actionable SEO strategy that drives results for your organization and your cause.

Why Do Non-Profits Need SEO?

In case you’re unfamiliar with SEO, it is essentially the practice of optimizing websites to rank higher on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for search engines like Google. 

Now to answer the question: do I need SEO? 

If your potential volunteers, advocates, and donors use search engines to find information relating to volunteering, fundraising, events, education, etc., then the answer is yes, you do need SEO. Some of the main benefits of SEO include:

• Increased visibility: SEO ensures your organization becomes more visible to people who are actively searching for information related to your organization’s cause.
• Credibility and trust: Ranking high on the SERP helps establish your organization as an authoritative source, building trust among your target audience.
• Targeted traffic: By optimizing for specific keywords and phrases related to your cause, you can drive more people to your site who have a genuine interest in your mission.
• Better user experience: SEO isn’t just about keyword rankings, it’s also about improving your site’s overall user experience. This leads to longer visits, increased engagement, and higher conversion rates.

8 SEO Tactics for Non-Profits

Developing and implementing SEO strategies can be a big undertaking, particularly for organizations that lack the proper knowledge and expertise. However, these tips can help non-profits with limited resources at least get started:

1. Define Your Audience

A good marketing strategy always starts with defining your audience, also known as “buyer personas”. In the context of the non-profit sector, buyer personas are a semi-fictional representation of your ideal donor, volunteer, or advocate. They are created based on real data along with educated speculation about their demographics, behaviours, motivations, and goals. By understanding your buyer personas, you’ll be able to tailor your SEO strategies and content to match your target audience’s needs and preferences.

2. Audit Your Site’s Technical SEO & UX

The next tactic is to audit your site’s Technical SEO and user experience (UX). This is because a site without good technical SEO or UX is going to have a much harder time ranking than a site without any technical or UX issues. When auditing your site’s technical SEO and UX, some key areas to look out for include:

• Page speed: Evaluate the loading times of your site. Slow-loading pages can lead to high bounce rates and lower rankings. You can check your site’s page speed using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool, where you can copy and paste a URL you would like to test, and it will give the page a score of 0 to 100. It will also provide you with suggestions on how the page’s speed can be improved.
• Mobile-friendliness: Mobile-friendliness is a confirmed Google ranking factor. You can check how mobile-friendly your site is using Google’s free mobile-friendly test tool where you will be asked to copy and paste a URL or website code you want to test. Once evaluated, Google will share a screenshot of what the page looks like on mobile and will provide you with a list of issues it finds.
• Ease of navigation: Review your website from your target audience’s perspective and assess how easy it is to find the information they seek as well as complete an action on your site. A confusing site structure can lead to a high bounce rate and decreased engagement. 
• Crawlability and indexability: You can’t rank on the SERP if search engines like Google are unable to crawl your site. To ensure your site is crawlable and indexed you’ll need to optimize your site’s robot.txt files, sitemaps, and canonical tags. You can also use Google Search Console to see if there are any pages on your site that it is unable to index.
• Technical errors: Utilize tools such as Screaming Frog, SEMRush, or Ahrefs to find technical errors such as broken links, 404 pages, server errors, and fix them promptly to maintain a healthy website.

3. Conduct In-Depth Keyword Research and Mapping

Keyword research is the foundation of any good SEO strategy. It is the process of identifying and analyzing specific words or phrases that your target volunteers, donors, or advocates use when searching for information on search engines like Google. To conduct keyword research, there are many free and paid tools you can leverage:

• Google Search Console (Free): With Google Search Console, you’ll be able to view which specific queries generated impressions for your websites URLs in the SERP. You’ll also be able to see the number of impressions, clicks, average position, and CTR (Click Through Rate) for those queries. This tool can be a great starting point for keyword research, as it shows you the pages on your site that Google finds to be relevant for particular queries. 
• Ahrefs (Paid): Ahrefs is a tool that offers a wide variety of features, but it can also be helpful for conducting keyword research. You can use Site Explorer to determine what organic keywords your site’s pages rank for as well as their keyword explorer to get in-depth keyword information such as volume, keyword difficulty, traffic potential, and much more.
• KWFinder (Paid): KWFinder is a tool by Mangools that allows you to analyze keyword data such as trends, search volume, CPC (Cost Per Click), keyword difficulty, and much more. It also shows you which sites rank for particular keywords and provides their domain authority, page authority, citation flow, trust flow, landing page score, and estimated visits per month.
• SEMRush (Paid): SEMRush has several keyword research tools you can utilize to inform your SEO strategy. These tools include:
  • Organic Research – A tool that analyzes your competitor’s organic keywords and content and provides insights on how to outrank them.
  • Keyword Magic Tool - Similar to other keyword tools, it allows you to look at keyword metrics such as volume, trends, keyword difficulty, intent, etc.
  • Keyword Gap – This tool allows you to compare your keyword profile to your competitor’s, side by side, so you can uncover keyword gaps and opportunities.

Keyword Mapping

Once you have compiled your keyword research, you’ll want to begin keyword mapping. Keyword mapping is the process of assigning target and supporting keywords to specific pages using your keyword research. Keyword mapping is essential for your on-page optimization efforts as it provides a blueprint of how to optimize a page. It also helps prevent potential overlap with other pages on your site, because the idea is that you will assign unique target keywords to each of your pages.

