Where to Put Keywords on Your Web Page

When you write your web content, you are writing first for real people and second for search engine spiders. For your website to be as successful as possible, you need to keep both in mind.

Prominent keywords are important for both audiences. They help real people skim your page, so they can decide if they are in the right place or not and they help the search engines figure out what your page is about.

So where do you put them? Here are nine good places to use keywords.

1. In your page title. This is what appears at the top of the browser window when someone visits your website. It appears in the page code in between the title tags in the head section.

2. In your page description. Visitors don’t see this, but the search engines do. This is the two lines of text that appear below the main title in search engine results. It appears in the page code between the description tags in the head section.

3. In your page URL. Using your keywords in your page URL (what goes after the www.) can also be helpful with search engines. That’s why lots of blogs, including this one, use post titles in their URLs.

4. In your headings and subheadings. Make it easy for your readers to very quickly see what your page is about by using lots of headings and subheadings.

5. In your first sentence and your first paragraph. Make sure your important keywords appear here — the earlier, the better.

6. In your last paragraph. Use your keywords at the end of your content too.

7. Elsewhere in your body copy. When keywords fall naturally throughout your article, consider bolding them. Don’t go overboard with it or it will be a distraction. But if it makes the article easier to skim, bold those keywords.

8. In your link text. Instead of linking to words like “click here,” use your keywords in your link anchor text.

9. In your ALT tags on images. The search engines can’t read images (yet). With every image, include a bit of text called the ALT tag and use your keywords in that text.

Don’t worry about the keyword tags in the head section. Though it would seem like the obvious place to put keywords, it’s too obvious, and the search engines don’t pay much attention to that tag any longer.

Learn more about writing for the web during the August 14, 2008 webinar, Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email.

Tags: keywords, online-writing, website
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Worst Nonprofit Website Mistakes? Check This List

Michelle Murrain at Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology has posted this week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants on the worst mistakes nonprofits can make with their websites. Check it out!

What’s Hot and What’s Not?

FYI, the Carnival will no longer publish weekly, but will now appear on the 1st and 15th of each month, beginning August 15. I’ll be hosting that edition and in honor of the dog-days of August, the theme will be “What’s Hot, What’s Not.” If you blog about nonprofit issues, what’s hot in your particular niche, and what’s not? Help your friends and followers in the nonprofit sector understand the latest trends. To submit your post for consideration, use this form or email npc.carnival AT yahoo.com by 5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, August 14, 2008.

Tags: mistakes, website
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Make Your Website About Visitors, Not About You

The biggest mistake that a nonprofit can make with its website is to use it as an old-fashioned brochure, where you immediately hit the visitor with your long, jargon-filled mission statement, right at the top or smack in the middle of the home page, followed by bulleted lists of “projects” or “services.”

Why is this so bad? Because it’s all about the organization (and usually the most boring parts at that) and it shows little interest in what your website visitors really care about.

But isn’t our website supposed to be about us, you ask?

Yes and no. Yes, it’s about you and what you do, but organized in a way that’s easy and intuitive for your site visitor. What they want is more important than what you think they should be interested in.

Two Easy Ways to Organize Your Site for Your Visitors

Let me show you what I mean. There are two easy ways to organize your website so it is more audience-focused.

The first is to divide sections according to who the visitors are. The home page of KidsHealth.org is a splash page with links to sites for parents, kids and teens. Each group is going to respond best to information presented in ways that speak to their age groups and specific needs and questions. Ultimately the facts may be the same on each mini-site, but the language and presentation are totally different depending on the audience.

The second way, and the one I usually prefer, is to organize your website around (1) the answers to the top questions people are most likely to have and (2) the actions they want to be able to take on your website. What three main questions would a potential website visitor have and what three things would they like to be able to do on your site? Figure that out and organize your site accordingly.

The New York City Meals of Wheels program, for example, has three tabs right across the top: Get Meals, Volunteer and Support Us. That about sums it up, doesn’t it? The overwhelming majority of people who come to a Meals on Wheels website will want to find out how to get meals delivered or how to volunteer to deliver them, and “support us” is thrown in for good measure. The left side menu includes additional information, but those three tabs right at the top stand out, and show me that they know exactly why people are coming to their website.

