4 Website Mistakes Affecting Your Non-Profit’s Search Engine Rankings

Search engines are indeed hard to decipher. That’s because there are many things to consider before your website can be on the first page of search engine rankings. 
Did you know that Google owns 91.05% of the market, whereas Bing only has a 3.74% share? That means your website needs to abide by all the rules of Google Analytics to rank higher. 
Let’s say you’re running a non-profit. However, you aren’t getting enough visitors to your website. That means either your web page’s design, search engine optimization (SEO), or marketing are wrong.
In 2023, America had almost 19,99,457 tax-exempt organizations. Among them, 73,467 were social welfare institutions. To stand out in this competition, you need to increase your website traffic and avoid making SEO mistakes. 
In this blog post, we’ll discuss a few ways non-profit organizations can optimize their websites to boost organic traffic.

Mistake #1: Missing Out on a Unique Website Design

According to BizBolster Web Solutions, websites are more than just adding words and pictures to a template. It’s about attracting visitors, engaging with prospects, and facilitating conversion rates. Your non-profit website will be the only hub for marketing and can become the primary tool to attract people to your web pages. 
To make an exceptional and functional website, you’ll need a responsive and unique web design. That will enhance the user experience and positively affect the session duration for each web page. Take a look at a few tips to increase visibility with responsive web design:

• Adapt website layouts and storytelling elements that resonate with your image.
• Optimize videos and images regularly to improve load times.
• Implement fluid layouts and flexible grids to accommodate screen resolutions.
• Ensure website elements, page titles, and images are understandable and clear.
• Use a soothing color palette that is neither too bright nor too shabby. 
• Strategically place promotional elements and clear mission statements.
• Use intuitive navigation, donor-friendly features, and impactful visuals. 

For inspiration, you can look at the Girls Who Code website. This website ranks higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) because of its clear mission statement, supported imagery, vibrant colors, dedicated donation page, etc. 

Mistake #2: No Mobile Optimization

According to Statista, mobile devices account for half of the web traffic in the world. Last year, these gadgets generated 58.67% of the global traffic. This statistic proves that ignoring mobile-friendly optimization can harm a non-profit’s online presence.
Needless to say, mobile users are growing. That means your non-profit must offer a positive user experience to reduce bounce rates and increase engagement. Mobile-friendliness means optimized web pages that your visitors can go through on their smartphones, tablets, etc. 
Did you know mobile friendliness and responsive website design go hand-in-hand? When making your website responsive, optimize the site structure for various screen sizes. 
Industry leaders have listed out a few ways you can make your non-profit website mobile-friendly:

• Use Google Search Console tools to help measure a website’s search traffic, performance, etc.
• Make donations user-centric to ensure ‘giving’ is easy from any device with different payment methods.
• Regularly perform quality checks and fix any problems with your website’s text style, images, and links when on mobile devices.

Mistake #3: Lack of SEO-Friendliness

Did you know organic clicks accounted for over 45% of search result clicks two years ago? Moreover, Google’s algorithm features over two hundred factors that SEO experts must consider. 
If your non-profit website isn’t ranking, then it probably doesn’t have relevant keywords based on search intent to attract the target audience. 
You’ll need to hire a website design and SEO service provider to help solve this. They will optimize your website’s headings, content, and meta tags with relevant keywords to increase visibility in search results. Their SEO efforts will improve poorly structured URLs, add alt text for images, reduce slow page load times, etc. 
To improve your non-profit website’s SEO-friendliness, experts will follow these tips:

• Content keyword research
• Focus on local SEO tactics
• Regular updates for faster loading
• Incorporate internal links and fix broken links
• Optimize meta-descriptions
• Posting high-quality content to enhance engagement 

Mistake #4: Inadequate Backlink Building

Your non-profit’s online presence is probably dwindling because of a bad off-page SEO tactic. Research suggests that 96.55% of content doesn’t get organic traffic from Google. To be in the other 3.45%, your website will need backlinks. 
Ideally, a backlink or an incoming link is a link-building tactic where your non-profit website will get traffic from other sites. It can help you enhance authority and increase search engine visibility. To improve backlinking, you must follow these tips:

• Create shareable and compelling content to encourage organic linking.
• Network with other non-profits or influencers for collaboration.
• Submit guest posts highlighting your services on authoritative websites.

With the help of these tips, your website can attract search engine crawlers to index the pages and establish better search rankings. For that, remember to make the website responsive, use a non-profit SEO strategy, offer mobile optimization, improve meta tags, etc. 
With these, you’re one step closer to maximizing your digital marketing tactics. As a non-profit, these website redesign tips can help raise awareness about your organization across local search results.