orginaly published by Silas Partners May 2006

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one, of many, buzzwords thrown about on the web without any real explanation. We all know SEO is good and something that we need to be doing, but ask anyone who sells SEO what it is and you’re bound to get an answer that sounds like an alchemist telling you how to turn lead into gold.

Search Engine Optimization is the snake-oil of the web: provided by traveling salesmen who trust in their victims’ customers’ ignorance and fear to hock their tawdry wears.

I exaggerate. I don’t think all SEO companies are just trying to steal your donors’ generous contributions or that you have been a bad steward if you have employed an SEO company.

Still, on any project where you are promised Search Engine Optimization you have to be sure what you’re getting isn’t a jargon-laden boilerplate but a well-thought-out plan for success.

Write Compelling, Unique and Topical Content

Every search engine’s goal is to return results that are helpful to searchers. If a search engine returns bad results you are likely to stop using it. Every search engine wants their top result for a search to be the best resource on that subject.

Make your content exceptional. Your ministry knows what is going on in your field, perhaps better than anyone. Be bold and choose stories that will get noticed and stand out from others. Keep your focus on the topics your ministry can speak about with authority.

Re-purposing existing print copy is not enough for your website. You have to make time to write web-appropriate content for every page. Most ministries do not have the time, people power, or expertise to do this. This is where partnering with an experienced web agency is crucial. When looking for that partner in your online efforts, make sure they will work with you to produce excellent content for your website.

Make Your Content Search Engine Friendly

This is where it gets technical and many SEO companies wrap the client in a tangled web of acronyms until they stop struggling. In short, search engines use machines to read your website, so you have to understand how those machines work when you are building the site.

There are no optimization programs or filters you can run your website through to make the underlying code search engine friendly. Also, most easy-to-use web design programs spit out code that chokes many search engines. The best way to assure your website is search engine friendly is to hand-code the website while keeping in mind the factors that add to search engine friendliness.

Keeping up with coding standards and tricks could be a full time job. While you are pouring over “A List Apart” you aren’t thinking about the next campaign or event or church service your ministry is preparing for. You partner with someone to build your website so you do not have to get bogged downed in the muck of HTML and CSS. Creating websites that are search engine friendly has to be part of the way a web partner thinks; it has to be part of their DNA. Everyone from the Information Architect, to the Project Manager, to the coder who produces your templates, to the production person who builds out your “About Us” page has to know how to build your site to please both man and machine.

Get People to Vote for your Site

The most effective way an organization can increase its ranking on search engines is to increase the number of inbound links to its content. This is something SEO companies cannot do for you; you have to do it yourself. Search engines count inbound links as votes for the content on your site. Sites with more votes are considered to be of higher quality.

There are two factors that weigh into inbound links, quality and quantity. The best way to get quantity is to connect with the thousands of bloggers who publish every day. Many of them are also your donors or subscribers. Quality comes from high traffic, trusted sites like news media or governmental websites. Having your organization featured on a high traffic news website will produce at least one very quality incoming link.

Seeking out and connecting with these online communities and media outlets takes time, more time that you don’t have. Any partner planning to increase your search engine rank has to have a plan for generating more quality inbound links. Further, they need people who understand bloggers and online media. That is the only way your partner will be able to communicate effectively in the niche that your ministry fills.

Always Pay for SEO

Wait a minute, now the truth comes out this author just picked a catchy title so people would link to this page to increase this article’s search engine ranking. Not entirely true: search Engine Optimization is not a line item on a contract or a one time project; it needs to be a continuing part of your entire web effort. So as your organization begins to think about how you can turn searches into supporters, find a partner who will:

• Come alongside you and develop compelling web-centered content
• Have people who know how to build and maintain search engine friendly websites
• Reach out to the larger web community to build incoming links