If you’re running or starting a nonprofit, the chances are that you’re looking for any free or inexpensive resources to market your organization. Among those resources are websites that enable you to create your webpage for free. But an effective website should contain more than just content on your site; it needs to extend your marketing reach. Consider these tips to enhance the web presence of your nonprofit organization.
Improve SEO Through HTML Code
Enhancing a website for search engine rankings is called SEO (search engine optimization). A web page optimized for SEO should contain highly searched keywords in not only the content but also in the website code.
Here’s the deal: The creation of a website has various “tags” that describe the structure of your site. The content placed between title tags is, well, the title of your web page. The content within the meta tags is a summary of your web page; this content doesn’t display on the website itself. Rather, meta tags are critical for search engines: page rankings derive content from the meta tags to identify a relevant web page. So when a search engine creates a list of relevant websites related to a keyword search, the rankings page displays the web page title and a summary of the site.
But when an HTML document lacks proper meta tags, the search engine can’t accurately capture content that succinctly describes the web page. As a result, the search results page will display random content from your website, making it more likely for a visitor to overlook your web page. That’s why nonprofits need to consider hiring a professional website builder who can improve the SEO of your site through the code.
Boost the Usability through Clear Call-to-Action Content
A website has to be not only searchable but also usable. In other words, once a visitor finds your site through a search engine, your web page must be easy for the visitor to navigate. Otherwise, a disorganized or confusing website will frustrate readers and make them leave. Nonprofits can improve the usability of their websites by placing a clear call-to-action message, such as subscribing to the newsletter or donating money, on the top half of the webpage rather than the bottom half. Call-to-action content helps nonprofits transform their website into a critical asset to their marketing reach.
Enhance Readability by Making Your Website Easy to Skim
Readability refers to the ease for the visitor to read the website. Well, more accurately, how easy it is for the visitor to skim the web page. However, that doesn’t mean that your site should only have bullet points and one-word descriptors. Concise writing, clean padding and margins, a simple typeface, and clear headings and subhead are among the attributes that make a website more readable. Nonprofits should check the readability of their website. For example, smaller paragraphs with bullet points will improve readability on web pages that have more text content.
More now than ever before, anyone can create a web presence. But it needs to be more than looks. Turn your website into a medium that’s more than displaying information about your nonprofit. These tips, such as tweaking to HTML content for improved search, can improve your nonprofit’s marketing effectiveness.
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