Like most charities, we’ve published vacancies on our website and in print. Visitors would see an ad that we’d placed in the jobs section of the local newspaper and then visit the website to download more information - but very few visitors seemed to discover the ads just by searching Google.

Unfortunately, Google isn’t ever completely up-to-date, it updates its indexes every few weeks, so a job vacancy might come and go on the website without Google noticing it (by the way, setting up an XML SiteMap can help Google spot your updates quicker).

However, if you create an ad using Google AdWords it appears immediately to people searching Google for relevant keywords. Plus, if you have a Google Grant then your ad tends to get prioritised above those of for-profit websites. Our charity’s job-related ads have consistently been positioned above those of well known jobfinder websites and usually our ads are in the #1 position for keywords such as “aged care nursing” and “residential care nursing”.

I create an ad on Google for each of our vacancies, with the ad’s URL pointed to the relevant page on our website. I’ve also created a few ads that point to more generic pages on our website on topics such as “Why work for Baptcare” and “Aged care nursing”. These ad campaigns are only displayed to people in Victoria and Tasmania, the areas that we work in.

What’s the happy result?

According to the HR department, we’ve had a big increase in the number of people applying for jobs, and the quality of the applications has not dropped. So our Google Grant has produced a measurable, very practical benefit.

What is a Google Grant?

It’s free advertising, only available to nonprofit organisations, that shows your ads to people when they perform relevant searches using Google.

You get a Google AdWords account and the ability to create simple or complex ad campaigns. Create an ad (it can be text, an image or even video), decide which page on your website it should link to, then choose the keywords that you want to trigger your ad. Here’s a tutorial.

Boosting a new website’s visits

Before and immediately after the launch of Greek Care, press releases were sent to various online magazines and print publications relevant to aged care. This resulted in a sudden surge of visits but a week later the stats had completely dropped off.

At that time nobody could find the website by using search engines. Websites don’t immediately appear in search results - it can take several weeks - but we sped up the process by creating an XML sitemap and uploading it via Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Unfortunately, even after the site’s pages were listed in Google’s results, our stats told us that visitor numbers were still low. This was a good time to start an online advertising campaign so I applied to Google Grants.

Applying for Google Grants

The application form is simple enough provided you’re well organised. Different countries have different forms (e.g. US, UK and Australia and others) asking different questions. You’ll need to show proof of charitable status, provide contact details, and be able to explain how you think Google Grants will benefit your organisation.

It took only a few weeks to get a response saying that we’d been accepted. We were lucky, other organisations have waited up to six months for a reply.

In their confirmation email Google requested that we set up a normal AdWords account (except that there’s no need to enter credit card details) and let them know our username and a few other details. Within another two weeks we were able to login to AdWords and set up our first online ad campaign.

In Part II : How Baptcare, an Australian nonprofit, benefited from a Google Grant

Here’s a screenshot showing an example of a benchmarking report. The thick blue line is the website being monitored; the thin black line shows the average visits and page views for other, similar-sized charities.

You can choose which type of website to compare your stats with. In the example below I’ve chosen to compare stats with other family and parenting nonprofit websites:

There’s one catch: in order to use the benchmarking service you’ll need to give Google permission to share your stats data with other people. However, since the information is aggregated and made anonymous, it shouldn’t necessarily prevent you from sharing data.

You could use some of these tools to improve your website. How about putting an events calendar on your website which you update by logging into Google? Or using Google Analytics to provide statistical reports for your website? Or applying for free advertising from Google Grants?

I recently used the Calendar tool to put two training calendars onto the Baptcare website. It took about 10 minutes to sign up with Google to create the first calendar and another few minutes to copy the code that Google provides onto a page within our website. I then sent invites to two other staff members so they can input dates and details as new training courses are identified. A quick, easy and effective solution.

1. Is your HTML code valid?

   The code on your website should meet certain standards. Use this free tool to check the pages on your website for errors: http://validator.w3.org. The results are full of techie jargon so let’s make this simple for you: if you get a green banner saying “this page is valid” then your site passed the test; if you get a red message then it failed and you should ask your web designer to correct however many errors are listed.

