Why Your Nonprofit Needs an SEO Audit
Search engine optimization is a great tactic for all organizations, especially nonprofits. So why might your nonprofit need an SEO audit? If your nonprofit has been losing traffic over time, you’re getting out-ranked by competitors, or if you’re looking to increase donor awareness, an SEO strategy might be for you!
What is an SEO Audit, and Why Is It Important for Nonprofits?
An SEO audit involves analyzing how well your website is as it relates to best practices. It is the first step to creating an implementation plan that will have measurable results for months and years to come. The purpose of the audit is to identify issues and roadblocks affecting organic search performance and to create a holistic strategy moving forward.
When to Consider Doing an SEO Audit
So you decided you might need or want an SEO audit, but how do you decide when you should do it? In most circumstances, you can proceed whenever you’d like, but here are a few good reasons to consider running an analysis:
- You’re planning on redoing or relaunching your website
- You want to invest in an SEO strategy but don’t know where to begin
- You’ve seen drops in traffic, or the website has poor visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs)
- You want to increase donor awareness organically
- You have a smaller marketing budget
Benefits of an SEO Audit
While SEO can sound daunting, if you are working with the right nonprofit marketing agency, you’ll be in good hands. There are multiple benefits to an SEO audit that you may not be aware of.
- Understanding your website’s strengths and weaknesses
Once you understand where your website stands in its performance, it’s easy to create a roadmap of how to optimize it. You probably don’t know what is currently hurting your site, and gaining that knowledge is power.
- Identifying top organic keywords and content opportunities
Does your organization know what is helping your website gain visitors and donations? An SEO audit can share benchmarks and insight into what top keywords and pages are helping drive traffic. Additionally, it can help you spot content gaps and opportunities to create new content.
- Content optimizations and overall content strategy
During an SEO audit, an expert can show you opportunities for high-value phrases for your nonprofit organization and how to utilize them in your content. They can also share opportunities for new content on your site as well to increase visibility and appeal to more users and donors and help you create a content strategy.
SEO Audit Tools
If you want to perform an SEO analysis of your website on your own, you can invest in a few tools to do so. Here are the top tools and platforms that SEO experts here at Media Cause use for performing an audit.
Google Search Console: dashboards and reports by Google that allow one to monitor and troubleshoot any issues related to your website’s presence on Google [free]
Semrush: an all-in-one SEO toolset that provides a comprehensive look at your site’s performance and helps you improve your website in all the crucial SEO areas [at a cost]
Google Analytics: a data platform from Google that allows a look at organic traffic, top pages, bounce rate, and more [free]
Next Steps After an SEO Audit
Now that you’ve either completed or received an audit sharing an SEO analysis, what is next? You might be feeling overwhelmed but also eager to get to work. The best step for your organization would be to create or invest in a holistic SEO strategy. This means optimizing content, fixing technical issues, and more, all at the same time. If your nonprofit is interested in our SEO services or learning more about nonprofit marketing, contact Media Cause today!