SEO audit
Nonprofits who don’t make search engine optimization a priority are taking an unnecessary risk. It can cost significantly more time and money to deal with the consequences of a website that doesn’t generate any organic traffic.
If you build it, they will come
When we talk to nonprofit stakeholders, the sentiment “if you build it, they will come” is often met with skepticism. For these organizations, so much time and energy has already been wasted driving someone else’s innovative ideas about technology into a deadend.
Websites, social media, and other digital marketing channels can still produce results. As these inbound channels have matured, their users have grown along with them. It takes research and empathy to build an effective presence among savvy internet users.
For that reason, it’s more appropriate to say, “If you build it correctly, they will come.”
Never stop rebuilding
It is still the case that publishing content online will generate organic traffic. The content you produce has steep competition to gain people’s attention. It must stand out or else it will be buried by other search results.
Steps have to be taken to ensure a website is optimized in a way that accurately communicates with search engines while meeting the expectations of the end user who lands on the page.
The rules of search are always changing
An SEO audit is kind of like an oil change. The longer you ignore it, the more damage it wreaks on your engine. On every website, there are things going on behind the scenes that communicate directly with Google. Search engine optimization gives your organization a chance to reach new people online.
Improve the performance of your website
Discover how you can increase the volume and quality of traffic to your site.
How does Google work?
Have you ever wondered what people mean when they talk about websites communicating with Google? It seems a little strange to think of someone working at Google pouring over every page on the internet. In reality, this communication is automated, and it isn’t performed by a person.
Think of Google as a huge anthill. Within the anthill, there are automated processes. These automated processes are like the ants crawling around inside of the anthill.
Every ant in the hill serves a purpose that helps keep the whole colony running efficiently. The colony isn’t autonomous. It has external needs. To support the colony, some ants will leave the anthill in search of resources to meet these needs. These ants are called scout ants, and they crawl over everything they can find at lightning speeds.
As we speak, these scout ants are crawling all over the internet looking for valuable new content that could provide nourishment for the colony. One could be crawling over this page right now, and the fact that you’re reading this means this page has been crawled before.
The scouts crawl between pages and websites through the millions of links that connect them. They will crawl through an entire website before a person could finish reading a single page. They even come back frequently to recrawl old paths to see how a website has changed and whether or not new resources are available.
The information the scout ants bring back is stored inside of the anthill in a huge index. Every time someone requests information from Google, the ants in the anthill scurry through the index to find content that matches their request. The anthill will only retrieve information it thinks will be helpful. As they review content they compare it to the request, asking questions like…
- How relevant is this content?
- How accesible is this content?
- Has this content helped similar searches in the past?
Depending on how these questions are answered, the index is built and the results are ranked.
This is how it’s supposed to work. Unfortunately, there are situations where the ants can’t access the information on a website. Technical issues on a website can keep it from getting crawled or hide the value of content so that the ants won’t understand what it means.
An SEO audit uncovers the issues that keep the ants in the Google anthill from discovering, understanding, and retrieving the information on your website. The audit lets you find out what’s not working on your site and how you can fix it.
Free local search audit
Benefits of an SEO audit
NGOs, NPOs, Nonprofits, 501(c)3s
Don’t wait until you notice performance issues on your website. Nonprofits should invest in a thorough audit of their site once a year to avoid new issues and discover new opportunities. With an SEO audit you will:
- Receive a plan to improve the visibility of your website in Google search
- Increase the volume and quality of search traffic coming through your site
- Gain a list of topics and keywords to inform content marketing strategy
- Discover insights about current audience behaviors and demographics