Free SEO Resources for Nonprofits
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a digital marketing medium that is constantly evolving. Exactly when the SEO experts think they’ve figured out how to ‘game’ Google’s search algorithm, the search nerds at Google go and change it again. It’s important to add an SEO nonprofit marketing strategy of some kind to your marketing mix, to ensure you have organic visibility for your nonprofit.
SEO Resources To Enhance Your SEO Strategy
While the ever-changing nature of SEO makes it a difficult marketing technique to master, understanding the basics of SEO will go a long way. To help your nonprofit understand SEO basics, we’ve put together this list of free SEO resources for nonprofits.
Media Cause’s 4-Part SEO Series for Nonprofits
In March 2014, Media Cause published a four-part series on SEO for nonprofits. These articles addressed recent changes in Google’s algorithm, outdated technical components of SEO, the importance of UX for modern SEO, as well as broader elements for a successful SEO strategy.
The first article, The Evolution of SEO, focuses on the new, “audience-oriented” components of modern SEO including UX components such as keywords in URLs, text-to-code ratio, and keywords in alt tags.
The second article, The Cessation of SEO, focuses on outdated SEO practices, or SEO practices that your nonprofit should NOT do.
The third article, The Sustainment of SEO, focuses on traditional SEO components, why they remain relevant, and best practices for properly optimizing your website for these components.
The fourth and final article, The Emergence of Audience Optimization, takes a holistic look at SEO, and addresses components such as mobile formatting, social media and search engines beyond Google (gasp!).
Moz SEO: The Free Beginner’s Guide
After covering your bases with Media Cause’s nonprofit SEO resources, we strongly recommend that all SEO professionals, nonprofit or otherwise, be sure to read the Moz SEO Beginner’s Guide. It covers all the basic aspects of SEO including how search engines operate, how to conduct keyword research, tools for SEO, as well as SEO metrics and monitoring.
SEO Site Checkup
SEO Site Checkup is a great tool if your nonprofit has some SEO know-how, and has the technical resources to perform a self-SEO diagnostic. SEO Site Checkup will tell you many of the issues with your SEO, why they’re important, and how to fix them.
As part of our SEO services, Media Cause offers technical SEO audits. Generally, we also like to implement all of the changes.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
For nonprofits with advanced technical SEO knowledge, Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider is a small desktop program that provides a full SEO audit of your website (up to 500 pages), including detailed information on website links, images, CSS, script and apps. For small nonprofit websites, the freemium app allows for up to 500 URLs to be crawled. If your nonprofit has more than 500 URLs on your site, the paid version offers a 20% discount for 501.c.3 nonprofits.
Moz for Nonprofits
While not technically a free service, Moz is easily the best SEO resource for nonprofits, and nonprofits are eligible for 75% discount on monthly rates and a free manual setup!
These free SEO resources can help you kickstart your SEO Strategy. If you want to take it to the next level with experts, reach out to us today about our SEO services here at Media Cause!