The Basics About Internet Marketing SEO When You Raise Funds Online

You've spent a lot of time, energy and perhaps money on getting your fundraising or charity website set up so that it will be appealing and interesting to your audience. But all of that work is useless if you can't get your audience to click on your site. In the seemingly infinite number of sites out there to choose from, your job is to find a way to make yours the one that both the search engines and your potential viewers will choose. This is where search engine optimization or SEO comes in. (SEO has turned into somewhat of a science and this article is meant to get you introduced to SEO and give some simple suggestions to get started.)

Keywords and content

Often referred to as SEO, search engine optimization is a term that can include a number of different methods for drawing traffic to your website. Internet search engines use a number of factors to determine what sites they return in response to a surfer's search. Factors such as the search phrases and keywords entered in the search engine (or directory), keywords used on your site, the content on your site and the number and types of sites that are linked to your site can all affect whether or not your site is selected - as well as where in the long list of potential sites your site is listed. SEO can help to improve your listing in a search engine's results in two ways. First, it can help your site to be returned at a higher placement in the list of possible websites that a surfer is looking for. Chances are, if your site is not listed on the first two pages of links that are returned, the surfer is unlikely to find it. Second, SEO will not only help to get a good position in search results, but also help to get the most appropriate visitor to your site. In other words, the more careful you select your keywords or phrases for example, the more likely it is that you get the kind of visitor who will actually use your site or purchase from your site, as opposed to a visitor who's only browsing.

So how do I use keywords and phrases to my advantage?

Keywords and phrases are in fact, a very important aspect of getting your site offered to a surfer. But the problem is, you might not always include in your text the exact key words that a searcher enters into the search engine. There is a very easy to use and free keyword search tool available at overture.com that lets you search for the most commonly entered search phrases and words into their directory. For example: type in 'fundraising' and you'll not only get the results for that word for the current month, but also all kinds of related keywords and phrases people are looking for on the web. Remember that the most popular keywords and phrases will also have the most competition in the search engines and directories. Unless you'd like to spend potentially a lot of time and money to compete for the top keywords, it may be wise to pick keywords and phrases that most closely describe your service, but that aren't necessarily at the top of the list. Use these keywords and phrases in the title and header tags, the keyword and description tags and throughout the text on a related page for said keywords and phrases.

How to use keywords and phrases

You might say "If I just get as many keywords and phrases as possible on a page, I should do pretty well in the search engines and directories, right?" Well... You could try to do that by creating rather jumbled copy that crams as many keywords and phrases into a page as possible, but you'll find that this is not a good idea. First, search engines and directories know this trick and will not respond to it. Second, remember that you don't just want to attract a surfer, but you want to attract visitors that will keep coming back for future visits. So a page that lists a bunch of keywords but doesn't give them what they were looking for is not going to rank well with your visitors, no matter what it does for your SE ranking.

Back to keywords and content

Stick to what makes sense: using content rich articles related to your subject and taking advantage of keywords and phrases in the title and header tags of your pages and the keyword and description tags. This strategy can help you improve your search engine rank and keep your visitors interested. It broadens the amount of interesting and relevant information you offer to your readers and increases the likelihood that your visitors will stay on the site. Not only that, but if your articles prove to be useful, then you also increase the likelihood that other sites will link to yours ('backlinks') - another important factor in increasing your search engine ranking.

This is an article created by the FundraisingIP.com Editorial Team.

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