Learn more about nonprofit websites during these upcoming webinars: July 30 - Attracting More Website Visitors: Traffic-Building Tips for Nonprofits | August 14 - Online Writing: Dos and Don’ts of Writing for the Web and Email | August 28 - Online Marketing Basics for Nonprofits: From Email to Social Media

Tags: audience-focused
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Notes on “Building Your Online Presence on a Tight Budget”

“Conversation in the Clouds” by Swamibu on Flickr

The Chronicle of Philanthropy hosted a live chat earlier this week with Beth Kanter (Beth’s Blog) and Jonathon Coleman (The Nature Conservancy) called “Building Your Online Presence on a Tight Budget.”

Beth and Jonathon are two of my favorite social media experts, so I took a few minutes to read the transcript today.

I recommend that you look over the whole transcript yourself, but here are a few points that stood out for me:

- Beth has an insane amount of material online and available to you! I knew this already, and it’s one of the reasons she is a favorite, but all of the links she shared during the chat definitely reinforce the value of the treasure trove that is her blog, wiki, etc.

- Lots of people are questioning the amount of time they need to invest in social networking sites like Facebook and what you get out of them for all that time. The metrics are still evolving, but focusing on what you learn from the conversation versus more standard fundraising or marketing metrics is the way to go right now.

- Search engine optimization and linking strategies are still incredibly important to the success of your website, as is great content. David Westbrook and I will be spending much of the hour during our July 30 webinar, “Attracting More Website Visitors: Traffic Building Tips for Nonprofits” on these topics.

- You don’t need much money to be a rock star in the nonprofit world online (although it certainly helps). What you do need is big buckets full of time. Time to read all the great how-to and what-for material out there. Time to sort through your options. Time to experiment. Time to participate in the conversation. Time to contribute in meaningful ways. So I take that back. You do need money to pay your staff for all this time they are spending working on your social media strategy!

- There’s some tension between the idea of using social media for publicity or promotion and using it more strictly as a conversation tool. I don’t think these two ideas are mutually exclusive — having good conversations with people can be a type of promotion — but I do agree that the conversation should come first.

- Nonprofits are overwhelmed by the options and the long list of to-dos associated with doing social media and online marketing right. I hope this blog and my nonprofit marketing webinar series are helping you feel less overwhelmed and more like you can tackle these tasks with confidence!

Tags: conversation, nptech, social media, web 2.0
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Is Web 2.0 Software You Buy from Microsoft?

And Other “Stupid” Questions You Were Too Afraid to Ask!

Photo by B Tal on Flickr

The “Be the Media” project led by the Nonprofit Technology Network and Beth Kanter starts today. The project will ultimately be the “go-to” spot for people who are both learning and teaching about the use of social media in the nonprofit sector.

Beth invited me to participate and I’m looking forward not only to sharing what I know through the project, but also highlighting its growth here for you on this blog and asking for your input on various questions and ideas as Beth leads us through the creation of the various modules.

This week begins with “Why Your Nonprofit Organization Should Be the Media.” Beth kicked off the conversation here.

But before we can get into why social media is so great for nonprofits, let’s back up a step and answer some basic questions that people have asked me quietly under their breath when they were fairly certain no one else was listening, usually after I’d given a talk on online marketing . . .

1) So “Web 2.0″ isn’t software you buy from Microsoft? (Usually said with a slight deer-in-headlights look).

No. Web 2.0 is not a single piece of software, but a whole new way of looking at how we use the Internet. Now anyone, not just the fat cats or tech geeks, can put just about anything online and we can all discuss it, build upon it, and share it with each other. The power of the back-and-forth conversation and the collaboration that comes from that is what’s new and exciting about Web 2.0 over old Web 1.0, which was more about just putting information online. That’s still valuable, but it’s not the same as being able to talk about the information and debate its meaning with others across the street or around the world, all at the same time.

2) Do we really have to have a website? (Usually said by a face sagging from the sheer exhaustion of an already way-too-long to-do list).

You have to have some kind of online home base to work from. It can be a traditional website or a blog, but yes, you do need some kind of page that you can edit at will and where people can find you, without any special membership requirements. In other words, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are great, but I think every nonprofit should start with a site that anyone can visit without a username and password. If you are completely clueless, start with Wordpress.com or Blogger.

