Social Media For Nonprofits » SEO

Designing Your Website to Draw in Donors

Rosita Cortez — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:33:54 +0000

Nowadays people use the Web to do just about everything. From reading books and conducting research to contacting others and charity giving, the Web is where it is at. An organization’s absence in the World Wide Web makes about as much sense as deciding not to have a telephone. Online giving is growing and fast. Large nonprofits are already reaching out and acquiring new donors via the Internet. How is your nonprofit doing? Do you already have an online giving program in place? If so, is your website helping you effectively achieve your fund-raising goals?

According to a report from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 4 out of 5 donors have made a gift online. Donors also prefer to use the Internet for donations. These statistics supports the trend in online giving. In 1997, online donations in the United States accounted for $300,000. By 2007, online donations totaled $314 billion. For many large nonprofits online gifts account for more than 30% of their new revenue.¹ Your nonprofit can take advantage of this opportunity but to do so you need to prioritize and focus on building a great website.

Here are ten simple ways to assess your website’s ability to help you raise money.

Basic contact information. Your website needs to state what your organization does, where it’s located and ways to get in touch with development staff. Your organization’s full name, address, telephone and email address should be displayed on your website’s contact page and on the bottom of every page.
Donation information. Provide your website viewers with easy access to information on how to donate and get involved. Don’t make them look around for it. Website users, in general, want to find information within a few seconds of entering your site. Otherwise, they are gone.
Tell where the money goes. Donors want to know how their money is spent. Provide a “donor update” every month or so.
Include a call-to-action. Lots of people miss the boat when it comes to this point. The goal is to convert visitors into supporters and donors. Insert subtle cues throughout your content and give visitors incentives to make that initial contact. Suggested reading “Increasing Online Giving: 10 Tips to Optimize Your Donation Landing Pages.”
Increase donor confidence: Place your Charity Navigator and Better Business Bureau badges prominently on your homepage and donation pages.
Integrate your online giving with other marketing channels. E-mail marketing still works. E-mail (e-newsletters) can feature content on your website. Always leverage offline promotion to compliment what you are doing online.
Freshness. Provide fresh and up-to-date content.
Use social technology. Provide tools for your visitors to share what they see via social networks. An easy and inexpensive way to do this is to include Twitter and Facebook buttons. There are also free “Tell a Friend” scripts that you can integrate on your website. Statistics show that word of mouth is still one of the most powerful marketing tools. People react positively to recommendations from their friends and colleagues.
Acknowledge your donors. Find a space on your website to publicly thank your donors.
Track users. The only way to improve your pages is by knowing your user’s preferences. Use a tracking tool to know where viewers go within the site and know how successfully you are leading them to donation or involvement options.

In sum, your website design should acknowledge your donor’s experience. Put yourself in their shoes and understand how they will interact with your communication. Your website design is experienced in stages — from the first impression to the last click. It is not just about your donation page. Recognize that more and more donors are taking action online. Use the 10 tips above to enhance your messaging or engagement strategy today.

10 Easy Tips to Optimize Your Donate Now Button

Rosita Cortez — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:19:08 +0000

Studies show that about half of those who receive an appeal for funds in the mail will checkout the organization’s website. Are you capitalizing on this? Is your organization optimizing its web pages to increase fund-raising? Having clever and inspirational online content coupled with optimization techniques can make a big difference in converting advocates, subscribers and other supporters into donors.

Although it may sound silly to you, the donate button your nonprofit is using can greatly affect online donations. If you are using the small, gray standard “Submit” button, you might be waving good-bye to a lot of donations. A study conducted by Donor Digital finds that color, size and the copy on the donate button are crucial in enticing people to donate.

Take a look at a few tips about optimizing your donate button. Remember, small changes to your web donation page can dramatically increase the number of visitors who actually make a gift.

Location. Put your Donate Now button “above the fold.” Eliminate the need to scroll to find the button. The upper right corner is prime website real state. Make it obvious. Make it impossible to miss.

Use large Donate Now buttons. Donor Digital finds that size does matter. Similar to the industry learning that large font is more eye-catching, we’ve learned that bigger donate buttons help convert more donors.
Use color. A little color goes a long way. Colorful, high-contrast donate buttons work better than gray buttons.
Use specific language. Buttons with a specific call-to-action (“Donate Now”) perform better than a gray button that says “Submit.”
Stand out. Make sure your “Donate Now” button stands out from the rest of your website.

Frame the button in a compelling way. Make it about the donor. Why should they care? What can they help accomplish? Make sure you have a strong persuasive message above the call to action. Use it to persuade donors on the fence.