4. Create a Content Strategy Based on Keyword Research

Leveraging your keyword research, it’s time to carve out a content strategy. A content strategy is a strategic plan that outlines your organization’s approach to content creation and ties each tactic with your organization’s broader objectives such as brand building, audience engagement, lead generation, or thought leadership. To create a content strategy, you’ll need to:

• Conduct a thorough content audit: before deciding what kinds of content you want to create, you’ll first need to take inventory of the content that already exists on your site to determine where the gaps lie. You can also use the content audit as an opportunity to analyze the quality of the content on your site, identifying which pages require content expansion as well as the ones that provide no value and should be removed. You can also determine the quality of your site’s content by following Google’s E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) guidelines. 
• Leverage competitor research: While you don’t want to copy everything your competitors are doing; competitor research can be a great way to uncover more gaps in your site’s content and find opportunities where you can stand out. When creating your organization’s content strategy, take a look at your top competitors’ websites and take note of the types of blog topics they write about, the resource pages they have (if applicable), and any other pieces of content you find interesting.

5. Conduct On-Page Optimization Using Keyword Research

Armed with your keyword research and mapping, you can begin on-page optimization. To do this, start with the basics first on your site’s most important pages. This includes elements such as:

• Page Titles: Optimize your page titles by including your brand name, target keyword, and aim for a length of around 60 characters. Also ensure that all of your page titles are unique and closely match the page’s H1.
• Meta descriptions: Optimize your meta descriptions using the page’s target and supporting keywords where applicable (avoid keyword-stuffing) and aiming for a length of around 150-160 characters. Provide an accurate summary of the page and ensure it is unique. 
• Headings: Headers are a strong signal for SEO, so it’s important to ensure they follow a logical structure, are easily scannable (i.e. not too long) and provide context to search engines about what the page is all about. Ensure your H1 includes the page’s target keyword if it can be incorporated naturally, as the H1 in particular is one of the most important signals for search engines.
• Internal Links: Adding internal links to relevant pages on your website helps people and search engines better navigate your site. It also helps search engines better understand the pages on your site and its hierarchy. When optimizing a page, it is best practice to add an internal link to its parent page (if it is a child page), as well as any other relevant pages you see opportunities to link to within the content. That said, don’t overdo it – you don’t need to link to every page on your site. On top of that, pay attention to the anchor text and ensure that it’s short and keyword-rich.
• Alt-Text: While alt-text is important to implement from an accessibility perspective, it also helps search engine crawlers interpret your page’s content. When adding alt-text to your site’s images, keep it short and descriptive, while including keywords if it can be incorporated naturally. Also, if an image is decorative, it’s best to leave it blank. 

6. Obtain Backlinks and Citations

Another important part of SEO is obtaining backlinks and citations. Backlinks are hyperlinks from one site to another while citations refer to online references or mentions of a business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP). Backlinks and citations act as an indicator of your website’s authority and relevance to search engines. That said, not all backlinks and citations are created equal, so you will need to ensure you are obtaining links from reputable, high-authority websites.

To begin obtaining backlinks and citations to your website, start by looking at your competitors to see where they have been listed and linked to. This may uncover industry-specific backlinks and citations that your organization should also obtain. 

Another easy way to obtain backlinks is to find unlinked mentions of your organization in articles and press releases. To do this, conduct a Google search of your organization’s name. If you find a mention of your organization without a link to your website, reach out to the site owner or writer and ask if they would be able to update the page with a link to your site. 

7. Leverage Google Business Profile for Local SEO

Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free online tool from Google that allows businesses to create and manage their online presence on Google’s search results page and maps. It’s a powerful tool for building your site’s local SEO, however, many organizations fail to use it to its full potential. Some ways you can leverage Google Business Profile’s features as a non-profit include:

• Choosing a relevant business category
• Adding important keywords to your business description
• Adding relevant photos of your business on a regular basis if possible
• Managing and responding to reviews and questions in a timely manner
• Adding hours of operation 
• Selecting relevant attributes
• Creating posts regularly that promote blogs, provide updates about your organization, or promote fundraisers

8. Measure Results

Your SEO strategy shouldn’t stop at implementation. SEO is a continual process of creating strategies, implementing tactics, and measuring results. Ensure you are keeping track of your site’s organic performance with tools such as Google Analytics and keyword tracking tools like Ahrefs to determine if your SEO strategies are working or if you need to re-evaluate and create a new strategy altogether. You’ll want to pay close attention to metrics such as keyword rankings, organic sessions, organic events/conversions, click-through rates, and conversion rates. These metrics can play an important role in demonstrating the value of SEO to your organization’s stakeholders, further justifying allocating resources toward it.

Final Thoughts on SEO for Non-Profits

In the non-profit sector, SEO proves to be a valuable marketing channel just as it does in other industries. For organizations with limited resources, it’s best to start small by focusing on developing a strategy for your site’s core pages. Once you begin to see results from your strategy, you can then justify allocating resources to optimizing other pages on your organization’s website, ensuring sustainable growth and impact.