Get your crayons ready, writers, and get to work!

As I think I’ve mentioned numerous times before, simple SEO techniques that can be performed by any decently savvy non-profit manager (or an extra-smart chimpanzee) can make or break a sites success online.  It can be truly shocking just how much difference a few image tags, submissions to relevant directories and keyword-rich text can make.  If you’re building a website, it’s sometimes very hard to create a informational structure that is both usable and appealing to your web traffic and readable by the search engine spiders.  Here are some tips to keep in mind as you’re writing copy for your organizations website:

1.) Search engine ‘spiders’ search for keywords that pertain to your organization or cause.  Spiders are super-computers that search engines use to ‘crawl’ the web- when they visit your page, they determine which search queries might relate to your page.  Because search engine optimized sites are more successful, it is important to use certain ‘keywords’ in your site writing.  For instance, if you are a animal rights organization in Spanaway, Washington and you’re doing a fundraising drive, it is important to profusely use all those words in the block of text on your main page.  Depending on what type of traffic you anticipate or want to attract to your site, think of what they might type into a search engine like Google to try to find an appropriate organization to fill their needs: you!

Here’s a little more about keywords.

2.)   Save the more in-depth or esoteric writing for the second-level pages on your site.  On your landing or index page- the first page people see when they visit your site- it’s important to craft an eloquent, enticing and dynamically brief description of yourself or your organization’s basic principles.   People visiting your site from a search engine will decide within the first ten seconds whether they want to stay or not.  The attractive aesthetic and user-friendliness of the site will help keep your Internet traffic engaged with your site after those crucial first few seconds.

3.)   The second level pages of your website (the pages you would navigate to from the landing page) are the place to go into minute detail about the specifics of your organization.  Use the front page to convey only the most important points about who you are and what you do.  Chances are, as a non-profit, you’ll have a whole bunch of stuff going on on your front pages, bells and whistles and fundraising drives and associated organizations etc., but keep the text block about what your organization actually does short, sweet, and keyword-rich.

4.) Write with a conversion in mind.  A conversion is the intended action you want your website visitors to perform- for most non-profits it may be a donation, for some simply a visit to an informational page, for an NPO having an event,  it might be the online purchase of tickets.  For a purely informational site, it might be signing up for a newsletter or visiting your blog.  In your writing, be sure to mention, on every (or nearly every) page, what you want your site visitor to do, in so many words.   For instance if you want your web site visitor to donate to your cause, it’s important that on every single page of your site, you give them an option to click that donate button and move forward in the process.  If you want them to visit your blog, then for the love of god, promote your latest blog entry to the front of your site.  In your writing and in the aesthetic and layout of your site, remind them regularly what you want them to do.  And they will.

Here’s a quick article about how to write for conversions and improve your bounce rate.

Some simple tweaks to the wording and search optimization of your organization’s site can make a lot of difference in how much new traffic comes to your site and how effectively it converts.  Spend some time revamping your writing today and reap the benefits of your newfound search optimization tomorrow!

A.J.

Filed under: DonationPay by AJ