Where do I start with Search Engine Marketing?

Many folks who have attended my training and leave wondering where they should start when it comes to optimizing their site and marketing it to search engines. I understanding that everyone is busy in the non-profit world, and have created a cheat sheet of what one should do first if they have "no time", and what task to tackle if you have more time to devote, etc.

Keep in mind all of the items on this list are really Search Engine Optimization and Marketing 101 - the absolute basics. But they give you a sense of where to focus until you're ready for the 201 level. So here we go:

If you have no time for SEO/SEM:

1. Collect your benchmark numbers:
   
1. So starting today:
1. how many volunteers do you have in your database
2. how many organizations, how many referrals are you seeing per month
3. how many referrals are you getting from search engines and other referral sites
4. what is your number of one time visitors and returning visitors
2. Pick some keywords. Make sure to pick a few geographic words. Put those keywords on your site.
3. Register your site on search engines and in local search
4. Work on getting inbound links. Start with .edu and .gov
5. Make sure to send press releases through pr.com, and post on Reddit.com
6. Measure your success in 6 months.

If you have some more time for SEO:

All of the above, plus:

1. pick keywords and research if visitors are using those words by using Wordtracker
2. Get more links
3. Create a Flickr account, give instructions to volunteers about how to add photos to Flickr account
4. Post on Craigslist

If you have even more time for SEO:

All of the above, plus:

1. Create a blog for your Volunteer Center
2. Write articles for online and email newsletters
3. Create a sitemap file and upload to search engines
4. Get a Google grant & post an online ad

Get your Volunteers & Board to Help you Build Links to your Website

Building inbound links to your non-profit's site can be time consuming, but it's essential to ensure that your website and your volunteer opportunities are listed in the search engine results pages.

I've gone ahead and written a one pager explaining what link building is, and have included an example of a link building email that you can hand out to your volunteers and board members to have them help you build links to your non-profit's website.

Enjoy!

Is your Email Making it through Spam Filters?

Do you know if your email is making it through your volunteer's email spam filters?

There are many elements to making your email more deliverable, but let's just focus for the moment on the "from" and the subject line of your email.

From Line

This should be your organization's name - something that your volunteer will recognize. I would discourage you from using your volunteer manager's name - someone they might not know. If they can't recognize who the email is from, there's a good chance that they are going to hit "delete" before even opening.

Subject Line

Here are some tips to make sure your subject line is not inadvertently looking like spam:

• Don't use an exclamation point.
• The use of all caps, even if it's just one word, is a red flag.
• Don't deliberately misspell words (and don't do it accidentally either).
• Avoid non-standard characters.
  
• Only use necessary punctuation. In most cases, at most you might need a comma or dash.
• If you're using an apostrophe, make sure it's straight, not "smart." And don't copy any such punctuation from Microsoft Word to paste into your subject line - they copy as non-standard characters.
• Avoid "spammy" (not sure if this is a word, but it should be) words like "free", "limited time", "buy now", "performance", "you're receiving this message because".
• Curious about other spammy words? Check out a full list here.

My next post will cover blunders that you might commit in the text of your email or based on the type of email you're sending...stay tuned!

Understanding How Links Work

At the SEO workshop at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service, there were quite a few questions about how links work and how to get other sites to place the code to link to your site.

Here's a great article that explains how the html link code works.

Driving Volunteers to Your Website Workshop

It's exciting to take the concepts of Search Engine Optimization and Marketing for volunteer recruitment to a larger audience at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service. The presentation for the Driving Volunteers to your Website workshop can be found here.

Great Example of Link Request Email

I was reading an article in SEO Chat, and I came across a well written link request/building email that I wanted to share. Here it is modified for those who want to recruit folks looking for volunteer opportunities online:

“I have created a web site for our Volunteer Center called www.volunteercenter.org, which could be very valuable to your students looking for volunteer opportunities or their graduation requirements. It is a free site with volunteer opportunity listings and information about local nonprofits who need volunteers. If you find time, please visit our site, and consider linking to it from your site, as it would certainly be a resource for your students. Any feedback would be much appreciated! Thanks for your time and have a nice day!”

Most folks starting out requesting links on a new site ask for 100 links per day for 5 days. That's where the tip sheet I created for how to get your volunteers help in building links to your website comes in handy. Use your volunteers to build traffic to your site!

Cleaning Up your Volunteer Email List

We all hate to do it, but it has to be done - updating and cleaning up your volunteer email list. If you're using a provider like Constant Contact, hopefully folks have been opting themselves out of your emails if they aren't interested. If you're mass emailing folks in some other fashion, you'll have to periodically clean up your list.

Where to start!!

First, start with your bouncebacks. If you have a postal email address for those volunteers, send them a postcard asking them if they still want to receive notifications about volunteer opportunities and events with a note to email you with their new address, or give you a call.

Second, if you're using an mass email program, pull a report of the folks on your list who are not opening your email. Most mass email programs charge per email address you're sending to, and you don't want to waste $ on folks who aren't interested in your message.

And finally, go ahead and send your old list an email asking if they would like to continue receiving information from you. You can have them register on 1-800-Volunteer.org, or respond back to you with their new email address.