Search engine optimization is becoming very important for your website to become competitive with other organizations. Generally, if your website is not on the first page or page and a half of listings then people will not view your website; therefore having good search engine rankings (where your website is listed, eg. Page 1, page 16 etc.) are essential to drawing website traffic.
Chris Nastav, a Kansas City web developer, offers some insight into a simple idea that could help improve your website ranking. Nastav says, “There's things we as Web developers can do to your site to help with that, but there's one really huge thing we cannot do. And it's probably one of the most important things Google wants. One of the biggest things Google looks at when determining where it's going to rank your site is the size of your company on the Internet.”
When Nastav says “size” though, he is not referring to income or number of staff. Instead, he says size, in reference to search rankings, is measured by “the pages of search results your company takes up, not how many links on a page, [but] how many pages full of results are about your company[.]”
You can do this quick test to find out the size of your organization simply by opening up Google and searching for your organization’s name. Put the name in “quotes” “and look at how many pages of results you get.
So what is the key to gaining size and getting noticed by Google? Nastav says the secret is this: “You get bigger on the Internet by having people link to your Web site. Writing a Blog. Linked-In, Face Book, My Space, Submissions to eZines, online newsletters, submissions to local newspapers, having your company sponsor events or speak at events that are written by other people on their Websites. Submitting your site to link sites.”
These might seem like small ideas and not huge traffic generators, but they still are important. The links increase your overall search engine ranking which should be a goal for any good website development.
It is important to investigate these ideas and others because they are one of the keys to driving traffic to your website. With this growth in online giving and online connections, your website is the starting point for forming new relationships. Try to find the ideas that are most conducive to what your organization is trying to accomplish and to your available resources.
William High is the President of the Servant Christian Community Foundation--www.servantchristian.com. Servant Christian has helped start www.iDonate.com which provides funding solutions to non profits. www.christianfoundationgrants.com is a database of foundations that provide funding to faith based organizations.