Make Sure You’re Getting the Most Out of Your Site

Posted on August 30, 2017 in Associations, Chambers, Feature Updates, Membership, Nonprofit

On this week’s Latest Buzz blog post we discuss SEO and Contact Pages. It’s important that the little things are not missed so that potential members can firstly find your site, and secondly, contact you! A few simple changes might make the world of difference to your members and potential members!

On this week’s blog we are sharing a couple tips and tricks on how to improve your sites SEO (when you’re not sure where to start), and the importance of a great contact page for your members!

Where Do I Start? (SEO for beginners)

Improving a sites SEO (search engine optimization) can be a very daunting and intimidating task for many organizations. But SEO is super important and will help you get the absolute most out of your website and reach more of your potential members.

Yoast offers a wide range of blog posts and training courses covering SEO for beginners and for those a bit more versed. Below we summarize the post, “Explaining SEO to Your Grandparents” written by Marieke van de Rakt. This post is for those who are just starting with SEO and who might still be confused what SEO even is.

Search Engines: These are places you make search's, like Google, Bing, etc. With the endless amount of material on the web these days it’s very important for your website to show up when necessary in searches, and when it should not.

What is SEO: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. That basically means, optimizing a website for the search engines – Google – in such a way it’ll appear in a high position in said search engine. For example, the Bee Keepers Association of Alberta would appear at the top of the search results when a potential member searches “Bee Keepers Association” in Google.

About Google: Understanding how search engines like Google work is an important part of good SEO. Google likes to keep content organized so that their users find what they’re looking for quickly and efficiently. Things Google prefers:

Good text/content on the website (easy to decipher what the website is about)
Google likes websites that are fast
Google likes websites that are linked to by many other sites
Strong meta data and descriptions – Check out this previous Latest Buzz post: Tips and Tricks to Increase Your SEO Rating

SEO Tactics: Now that you know more about SEO it’s time to put that knowledge to work:

Your website should be fast and it should be user-friendly
Write awesome content – content that people want to read, content that people like to read!
Navigation of your site should be easy
Security – make sure your website won’t be hacked. Google does not like hacked websites!
Technical SEO – Check out this previous Latest Buzz Blog post: Tips and Tricks to Increase Your SEO Rating

These tips and tricks, combined with the info found in this previous blog post will improve your SEO!

Improve Your Contact Page

When you’re constantly trying to attract new members it’s very important to have a well put together contact page. A good contact page will also improve your sites SEO and user experience.

Check out the post, Five Annoying Contact Page Mistakes that we’ve summarized below:

1. Don’t Have Just a Form

If your contact page is just a form there will always be some who don’t understand, or don’t have time to fill it out. Provide a separate option for these people to just fill out an email address and/or phone number.

2. Call it “Contact Page”

Once you start using fancy names for your contact page it will become harder and harder for people to find it. Using the word “contact” and having it in the main menu or footer is the best practice.

3. Outdated Information

Update your contact page immediately! Whether that be moving offices, new phone no., new contact person or email address. Information on a contact form should be accurate at all times, if not it could result in potential members becoming frustrated and leaving your site.

4. Not Being Responsive

If your contact form or website isn’t responsive it would ruin the mobile experience for potential members. Labels might even get lost, as a mobile browser will focus on the form fields.

5. Privacy Option Available

This means that a “Reach out to me on the WordPress Slack”, “Talk to me on Twitter”, or even “Drop a comment below” isn’t enough for many potential members. If people want to ask certain questions or talk to you directly, make sure they can.