SEO — Search engine optimization — is what you do with your website so that search engines like Google send more traffic your way. Here are a few SEO trends and corresponding advice for nonprofits to consider over the next year.
Note these SEO trends are in addition to what we shared late last year in SEO for Nonprofits: Meet BERT Who Likes to EAT and Hates ROT. That post summarized some of the changes to how search engines evaluate content.
Trend #1: Nonprofits Need to Carefully Vet and Edit Any AI-generated Content.
Many of us are thinking about ways that various AI tools can help us create and edit content. But remember, Google and the other search engines know that too, and they have no interest in promoting inaccurate, poorly written, duplicative (or plagerized) content.
If you end up using AI in content creation, set some internal standards for how that is done so that you don’t negatively impact your website’s performance.
Trend #2: Nonprofits Need to Add More Brand Personality to Website Content.
Because of Trend #1, it’s important that your content sounds human. If you can’t tell the difference between something you wrote and something AI wrote, that’s problematic. Ironically, several AI writing services can help you adjust tone and style! Stay human, people.
Trend #3: “Technical SEO” is Probably Something You Should Budget for Long-term.
Nonprofit communications professionals are used to thinking about content strategy for SEO, but behind-the-page technology considerations are becoming just as important. How fast do your website pages load? Do they work well on mobile? Can Google tell what your visual content- photographs and videos- are about?
This should be a shared responsibility between those handling IT and communications within nonprofits. If you don’t have internal IT capacity, talk to your web developer about these issues. If you don’t have a web developer, it’s time to work toward that budget line item.
SEO isn’t an essential strategy for all nonprofits. If your website works best for you when you direct people to it, that’s fine. But if you want the help of Google, Bing, and other search engines in sending folks to your website, you must pay attention to these SEO trends.
