Create an Efficient Invoice Website for NPOs

Invoice website for NPOs

One of the best things that we can do to attract  and retain donors is to have a great website that   is properly optimized if your website is outdated  poorly designed or just plain sucks you're   going to be missing out on opportunities for  relationships and donations think of it this way   if someone is looking to support an organization  like yours yet you are number eight on the google   guess who's going to get the donation or the  volunteer the lower you are in the rankings the   lower your support and the problem is is that  gone are the days where we could just build a   website and they will come in fact in some  cases google will not even index your page   if it's not properly optimized search engine  optimization or seo is a critical factor in   creating websites these days so if you're here  searching for how to create the best nonprofit   website we're gonna need to talk about seo i'm  still gonna cover how to plan and structure your   website including some trending best practices  but we're gonna get a little bit technical so   i did time stamps below because we do cover  a lot and make sure to like comment subscribe   share all that kind of stuff really helps our  channel reach new fundraisers so let's get to it [Music] so we're going to make keyword research  step one because before we do anything i want to   get keyword research out of the way even basic  research is better than no research at all and   it really isn't that hard now there's plenty of  great videos out there if you want to geek out on   this topic but here's a super quick example i'm  going to pop over to my google ads account and   within that i find the tool google keyword planner  now i'm going to start with keywords and i'm going   to type in a few examples and i'm going to use an  example of being an animal welfare organization so   i'm going to insert animal welfare animal rights  animal rescue i'm going to pick out a couple now i   should probably mention that there's a difference  between short tail keywords which is short one or   two words that are highly searched but they have  way too much competition and long tail keywords   which are more specific like sentences and are  less searched so i'm going to take the results   that google spits out and i'm going to export it  into a cvs file and start playing around i'm going   to sort by volume first and remove any keywords  that have a low search volume next i'm going to   short by competition and pick out keywords that  have a lower competition in this situation i like   the term animal shelter and synonyms of that as  my primary keyword for my home page and i'm going   to go back and i'm going to repeat this process  for each of the pages that i want to create so   for example if we have a foster program i might  use keywords like adopt a dog cats for adoption   on a separate web page under my program section  and i'll explain that a little bit more when we   get to structure step two is planning and tools  and before we begin there's a few things you're   going to need aside from a keyword research tool  like google keyword planner and i'll leave links   in the description for some of my favorites but  you're going to need a wordpress or a wix or a   godaddy type platform to create your website and  do your hosting whatever it is just make sure it   is responsive and mobile friendly often you get  what you pay for with these web design platforms   you're also going to need a domain name now most  of the web design platforms offer this service   but just make sure to think long and hard  about your domain it should ideally contain   one of your keywords so again using my animal  rescue organization i would make my domain xyz   animal shelter dot com you're also going to  need graphics editing software like canva or   photoshop to customize photos buttons and header  images i also have video editing software because   video is becoming huge these days on websites and  any integrations that you want like your donor   database or your email system like hubspot that  connect directly to your website forms and some   extra goodies like security speed test audit  tools which we're going to cover along the way   now i'm old school so i start every website by  drawing it out and i start with my home page   and logically think about how it will flow so  here's an example of a typical website that i   just did with a template in wix just to show  us what we're doing now within our home page   we have our header and this is where i want  my call to action my donate button sign up   my register i want my logo and i want it to be  clickable back to my home page obviously we have   our navigation and i can also include any special  news or some kind of call out within my main page   i have a great headline six to 12 words i want  that hero shot or video to help draw people in   i can include impact and benefits there's a trend  nowadays where we're seeing a lot more information   that used to be on separate pages that are  directly on your home page now within your   footer you can have your covet statement if it's  still relevant you're obviously your copyright and   nowadays we're seeing more and more websites that  contain contact information right on the footer   you can also have your newsletter sign up any  social media links and also a site map with quick   connects now for our programs page we've busted it  out between animal fostering and animal adoption   again this is going to be very important for seo  we also have our impact and stories and are on our   about page this is where we can put our team and  our board our partners careers financials and then   obviously we want a get involved section where we  can have our donation forms now there's a whole   other methodology behind donation forms which is  beyond the scope of this video but we can also   have our volunteer and other ways to support like  planned giving and peer-to-peer and sponsorship   and then finally our blog now i talk a lot about  the power of blogs and they are another key to seo   and what we call domain authority blogs  help us build authority because they help us   build backlinks people linking to our site from  theirs they improve user experience they increase   visits and so much more not to mention all the  other marketing and positioning benefits of blogs   so next we want to start writing copy but  this is where seo really comes into play   we want to start with a header an h1 heading  like anything else that we create it all begins   with a really great caption or header we also  want to write a paragraph or two that contains   our keywords and variations of them we can also  break things down with additional headers h2 and   h3 headings now just a couple of quick tips when  writing your copy write for the audience hopefully   you've done your persona work simplify your  language and you can break up text with bullets   and white space and show your impact it's okay to  brag use stories and stats use compelling imagery   and clear calls to action now step four is  laying it out so now that we're ready go grab   your brand guidelines and let's get to it because  colors fonts imagery voice and tone are all very   important your website is your brand so let's once  again bounce back to our example just a quick note   if you're using videos or images make sure to set  the alt text so that they contain your keywords   also ensure the size of and images are not over  500 kbg or it's going to affect your load time   so i'm using wix but if you're using wordpress  you can download an app like yoast now google   has something called a snippet and that  is what shows up when anyone does a search   and it contains your title your url and your  metadata so we want to make sure we've set that   now as you can see the url slug is animal  adoptions we're using our keywords there   we also have animal adoptions plus our name  and your city if you're doing local seo   in our title tag and then finally our meta  description which again we're using the   keywords but we want to make sure that it's  going to entice people to click on the link   we do this for each of our pages using each unique  keyword that we picked for each of our pages   another great thing about using programs like wix  is they have integrations where they will actually   walk you through some of the search engine  optimization now this was just a quick overview   my main goal is to reinforce the idea that s e o  is super important i mean we haven't even talked   about things like sll certificates and schemas  and backlinks well the whole off-page seo stuff   but this should get you started the main thing  is you are here searching for how you can make   your website better as always if you have any  questions leave them below in the comments and   i'll be sure to get back to you with that i'd  like to thank you for staying till the end it   really helps our channel so make sure to  subscribe and we will see you next week [Applause] [Music]   come on