3) Do we have to get on MySpace/Facebook? (Usually said with a profound look of worry about having to venture where all the younguns’ are).

Definitely not right away, and maybe never. It totally depends on who you are trying to reach. If the people you are trying to reach — your target demographic — are on a particular social networking site, then at some point, yes, you should work on being there too. But if the people you need to talk to the most don’t use those sites, then there is no need to make them a high priority. And it’s much more important to have your home-base website or blog in good shape than to start creating additional outlying pages that will be hard for you to keep updated.

4) Why should I be excited about letting some random person we’ve never heard of before raise money for our group? This is a nightmare! (Usually said with a look of great alarm after hearing me talk about online fundraising widgets like those individuals can create on Six Degrees).

This question is usually coming from one of two fears: (1) the person will go way off-message in raising the money and (2) the money will not actually be turned over to the charity.

Think about the best in-person conversation you’ve had in the last year with friends or family. Did you both have a script and did you both follow it exactly? Of course not! To realize the greatest benefits of social media, you have to let the conversation happen naturally, off script. Yes, you have to give up control of the message (which, honestly, you don’t have anyway). But why not embrace these fans and give them a little help, gently correctly any mistakes as you give them loads of praise for helping you? And people who use widgets from the established organizations like Six Degrees don’t actually see the money themselves — it goes through a processing company that cuts the check to the nonprofit directly.

5) I love the idea of using photos on our website or sharing through Flickr, but how do I get the photos off of my digital camera? (Usually said by someone laughing at herself for not being able to figure it out).

Your camera has some kind of memory card in it. That card is like a little hard drive where your pictures are stored and you need to let your main computer see that little hard drive. You can usually do this in one of two ways. First, your camera may have come with a cord that allows you to plug the camera into your computer through a USB or firewire slot. Or you can take the card out and plug it into a card reader that’s already built into your computer or that’s plugged into a USB slot. Your computer will give your memory card a drive letter. Find that, and then you simply copy and paste (or move) your picture files from that drive to your hard drive, just like you move any other file from one folder to another.

OK, with all of that out of the way, let’s have some fun talking about nonprofits and social media!

Tags: bethemedia, social media, Social Networking
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Website Tune-Up: Get Multiple Domain Names

I’m presenting “Must-Have Features for Nonprofit Websites” as a webinar on this Wednesday, June 25, from 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. ET, and the first must-have on my list is a clear domain name and multiple variations on it. Not multiple websites. Just one of those will do. What you need is multiple domains that all point to your main website. It’s like having more than one door into your house. In your domain registrar account, you simply forward all of your secondary domain names using a 301 permanent redirect to your main domain that holds all of your website content.

Why is this so important? Because when people guess what your website is or try to dredge it up from their memories, if they get close, wouldn’t it be nice if they went straight to your website instead of getting an error page or someone else’s site?

And what about those fingers on auto-pilot that type .com instead of .org but otherwise get your domain name right? Again, wouldn’t be nice if they got to your site anyway?

Multiple domain names not only help visitors who don’t have it quite right; they also help you protect your brand. If you build a great .org site, you don’t want to give up traffic or the goodwill you’ve created to someone who uses your name as a .com site.

Get the .com, .org. and .net versions

Here’s what you should do. First, if they are still available, buy the .org, .com, and .net versions of your main domain name at GoDaddy or your favorite registrar.  I’m working with one nonprofit who was using a .com domain name. The first thing I did, before even talking about their design or content, was to have them buy the .org and .net versions, which (luckily) were still available.

In theory, .com is for businesses (commercial), .org is for organizations, and .net is for networks. But unlike .mil (military) and .gov (government) which are reserved for those institutions, .com, .org. and .net can be purchased and used by anyone. Go get them. There’s nothing stopping you except the price, which is usually less than $10/year.

Get the reasonable guesses and typos

Next, think of reasonable variations that a site visitor might type into a web browser. The Nature Conservancy uses the very short and memorable nature.org as its main domain. But natureconservancy.org and thenatureconservancy.org will take you to the same place. Those domains are forwarded automatically to nature.org.

