Why Every Non-Profit Should Do an SEO Audit

Regardless of what kind of non-profit your organization is, you want to be found on Google. This is because both awareness, donations, and volunteerism are key parts that make the lifeblood of a non-profit, and one key piece to drive all three of those is by Google. Yet how does a non-profit even begin the process of being found on Google? This is why every non-profit should do an SEO audit.

Chances are you probably have at least heard of SEO. If not, here is a quick explanation. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is essentially helping Google and other search engines understand your website to be an authority on your field and thus serving as a result to search results. SEO can be a big undertaking and one that does not ever really stop. It can feel like such a big undertaking that many small nonprofits feel overwhelmed and don’t even start the SEO process or how to even start it. That is where an SEO audit of your non-profit’s website comes to into play.

What is in an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is meant to identify the strengths, weaknesses, and potentials of your website in regard to search engines and how easily your website can be found in them. Some of the things that can be found in an SEO audit are:

• Titles and Meta Data: Title tags and meta descriptions are the first thing visitors will read about you when you show up in search results. It is important that they be relevant to the content of the site.
• Website Structure Issues: Your website needs to flow well from one page to the next. SEO Audits can help you spot pages that have broken links or links to pages that are not even there.
• Page Speed: Sites should be striving for a fast First Contentful Paint Speed ( where the visitor can see that the site is loading) To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have a First Contentful Paint of 1.8 seconds or less.
• Images and Alt Tags: Your pages should have images relevant to the content and Alt Tags ( the text coding telling Google what the image are) that match what you are trying to be searched for.
• Keyword Analysis and Content Analysis: This is the process of seeing which search terms you want to rank for and how well your content matches up to those search terms.
• Backlinks: Backlinks are links from other sites to yours. Google uses them as way to see if you are an authority on your subject matter.

Now, if this sounds like a lot of information, it’s because it is. But SEO audits can be the key to understanding if your website is on the right track to being found in search results. My suggestion is to get more than one SEO audit. This way you can compare notes between the different SEO audits and create a plan on how to tackle those issues.

Just getting started on your nonprofit website? Read SEO For Nonprofits 5 Basic Tips