2. What about your CSS?

   CSS code dictates how your website looks: its fonts, sizes and colours, widths of columns, margins and backgrounds etc. Use this free tool to check the code for errors:  http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator and let your web designer know if you find any.

3. Can Google find the pages on your website?

   Get yourself a Google account and sign up for the free Webmaster tools. The Sitemap tool will tell you whether Google can or cannot reach all the pages on your website. If Google can’t find some of your pages, it probably indicates a web design fault, most likely a problem with your navigation links. You can do a more basic version of this test by simply typing “site:www.yourdomain.org” into Google and checking whether all your pages are listed.

4. Identify the missing links

   The links from your website to external websites will need updating occasionally. Other websites may change their address, delete pages or even disappear completely. Use the W3C’s free Link Checker tool to check individual pages or the Dead Links tool to check an entire site at once  – it may take some time so go make a coffee and come back later.

5. Are font sizes resizable?

   In Internet Explorer select Page > Text > Largest. If all the text on your website increases in size then well done. If not then your site probably uses fixed font sizes e.g. 12pt. Ask your web designer to change them to variable sizes e.g. using percentages or ems. This will benefit visitors with poor eyesight.

6. How many other websites link to your site?

   If your website is to attract visitors you need a lot of other sites to link to yours. You could use Google to find out how many websites link to yours by typing in “link:www.yourdomain.org”. However, if you try the same search in Altavista you’ll actually get a more accurate result. If you find that only a few websites link to you, start emailing other websites in your area of work to politely request a link.

7. Where are your contact details?

   Are your contact details on every page of your website? If not, is there a prominent link to a page with your contact details on it? You should at least provide your address, phone and email and registered charity number. If you expect people to visit your building, a map will also be helpful. You’d be surprised how many charity websites fail this basic test.

8. Check your website statistics

   Every organisation needs statistics for how many people visit their website, how many pages are looked at, which are the most popular pages etc. Start checking your stats monthly and making a note of the number of visitor sessions and page views. Hopefully, if your content is good and you’re promoting your website well, you’ll see a steady increase. If your website is popular, produce a couple of simple graphs for your management committee to show them how worthwhile the website is. If not, start a campaign to get your website noticed.

   Don’t have statistics? Unsure how to understand them? Take a look at some of the discussions on the TechSoup web building forum, especially October 2007′s online event about web analytics.

I’d be very interested to know what results you get. Please come back to this website and leave a comment or ask a question!

Let’s say you are a small AIDS prevention nonprofit in Boise, Idaho.  It’s December 30, and several Boise residents have logged onto Google to find a charity for a…donation/last minute tax deduction.  It’s likely that potential donors will do a Google search for “boise aids charity.”  But if your nonprofit doesn’t pop-up near the top of the search results, these donors may never find you.

That advice makes sense to me because I’m currently working on a long-term SEO campaign for Baptcare‘s website. As a provider of aged care, Baptcare has quite a few competitors and since there are only so many charitable causes that people will give to, it’s important to get our website performing well in Google. First we’ll sort out some coding and accessibility issues; then we’ll rewrite some of the content to make it more compelling; then we’ll look at getting more websites to link to us; and we’ll apply for Google Grants free advertising.

Nancy’s article is called Push Through Fear of SEO to Boost Your Nonprofit’s Online Marketing Results. While you’re on her website, make sure you read her other articles and learn from an expert how to market your charity more effectively.

This post was written as part of the Nonprofit Blog Exchange.

So if you already have a website but want to take it one step further, read about the 8 free tools to promote your association’s website.

Website promotion is something that is often overlooked. In order to get noticed your website will need to have compelling content, be well designed, have a strong presence on search engines, and a marketing strategy. And in order to judge the success of your site you need to be able to find out how many people visit your site and what they look at, so let’s look at the last of those first.

Statistically speaking

Here are two questions every organisation should be able to answer: how many visits were there to your website last month and which pages were most popular?