If you think your site visitors might be prone to replacing a word in your domain name with another, you should also consider purchasing those variations.  When I started Nonprofit Marketing Guide, I thought to myself, “OK, if someone heard about a site like this, but couldn’t quite recall the name correctly, what guesses might they have?” As a result, I also purchased the domains for “Nonprofit PR Guide” and “Nonprofit Communications Guide.” Those all forward to NonprofitMarketingGuide.com.

If your website address includes a commonly misspelled word or name (e.g. Cathy or Kathy?), you should also consider buying those variations.

What do you do if the domain names aren’t available?

Many registrars offer backordering services. For a fee, you can backorder the domain names, and if the current owner fails to renew the domain on time, your registrar will try to snap it up for you.

For example, when I started NonprofitAnnualReports.net in January 2004, the .org and .com versions were already gone. As I recall, one was a consulting firm and the other was an ad site. Using backordering, I obtained the .org site at the end of last year and the .com earlier this year. Both are now forwarded to the original .net domain where the site is hosted. I also purchased nonprofitannualreport.com, .org, and .net (without the s on reports), since that seems like an reasonable typo.

Obviously, you can take all of these tips to the extreme, and end up spending a fortune. You don’t need to go overboard with it.  Brainstorm the most obvious choices and then get as many as you can reasonably afford.  If you can only afford a handful, I say get at least the .org, .com, and .net of your main domain name.

Tags: domain, domain name, domain registrar, nonprofit website, registering domains
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Nonprofit SEO Tip: Don’t Sweat the Keyword Meta Tag

As you know, I’m hosting a webinar this week with search engine optimization (SEO) expert David Westbrook. It’s going to be full of great tips on how to do your keyword research and search engine optimization, which is really essential if you expect your website to produce new supporters. David will speak in plain English, so even if HTML is Greek to you, you’ll still understand the basics. The webinar is this Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern and registration is just $35. Details and Registration Here.

Here’s another free tip from David that was news to me: “Frequently people who have heard anything about search engine optimization, but who don’t follow it closely, have heard that there is a near-magical meta tag called the “keyword meta tag.” This comes from the fact that a few years ago search engines relied on it heavily for indexing Web site pages. Today the importance of the keyword tag is zilch. Most search engine companies have programmed the indexing portion of their engines to ignore the tag altogether.”

And here I was thinking I really needed to go update the keyword tags on several of my sites. I’ll knock that right off the to-do list! Thanks David!

P.S. Take three minutes and tell me what webinar topics you want on the schedule this summer. Just rip through the list, ranking each topic on a scale of 1-5. Five free webinar passes are up for grabs for those who complete the survey. Take the survey now.

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Getting Google & Your Nonprofit Website on Speaking Terms

Next Thursday’s Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinar is on keywords and search engine optimization (SEO) for nonprofits and will feature guest speaker David Westbrook, an SEO expert with lots of nonprofit experience. If you just crinkled your nose and said, “Huh?” or if you are your office’s accidental techie and default webmaster, this webinar is for you. If think you’ve done everything right and your website still doesn’t come up when you put your keywords into search engines like Google and Yahoo!, this webinar is for you too.

I asked David for a sneak peek at some of the insights he’ll share next week and here’s a good one:

“When it comes to esthetics, search engines couldn’t be much more disinterested. This is because every image looks the same to a search engine. Imagine walking through the Louvre and where others see the Mona Lisa all you see is .img and further on where others see Madonna with the Green Cushion, you again see .img. This is the world of a search engine. On the other hand, search engines are voracious readers, and while they can’t interpret a word, they do know how often it appears and they are able to assign a level of importance to it depending on where it appears and what is surrounding it.”

David goes on to talk about the importance of the ALT tag:

“Every image should have what is known as an alt tag (technically an alt attribute). I am sometimes asked if this includes when menu items are images instead of text. As it turns out, they are especially important here. Their importance extends beyond search engines, as they are chiefly important to the blind who use screen readers that have no way of knowing a link exists if it is just an image without an alt tag.”

David will share lots of ways that nonprofits can improve their search engine rankings, whether you have complete control over the design of your website or you can only write articles for it.

Get the details on Can We Find You on Google? Keywords and Search Engine Optimization for Nonprofits, taking place Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern (11:00 a.m. Pacific). Registration is $35 and includes everyone in your office who can fit around a single computer monitor and speaker phone.

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