Rebranding? Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits Tips

We understand that nonprofit rebranding is sometimes necessary in this ever-changing society. And it results from many different reasons: in need of a new logo, change in strategy, target demographic repositioning or just to freshen up with a new look. However, despite as much changes as you are going to make, there’s one thing you don’t want to lose or replace at all — your Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits account. While you are going through the rebranding process, small things like switching to a different web-server might disqualify you right from Google Ad Grants and you’d have to go back to traditional paid search marketing from then on.

Concerned? We’ve got you covered! Print out this checklist and keep it handy as you strategically plan for the rebranding phase; it’ll assure you that your Google Ad Grants program runs just as effectively as it did prior to your rebrand.

1. Use The Same Domain

Most importantly, you will have to make sure you still use the exact same domain for your nonprofit. The second your site transfers to a different domain, your nonprofit is at high risk of sending disqualifying alerts to the Google Ad Grants team and your Ad Grants account will be paused or cancelled after the review. If a new domain is absolutely needed, you might want to consider reapplying to the Ad Grants program.

2. Keep Your Destination Pages

  • Pull a report from your Ad Grants account to list out the URLs that are currently being directed from the search ads.
  • Keep in mind these pages are getting exposed everyday and supporting your ads at a decent rank/position with quality content.
  • It’s important that you keep what you have and, of course, increase the quality of the content on those pages so they don’t drag your ads done with poor quality scores.
  • However, if you decided to build new pages to accommodate these contents, make sure you update the destination URLs to keep your ads from disapproval.

3. Optimize regularly

Google asks you to optimize your account on a regular basis depending on what type of Ad Grants program you are in. For regular Ad Grants account you are obligated to make at least two changes within every 90 days and for those utilizing the Ad Grants Pro you will need to perform account management biweekly at least. Account management or optimization should really happen much more regularly, but this is the minimum of what Google for Nonprofit asks you to do. If you feel like you don’t have enough time to manage your accounts on a regular basis, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll get our experienced search marketing professionals to help you out.

4. Don’t Show “Under Construction”

Even if switching to a new domain is not part of your plan, you might be considering “shutting down” the site for a period of time for maintenance reason. Remember that an active and functioning site is part of the Ad Grants Eligibility and showing “BRB” or “Under Construction” on your site is putting you right to the disqualifying queue that Google’s Ad Grants team will review and decide if your account needs to be paused or cancelled. We know it is difficult, but you should at least try to minimize the gap between taking down the old materials and filling up with the new ones.

5. Keep Your Conversions Activated

This is for the Grants Pro accounts only — you will need to keep utilizing the AdWords Conversion Tracking tool to stay qualified. If the conversion items will go through changes in the rebranding process, you should be sure to update your Conversion Tracking tool in time so it stays active as much as possible. Here  is a guide to remind you how to import Google Analytics Goals into Google Adwords Conversion.

6. You Still Do What You Do

Last but not least, as we know how amazing nonprofit is good at making the world a better place (for real), your organization should still be doing the awesome things that it’s been doing from beginning of the time! More exactly, to stay eligible for Google for Nonprofits.

Good Luck! If you have more questions about how to stay qualified for Google Ad Grants or meet obstacles during the rebranding process, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!