Website hosting companies should provide website statistics and these are key to measuring the popularity of your site. You probably already have web stats – take another look at the emails your host sent you when you bought hosting, look on their website or call them to find out. Typically you access these statistics via a website using a password. Check your stats monthly to track how many people visit, what they look at and what they don’t, and look at the list of referring websites to find out if they followed a link on another website to find yours.

Content is king

A website with well-written, timely, interesting content, will draw visitors back time and again. Text on your site should be concise, properly punctuated, with good spelling and grammar.

One of the best ways to get people to revisit is to keep updating the content. The news page is often the most popular section of a website. If you have regular events, plenty of opinions, and if you want to keep your audience informed, consider starting a blog for your organisation.

A few years back there was a trend for website owners to try to fool search engines by putting unnecessary keywords throughout the text of their site. Search engines have improved and this technique rarely works, in fact it can backfire and cause your site to be penalised. Use plain English and no tricks.

Five web design tips

However good your content is, people have to find it in the first place. The following advice will help ensure that bad design isn’t a barrier to your web pages being found on search engines.

1. Buy an appropriate domain name

Most UK voluntary organisations should choose a domain ending in .org.uk, not .com or .co.uk. Make it memorable and either keep it short or be descriptive. Organisations with a long name might consider using an acronym.

2. HTML and CSS code should meet W3C standards

You don’t need to understand the code yourself: you just need to know that you can test your web designer’s work using the compliance tools at http://validator.w3.org and http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator. If it’s not 100% compliant, it’s not good enough.

3. Be accessible

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 says your website must be accessible. Remember, Google is the single biggest blind user of the Internet. Read AbilityNet’s publication How to Commission and Design Accessible Websites and look at the RNIB website.

3. Give every page a title and description

Meta tags provide additional information about your pages and are used by search engines to rate your website. A short, expressive title tag is essential as it’s displayed first in search engine results. The description tag, in no more than 25 words, explains what the page is about. However, the keyword tag is redundant as the main search engines now ignore it.

4. Use heading tags to structure your content

The most important headings in your web page should be enclosed in ‹h1› tags. The second most important should be in ‹h2› tags, then ‹h3› tags and so on. Other paragraphed text should be in ‹p› tags.

5. Keep navigation simple

Navigation is the means by which visitors find their way around the content on your site. Keep your menus simple and, if possible, use text rather than graphics as the links.

Get listed on search engines

Search engines are websites which search the content of other websites. Google is the best known but Yahoo, Altavista and Ask Jeeves are also popular. You need to tell the main search engines about your website and each has a site submission page. Submit first to www.google.co.uk/addurl and http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest then visit the Search Engine Watch website for a list of the other major search engines.

When people search for the appropriate words using search engines, you really want your website to be listed on the first page of results. So let’s take a look at how Google rates websites.

Google uses software called spiders that travel from website to website, remembering what’s on each page and how the pages link to each other. Google has a massive database of about eight billion web pages and when people search for keywords, it compares them with its database of web pages and produces a list of matching pages.

Google uses a complicated set of criteria to judge which web pages rate highest in its listings. Factors that boost your rating include having the search words: in your domain name; in your title and description tags; in your headings; or elsewhere in the text of your page. That’s why good web design is important. But above all Google rates your website highly if other websites link to yours, especially where those websites are on a similar topic to yours and are highly ranked themselves. Google has more advice for web designers at www.google.co.uk/webmasters.

Get links from other websites

Links to your site from other sites will boost your rating in search engines. Also, you want people who visit similar websites to cross over to yours. So put aside some time to build links with other organisations’ websites in your field of work.

Go to any search engine and search for whatever words you think describe your sort of organisation. For each website listed on the first page of results, consider asking them to link to your own site. Make a note of their website editor’s email address and send them a short message, politely asking them to create a link to your website.

Then make a list of every voluntary and statutory organisation you work with and ask them to link to you. Ask your local council and CVS to link to you. At any time, you can check how many websites link to you by typing link:www.yourdomain.org.uk into most search engines.

Maybe your site has quality information that merits a mention on wikipedia, a collaboratively written online encyclopaedia. If so, visit the site and you’ll find that you can edit any of the entries to add a link to your own website.

Who should do site promotion?

