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A non profit website has to make all search engines happy. Search engines like Google, Bing & Yahoo look at two things when they decide who to show on the first page. They look at the context and the authority. The context is what's happening on each page of your non profit website, and the authority is how important your website is on the internet.

Below are few tips to help you optimize your website:

• Define your keywords
  One of the mistake we commonly see if people trying to compete for highly competitive keywords instead of looking for opportunities. When you do an analysis, I would recommend you look for high traffic with lower competition and establish yourself there instead of trying with everybody else to compete for the top keywords. Look for the opportunity!
  
  
• There are plenty of free & low cost tools on the market to choose from:
• Google Keywords search tools (free)
  Great to identify your top 10 keywords.
  
  
• Google Analytics (free)
  Will analyze your traffic and tell you what people do when they land on your site. It will also tell you what keywords lead you to your site.
  
  
• ScribeSEO (starts at $17/month)
  This is one of the best value software and we highly recommend it. Install the plug-in directly into the text editor of your webpages, blogs, news articles, etc and click on the button to analyze the content. The analysis will tell you exactly what's missing to be 100% optimize, make the corrections and voila!! Our CMS is already configured to work with the plug-in and the set up takes about 3mn and is free to our clients.
  
  
• Website Grader (free)
  There are few tools on the market but the websitegrader.com is probably one of the easiest one to use. Simply enter your domain name, the url of a competing organization, your email address and it will send you a report of how your website is doing

Remember that optimizing your website is not very hard once you know what to do, but can be very time consuming. Large organizations will often time, have a dedicated staff to work on optimization only. I know of a person working for a large non profit organization where her job is to work exclusively on their blog and social networking presence on the internet. That's it. So considering hiring someone to help you with this may not be a bad idea unless you can spare 2-4 hours a week on optimizing your site.

Search engines help people find relevant information on the Internet. Major search engines maintain huge databases of Web sites that users can search by typing in keywords or phrases. To compile databases, search engines rely on computer programs called “robots” or “spiders.”

These programs “crawl” across the Web by following links from Web site to Web site and indexing each one that they visit. Search engines use their own set of criteria to decide what to include in their databases and each search engine is different. There are several ways to organize results and most search engines use a combination of them.

Key guidelines to remember when considering search engine placements:

Title: The title tag is the most important element.

• Should include the top 3 primary keywords selected for the site
• Should include the location (City, State) but not the company name

Meta Description: The Meta description is used by crawlers to summarize the Web site it is searching.

• Include all of your primary keywords, as many other keywords as practical
• Logical sentences using keywords, essential information first, should be a call to action
• Include the location (City, State) but not the company name
• Limit to 200 characters (15 -20 words max), avoid subject matter not keyword related

Keywords: Think like a search engine user. What would people type to find your Web site.

• Target keywords should be at least two words long, “dog grooming” as opposed to just “grooming”
• Select no more than 20 keywords/keyword phrases for the site, not overused but still popular
• Less than 20 keywords is acceptable if the business/data warrants less
• Each word/phrase should be used multiple times on the site.

Body Copy: A Web site is ranked based on location and frequency of keywords used on the page.

• Write 250 to 300 words or more per content page, text needs to be persuasive and flow
• Should include ALL keywords/keyword phrases multiple times, as practical
• Since important information comes first, search engines favor keywords high on the page
• For custom sites ideally, all pages should include some body copy with keywords

ALT Tags: Search engines can’t read images, but can read ALT tags, so make them descriptive.

• Should be separated in 2 parts: Image description and brief keyword/keyword phrase description
• Parts should be separated by a space hyphen space (–) Example: Dog – Pet store offering dog food, pet toys, crates, and health supplies

Links: Every major search engine looks for links, so add them on the Web site.

• Linked text should be keywords if possible, if not, link page names
• Search engines rank pages higher when they are linked to external pages.

Do you know that you have less than 10 seconds to make a new web visitor stick around? So the question then becomes: "how to make them stay?". It's easy: make sure it's not dull & boring and covered with all kinds all marketing blah blah blah.

Your landing page should be informative in tone and targeted to your specific audience. Here are few things that we find missing in many sites that would make a huge difference in increasing the number of visitors that stick around longer, translating in more sales/registration/inquiries, etc

1. Use a clear Page Title & Description for your website:
   Why? Because this is what they'll see first in the search engine. Consider this: before they land on your website, they see your Google search result first. Try googling your company or organization and see what comes up in the search results. Is it descriptive? fun? informative? does it include an offer?
    
