4 Steps to Search Engine Optimisation - SEO tips for charities

spiderGetting to the top spot in a Google search is akin to being awarded the World Cup. You can be technically brilliant, have all the correct features in place, paid a few pounds to some nice SEO Company but you cannot guarantee top spot.
This document aims to share with the secret of getting on the front page of a search engine. (Taken from a training event on Drupal SEO by Pete Read)

Getting your site to the top of a search engine requires just 4 elements.

These are

1. Content
2. Site Structure
3. Links, Links, Links
4. Good Luck

Content is King for good SEO results

kingBefore you start to create your content you need to spend some time thinking about your organisation. Try answering the following questions.

Who are your customers?

• Are they other voluntary organisations;
• Search engines are customers too;
• Statutory organisations such as local councils;
• Service users;
• Commercial organisations;
• Or perhaps the public;
• What would each customer use your site for;
• What search terms will they use;

The reason for doing this is that a search engine will index your website for words and terms it finds on your site. These key words and phrases should appear in the content of your website and where possible should be in the page title.

Be aware of your audience at all times but remember the hidden customer - the search engine spider. This means that you should avoid the phrases such as, "we provide great services to our client group". Why? Because people do not search for "We" or "Client Group". So you could say "IlluminateICT supplies great Web development services to Voluntary organisations"

Use the key words in context, try and avoid repeating words too often or the Spider may well think you are spamming and you may be penalised.
You may want to consider the use of Meta tags and descriptions -

• Meta Tags is a list of key words that you want the search engine to associate with your site. The use of Meta tags has been much overused in the past but recent reports suggests that some major search engines still use them. It is very important to avoid repeating words - you will be penalised. Remember though Illuminate is not the same as IlluminateICT.

• Meta description is a short paragraph that Google can use to describe your site when it returns it in the search results. So a good paragraph that will draw people in and make them want to read more is essential.

Please do not sacrifice readability just to get all your keywords in and remember if your first sentence is boring, people won't read the second one.
Add new content - keep your site fresh and interesting so that there is new content to be indexed and people will want to come back

Site Structure

You should be able to edit and manage your own content. Ideally, you should be able to share this responsibility with others to help keep your site fresh and interesting.
Most modern content managed websites will have been developed to be search engine friendly. We develop sites in Drupal, which is one of the leading open source CMS solutions others include Joomla and the blogging platform Wordpress is also search engine friendly.
Within the structure of your site you should have the ability to create an XML site map (for your friendly spider). Friendly URLs is also useful e.g. www.wmictchampion.org.uk/fbpages is friendlier than www.wmictchampion.org.uk/node/215
You should also be able to create and manage links.

Links

Getting people to link to your website, and you linking to other sites will help to increase your sites ranking. When people create links tell them what key words you want them to associate with your website. A naked URL e.g. http://www.illuminateict.org.uk is not as SEO friendly as "For outcomes monitoring look at http://www.illuminateict.org.uk/content/social-impact-tracker-0" Always try to get your keywords associated with your URL.

When I publish any content onto this website I publish the URL to Twitter. This link provides a lot of useful traffic and can help with your ranking. (And hopefully people will click on an advert at the side and help me earn some income)

Good luck

Yes, good luck is an essential part of search engine optimisation.  The secrets of how google and other search engines assign their scoring is closely guarded.  There are many different factors and we have concentrated on just 3 of the top ones.

For more information email Pete@illuminateict.org.uk