Test your links. Once it is up on your site, make sure it takes donors where it should. There is nothing worse than a broken link.
Put it on every page. The act of giving is immediate. We can not predict what page someone will be on when they are inspired to donate. Increase your chances of receiving a donation by putting the button on every page.
It is not just for your website. Include the Donate Now button in every communication (blog, e-newsletter, email signature).
Test it out. It shouldn’t take someone more than 3 seconds to find your “Donate Now” button.

Take away: If you want to see an increase in online donations, you need to optimize your donate now button, not just your website and your donation landing pages. Give your button the emotional tone that touches people and invites them to donate.

10 Tips to Effective Search Engine Optimization for Nonprofits

Rosita Cortez — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:48:31 +0000

Many people feel intimidated when approaching Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They think it’s super-technical or requires a huge budget. But the truth is that SEO is not brain surgery. Search Engine Optimization doesn’t require an expert to do. The only things that are really necessary are time, the willingness to learn and a tad of patience.

Does your nonprofit have a website that would benefit from an increase in targeted traffic? Would you like to rank higher in search engines? Would you like to increase your online fund-raising and brand visibility? Don’t sweat i! Do-it-yourselfers can do as good of a job as professionals when it comes to SEO. After all, you know your organization — and all its nooks and crannies — better than anybody.

Let’s be clear: SEO takes some time. There are no short cuts or quick fixes. Good results almost always takes many months. But don’t despair. If you follow the 10 tips below, you’ll be paving the way for your nonprofit. Although the tips below are a mix of on-page and off-page optimization techniques, they work together to increase your nonprofit’s ranking in organic search results.

1. Clarify your goals. Good SEO requires concrete, laser-focused goals. Spend sometime clicking around your website. Think in terms of:

a. Presentation (is your information up-to-date? Are your forms asking the right questions?)

b. Functionality (Can people make donations online? Do you have a strong brand identity?)

c. What do you want your visitors to do on your website? It is your party. You decide what you want your guests to do: make a donation, view a certain page on the site, subscribe to your mailing list, etc.

2. Audience. Who is the target audience for your website? Surely it includes potential donors. But don’t forget that it may also include members of the press, employees at your organization, current and past beneficiaries seeking support. Describe your target audience(s) with as much detail as possible.

3. Keyword selection is key. Keywords are the heart of any SEO campaign. Organizations who are on top of their SEO game have a list of top-priority keywords that they use on their site with reasonable repetition.

4. Pay attention to Meta tags. They are what we called “invisible text” because metadata is not displayed on the page, but is added to your html code to be analyzed by SEO robots. Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords and images.

a. Page title. Most search engines assign great importance to page titles when indexing content. Writers who use descriptive headlines can become magnet for SEO attention.

b. Friendly titles. If your nonprofit is using a CMS platform, make sure that it does not assign content ID numbers to page titles.

5. Clear and compelling content. I cannot say it enough: content is king. Content should be fresh, interesting and directed to your users. Your content needs to be formatted so robots can read it. This means HTML text, not graphical text, which search engines can’t read.

In addition, within your page body, there are 5 important elements from a SEO perspective:

a. Anchor text (also called linking text). Text that is clickable on a webpage. Aim to anchor text that contains your page’s targeted keywords. This can help you boost your page rank.

b. Breadcrumb trail. It gives users a way to keep track of their location within your site. Usually, breadcrumbs appear horizontally across the top of a web page, usually below title bars or headers.

c. Heading tags. After the title tag, the headline tag is the next most important SEO on page element. Although HTML supports up to six levels of heading tags, typically I don’t recommend using more than the h1 and h2 tags on a given page.

d. Body text. Use no more than 450-600 words in total on each page. Use bold and italics to pick out keywords on the page. This helps search engines as well as humans readers to identify your key text. Do not use the underline tag on your page as it confuses users expecting to find a link.

e. Image ALT tags. As we discussed before, robots cannot read graphics. Make sure that all your images have an ALT tag that describes the image clearly.

f. Internal links (also known as cross-linking). Greater SEO value is given to internal links. Have keyword-rich navigation within your own site (in addition to the breadcrumb trail).

6. Inbound links. SEO considers inbound links to be the gold standard for content quality. Think of links as online recommendations.

7. Create and file a sitemap. It allows robots (and users) to quickly and easily find and index your content. Sitemaps help with usability and site navigation.

8. Make SEO-friendly URLs. Use keywords in your URLs and file names.

9. Optimize other assets found on your website, including documents (.doc, .pdf), spreadsheets (.xls), presentations (.ppt), videos (.avi) and pictures (.jpg, gif, .png).

10. Track and evaluate your SEO efforts periodically. How will you know you’re successful if you have no way of measuring what you’ve done? Sign up for Google’s webmaster Central and Google Analytics to learn more about how the search engines see your site, inbound links, source of traffics, etc. Measure, analyze and adjust your strategy as needed.