When you commission your website the designer may quote an amount for website promotion, often for as much as £500. There are also companies you can pay to submit your website address to hundreds of search engines. However, you can do this all yourself. It takes only an hour or so to submit your site to the main search engines, and building links requires specialist knowledge of your field, so the best person to promote your site is you.

Marketing your website

If your organisation has a marketing strategy, make sure the website is part of it.

Get some free advertising by signing up to Google Grants. You may have noticed adverts appearing in a column beside Google’s standard search results; these ads are now available free to registered charities.

Tell everyone about your website. At the very least put your domain name on all your organisation’s business cards, newsletters, reports, stationery and staff email signatures. At the end of your ansaphone message tell out-of-hours callers they can find information on your website. Send a poster to local libraries. Send postcards to your members. Have display boards and a rollup banner made to carry to outside events. If your charity owns a minibus put the website address on its side.

Have a launch event for your website and send a press release to the papers. Getting your website mentioned in magazines and especially on radio or televison will really boost your web stats.

You could put content on the Internet but not within your own website, to attract the widest audience. If you have a promotional video, set up a free account with YouTube and put it online with a link back to your website, especially if your target group is teenage. Find out which websites your client group use and start using them yourself.

Word of mouth made many websites successful. Find out about online messageboards and email lists in your field of work. It’s impolite to use these services just to plug your website, but engage others in conversation and ensure your web address appears in every message.

A final question for you: if your website becomes very popular, will you write new content and update the site more regularly? Can you cope with an increase in enquiries? Will you move any services online? Will it change the way you work? With success come new challenges.

This article by Jason King was first published on ICT Hub’s Knowledgebase in July 2007 under a Creative Commons license.

Your website’s hosting company should provide website statistics and these are key to measuring the popularity of your site. You probably already have web stats – take another look at the emails your host sent you when you bought hosting, look on their website or call them to find out. Typically you access these statistics via a control panel on your own website or your host’s website using a password. Check your stats monthly to track how many people visit, what they look at and what they don’t, and look at the list of referring websites to find out if they followed a link on another website to find yours.

If your hosting company doesn’t provide a stats tool, or if what they provide just isn’t good enough, you could sign up for the free Google Analytics service. This is an excellent tool, simple to set up and get the hang of, very visual with plenty of graphs and graphics, yet clever enough to produce reports for the most complex of websites. All you have to do is get a Google account and insert a line of code at the bottom of your web pages. Then you can log into Google at any time to see your latest statistics.

Statistics are not necessarily simple or obvious enough to understand without some knowledge of what they represent. You may have heard website owners boasting about the huge number of ‘hits’ their sites get: however, this figure by itself is almost entirely meaningless. Instead, start by looking at how many visitor sessions you get per month: a visitor session means that a person went to your website, looked at one or more pages, then left again. Is this figure increasing or decreasing? Does that trend relate to how often you’ve updated your content?

Then look at how many page views you receive per month. Divide this figure by the number of visitors to find out how many pages the average person looks at. If few people are visiting you need to do more to promote your site; if many people visit your site but don’t read much when they get there, maybe that indicates you need to write more interesting content. Trends are important: month-by-month your page views should be increasing.

Your stats tool should tell you which pages are the most viewed. For example on www.ectopic.org.uk one of the most popular pages is about symptoms: not surprising when an ectopic pregnancy is an oft-misdiagnosed condition. What about the least popular pages? Is there are reason no-one reads the page about the history of your charity – is it just too dull? Sorry, it probably is! Or do you need to make the link to it more prominent on your home page? Perhaps the really good content on your site is hidden where no-one sees it.

You should be able to find out which other websites have ‘referred’ visitors to your site. This is very useful information because you may find out that most of your visitors have found you by clicking on links on just a few other websites; on the other hand you may have very few referrals at all: either way it’s time to start asking more sites to create links to yours.

Once you’ve got to grips with web statistics, include them in your reports to funders, discuss them in staff meetings, let your colleagues know what’s hot and what’s not and encourage them to contribute. But keep it very short: there’s nothing more dull than a half-hour PowerPoint presentation on statistics!