2. Have a self evident call to action button:
   It always baffles me to land on a webpage and have to seriously look around to request more information. I'm always left with: "why are you trying to make it hard for me to do business with you?" The call to action should be so self evident that your legally blind grand father could point it out to you! Color matters too, red gets better results than green or blue in A/B site testing. Not sure why but it does.
    
3. Have multiple way for people to take action:
   Don't you hate when you can't find a phone number or even a simple address on a site. I may want to talk to someone, or even drive there if it's not too far. All that information should be on the landing page without having to dig. Yes, some people actually want to talk to a live person before they make a decision.
    
4. Include social media links:
   Encourage people to check you out and possibly like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. Consider adding a "Like" button on your page so people can post it on their FB page.
    
5. Include a quick & easy way to sign up for more info:
   No big commitment, just a name and an email is enough....we barely know each other, let's just start easy is the way to go.
    
6. Respond quickly to all inquiries:
   78% of sales that start with a web inquiry get won by the first company that responds. Do you want to impress people? Respond within 10 minutes and see your sales increase dramatically.
   
   
7. Have a great Thank you screen and awesome confirmation email:
   A lot of time is spent on design and layout but once I made my online inquiry....how does it look? You should make both the thank you page and confirmation email count. Include valuable information, make them feel like they have made the right decision by contacting your company or organization. Too many times, both those pages are overlooked and too often flat out boring.

Got it? Now go optimize your website and measure the results.

First you have to understand how search engines work. Most of us don't have a clue, it's something about complex mathematical algorithms....right?

Yes, that's right, but you are now most likely in a mild coma, so let's look at the 3 major components that power the major search engines:

1. Crawling
   Crawling is actually done by bits of computer that find information on a web page, read it and then continue along be following links from your page to other pages. Another terms to describe crawling is search engine spiders that "crawl" around the web looking for content. Spiders will return looking for changes to the original page, which means there are always opportunities to alter the way a search engine sees & evaluate your website content.
2. Indexing
   Once your content has been captured, it is indexed & stored in a giant database. It is now gauging how relevant your content is to the words that people searching the web are using (i.e. keywords or key phrases)
3. Ranking
   The critical aspect of search engine technology is how the engine decides to provide the most relevant content to people searching for specific stuff (via keywords & key phrases). This is done by the secretly guarded "algorithmic functions". Fancy word for the search engines rules about what's relevant and what's not, thus PageRank.

Take a look at the major components of Google ranking algorithm

24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain
Largely based  on the quality of incoming links. They treat links that flow to your site over time as an indication of other's people's trust in your site, find value in it, and reference your content as an authoritative citation. Creating a blog on your site that others link to or add a link on their site to yours is one of the major way to accomplish this. You can also call your friends and beg but don't be surprised if they stop answering the phone when you call. Provide value & be a resource is how you get this done....and it takes time & dedication. Read Blogging tips for non profit websites

22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page
The number of links to a specific page matters a lot too. How you keep visitors engaged and the quality of the content (highly valuable) is directly related to the probability of attracting incoming links. If the first measure is quality, this one is about quantity. Be a reference (.e. link) on many site as you can. Same here, this takes time, won't happen overnight.

20% Anchor Text of External Links
Anchor text links from other sites matters because this is their way of finding out what your page is about (i.e. "Your Company Name" as a link to your website posted on other websites)

15% On-Page Keyword Usage
The density of keywords in your content. There are few tools who can help you with that. The one I use is SEOscribe, it does all the work for me, it's like having a pro on staff reviewing your content before your post it...for $47/month. To help you with indentifying the right keywords, Google Keyword Tool is a great start

7% Visitor/Traffic and Click-Through Data
What do visitors do when they land on your site, stay for a while and browse or leave seconds after they get there (bounce). Engage people as soon as they land on your site, if your site doesn't provide any value, or valuable information, then they'll leave. Information about your company or services is not valuable...especially if it's full of marketing catch phrase such as "state of the art" or "best in class" or any other marketing mumbo jumbo. Provide value, something that 5 minutes ago I didn't know, i.e. valuable information in bite size format. If you do that, then I may re-tweet, like or link to my Facebook page your valuable content. Now you are helping your site with the #1 & #2 factor to better ranking....does that make sense? Google analytics has all the tools you need to analyze your traffic/

6% Social Graph Metrics
How popular you are with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. How often people "Like" or "Re-Tweet" your content is very important. The more likable you are in social network, the better it is for your rankings. Now you may have realized why you should do it if until now you were a bit puzzled by why & how to do it.

5% Registration and Hosting Data
The trust worthiness of your domain name registration & hosting provider.

What do you think your biggest challenge will be in optimizing your site?