Why SEO Matters for Nonprofits

What the Standard Case for Nonprofit SEO Already Covers

Search traffic costs nothing per visit. Budgets are thin. A ranking that arrives tends to hold for years. All true. This site argues it properly elsewhere, so none of it gets repeated here.

What follows is about something else. A nonprofit website carries a problem most business websites never meet. Search solves half of that problem for nothing, which is the part almost nobody mentions.

Two People Who Never Meet

Think about who a plumbing company’s website is talking to. One person. That person searches. Then that person pays. Finally that person gets the work done. Three jobs, one person.

Now look at yours. Somebody might fund what you do. Meanwhile somebody else needs the help you give. Neither one is the other. Mostly they will never meet.

Watch what happens when both open your website on one afternoon. One wants the size of the problem. How many people, how much it costs, what last year’s money achieved. Meanwhile the other one wants to know whether you are open on Sunday.

Same organization. The same website, too. Two questions with almost nothing in common. Social shares often get credit here too, though the reality of twitter for search is thinner than people assume.

The Search Box Tells Them Apart for Free

Here is the part worth sitting with.

Those two people do not type the same words. Nobody searching for a food bank open tonight is deciding where to leave a bequest. Meanwhile nobody searching for charities working on homelessness in Alberta is hungry this evening.

The vocabularies barely touch. One half reaches for funding words. Whether to donate, and who to support. The other half reaches for the problem itself, plus a place and often a time.

So they arrive sorted. Nobody at your organization did that sorting. No budget paid for it, and no software was involved.

Search is usually poor at telling you who is asking. It reports the wanting, then stops there. Mostly that holds up. For a nonprofit it comes apart, since your two audiences want such different things that wanting is enough to separate them.

Almost nothing else in marketing hands you that. Print something and you are guessing who reads it. Buy advertising and you are paying to guess. Here the guessing is finished before either of them lands. Some organizations answer both audiences with video, and video marketing in SEO explained walks through what that involves.

Somebody Will Say Their Donors Search Too

They do. Plenty of giving starts with somebody researching a cause rather than typing your name.

Fair enough. Only read those searches. They come through full of funding language. Best charities for something. Where to donate. How much of my money reaches the work.

Every one is recognizably a donor question. Which is the separation showing itself rather than an exception to it.

The Half That Sorts Itself Lands on the Wrong Page

Now the awkward part.

Read your own website in the voice it is written in. Mission and impact. Programs and beneficiaries served. Partners and initiatives. A number somewhere with a comma in it.

None of that is wrong. All of it is necessary. Somebody has to write the funding application. Boards read what boards read.

Only notice who that language got chosen for. It was chosen for the funding half. That language reads well in a room where money is being decided.

Then somebody types the plainest words on earth into Google at eleven at night, in trouble. They land on a page describing a program.

So the half that sorted itself perfectly arrives on writing meant for the other half.

Nobody at a Nonprofit Chose That Language

Watch how it happens. It is nobody’s mistake.

The funding half has a person on the other end who talks back. A grant officer asks a question. Then a board member reads a draft and suggests a word. Somebody at an event says the annual report was moving.

That language gets practised. It gets edited, then reused, then it becomes the house voice. Eventually it is how the organization writes about itself.

Meanwhile the other half never answers. Somebody who could not find your hours went somewhere else. Nothing about that reaches you. No email arrives, and nobody rings to mention it.

One voice got years of practice. The other one was never asked for.

Somebody Will Point at the Ad Grant

Eligible organizations can receive advertising credit from Google. Real money, and worth applying for. How it works is answered elsewhere on this site.

Only look at what the credit buys. It buys the visit.

A click paid for out of a grant lands on a page you wrote. So does a click nobody paid for. The grant settles who covered the arrival. It has never once settled what the person found after arriving.

Which leaves the question untouched. More people reach whatever content your pages already carry. A painting company chasing more leads runs into the exact same arrival problem once the click lands. Before spending any of it, what Google Ad grants mean and what they do not cover is worth reading first.

Somebody Will Point at the Two-Sided Business

A job board talks to employers and candidates. A marketplace talks to buyers and sellers. Neither side meets the other, so the split is hardly unique to charity work.

Fair enough. Only look at what both sides carry. Money, in both directions. Each side is a customer, and each gets courted, since a job board with no candidates has nothing to sell.

Your second audience carries none. That is what makes it forgettable.

Where the Nonprofit SEO Argument Stops

None of this ranks anything on its own. The ordinary work still decides that, same as for everybody else.

Nor does it hold where your people do not arrive through search at all. Plenty of organizations get nearly everybody by referral. A hospital sends them. So does a school, or a court.

Where that is true, search was never the route. Better writing changes nothing about it. Worth finding out before anybody spends a penny. Tempting as shortcuts look when the budget is thin, blackhat SEO in plain terms explains why they backfire anyway. A brand new organization faces the same starting line, and how first SEO steps work applies here just the same.

Ask How the Last Five People Found You

Take the last five people your organization helped. Not donors. The ones who needed the work done.

Then write down how each one reached you. Somebody who already knew about you. A referral from an agency. Or a poster on a wall.

Now count the ones who typed something.

Should the count come back at zero, you have learned more than any keyword list holds. Search is not the door your people use. No page fixes that, and knowing it early saves you the spending.

Should two of them have typed something, go and find out what. Those words are your keyword research, and nobody had to buy them.

SEO Work for Calgary Organizations

No guarantees. Positions move over three to six months, sometimes longer. Anybody promising faster is selling something. SEO Company To-The-TOP! has been doing this work in Calgary since 2007. Some of that for businesses. Plenty of it for organizations that are not businesses at all.

The first useful hour at To-The-TOP! often goes on reading the website out loud. Not auditing it. Reading it, then asking which of the two audiences each page was written for.

Plenty of the work after that is ordinary search engine optimization, since the technical half does not care who you serve. Where a Google Ads campaign fits alongside it, To-The-TOP! says so. The portfolio shows the keywords this work has reached. Older technical questions come up too, and the longer piece on RSS feed answers one of the more common ones. Trade groups face the same shift, since associations can no longer ignore SEO the way they once did.

Common Questions About SEO for Nonprofits

Does Google treat nonprofit websites differently in search?

No. Your pages get read the same way a shop’s pages do. The status changes what you can apply for, never how a page ranks.

Should a nonprofit write for donors or for the people it helps?

Both, on different pages. The mistake is one page trying to do it, since the two want opposite things from the same sentence.

Is SEO worth doing on a small nonprofit budget?

Often yes, though it depends on whether your people search at all. Answer that first. It costs nothing and settles the whole question.

Can the Google Ad Grant replace SEO for a nonprofit?

It replaces the cost of some visits. What it does not do is write the pages those visits land on, and it stops when nobody manages the account.

What is the quickest nonprofit SEO fix?

Usually a page written in the words somebody in trouble would type. Plenty of organizations already have the donor version. The other one turns up far less often.