Image courtesy of MashableNonprofits are facing a bevy of problems they never faced 10 years ago because of technology, and more specifically, the internet and search engines.
Getting noticed online becomes more difficult every single day. Social media news feeds are over crowded as people’s peers, corporations, and advertised Tweets and Facebook posts all vie for the allusive click, like, retweet, or share. Search engine results pages are difficult to grasp and take complete control.
Even more difficult and mysterious, especially to many of us in the nonprofit sector, is the search engine and where it places our websites and social media outlets on those first few pages. Google keeps their algorithm tight to their chest, and no one can be 100% certain how it works, but there are a few things we do have control over.
1. Take control of your SERPs
Controlling your SERPs, or search engine results page, is vital to driving traffic to your nonprofit’s blog, website, and social channels. The more traffic you get, the more donations, volunteers, and potential investors you have at your disposal. That’s obvious.
What’s not so obvious is the best way to take control of your first SERP is to get your website and blog to rank #1 and #2 overall for your name. In a previous post, we discuss what exactly what search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, look for when ranking your website.
Aside from search engine optimizing your website and social media profiles, it is imperative your nonprofit has enough assets, or webpages, to fill the first page, of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Second, you need to keep active across all of these assets.
2. Get social, and stay social
Simply having a social media account under your nonprofit’s name is not always enough to entice Google to rank that asset highly. It takes consistent engagement, sharing and production of quality content, sharing of links to that asset on other feeds, and interactions from outside sources to rank those social media accounts on that first page.
Populating the first page of your SERPs with social media feeds is a great way to drive engagement across those channels. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, SlideShare and even Vine are all free social media channels that your nonprofit should look at as serious additions to your brand management arsenal.
3. Knowledge is power
Encourage your constituents, volunteers, donors, supporters, and employees to like comment, Retweet, and share your content on your blogs and social media feeds. You might be surprised how much more interaction you begin receiving just by asking, nad how much higher your assets start to rank.
