Web Marketing for Fundraisers: Get Found, Get Traffic, Get Ahead

Web Marketing for Fundraisers: Get Found, Get Traffic, Get Ahead United Jewish Communities CPE 2006

Web Marketing for Fundraisers:
Get Found, Get Traffic, Get Ahead

Not all those who wander are lost.
— J.R.R. Tolkien

Jonathon D. Colman
Senior Manager, Digital Marketing
The Nature Conservancy

www.nature.org
http://www.nature.org/

Jonathon D. Colman, The Nature Conservancy, http://www.nature.org/ Slide #1 of 106


Introduction to Web Marketing via Search

Seven key topics we’ll be covering today:

• Findability

• Search engine optimization [SEO]

• Search engine marketing [SEM]

• External web marketing

• Online reputation management

• Landing page design

• Web analytics



I. Findability 101



You’ve Got an Opportunity: The Web

• But: It’s big, really big

• And: It’s unstructured, ad hoc, random

• By the way: No standards for quality, value, credibility, or usability

• Did you know?: Your donors and competitors are already there.

• Don’t forget: It’s growing like a weed



You’ve Got an Opportunity Challenge!

• Web publishing is not print publishing: Your users act as both
information consumers and providers

• Users decide what’s quality, what’s credible, what’s valuable
• Your user experience is now part of your brand

• Users decide how to navigate the web:
• Users decide when (or if) to link to your site or your competitors
• Inbound links to your site are “votes” of credibility and relevance



Wayfinding: How Users Get to Your Site

• Accidental (discovering)

User

Your
Site




• Accidental

• Purposeful (finding)

User

Your
Site




• Accidental

• Purposeful

• Your goal: provide findable pathways to your content for both

User 1
Your
Site

User 2



“Push” Content vs. “Pull” Content

• Push content drives content outward toward incoming visitors
• Great for purposeful wayfinders who need detailed info.
• Standard means for showing & telling your org’s story
• Ex. online magazine, news releases, e-newsletter article

• Pull content brings visitors to your site from diverse venues
• Brings visitors to your site from all over the web
• Leverages strong external networks, online services
• Ex. e-cards, volunteer events database, online quiz or poll

• Bottom line: you need both types of content to build traffic and
drive engagement



Don’t Forget: Offline findability

Provide findable pathways to your online content in offline venues:

• Magazines, journals, brochures

• Annual reports, press releases

• Marketing collateral products

• Sign-up sheets at events

• Signage at conferences and other events

• Office voice-mail, business cards



Where is Your Audience on the Web?

• Local portals, communities

• News sites

• Online stores

• Partner sites

• Blogs, social networks

• Events, volunteering sites



Where is Your Audience on the Web?

• News sites

• Online stores

• Partner sites

• Local portals, communities

• Blogs, social networks

• Events, volunteering sites

• Oh, yes, and... search engines



II. All About Search Engines



Search Engines = The Means of Wayfinding

• For many people, Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the Internet

• About 60 million American adults use search engines each day

• 61% of searchers think that organic listings are relevant
• Why? Perceived credibility

• Probably bring in a high % of visitors to your site
• These can be very high-value leads due to contextual relevance

• Fast, free, and useful for finding what you want



Your Business Case for SEO

• Good SEO draws new visitors, audiences to your web site

• Helps bring better leads to your web site

• Improves your positioning against your competitors

• Supports and builds brand strength, online reputation

• Gives you more data on how your target audiences find you

• If performed in-house, costs nothing but staff resources/time
• Saves money when compared to buying search ads



What Can’t SEO Accomplish?

• Make your site the #1 top result for all searches, all the time
• Purchase ads if you need a guaranteed top result
• Be prepared to spend

• Optimize your site for all keywords
• Especially keywords you don’t use

• Un-optimize competitors’ sites

• Force people to visit your site



Vertical Search Markets to Consider

• Niche markets can = better leads

• Local

• News

• Images

• Products

• Maps

• Travel



Submitting Your Site

• Don’t need to do it for most search engines — they’ll find you!

• Directories:
• Yahoo! (free for non-commercial sites)
• DMOZ Open Directory Project

• Paid inclusion? Probably not worth it — buy ads instead!

• Best way to make sure you can be found in search engines?
• Build great content, link to it on your site
• Get inbound links



No Time for SEO? Out-source to the Pros

• Many firms practice SEO responsibly using ethical tactics

• But, caveat emptor:
• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking

• Be wary of SEO firms that send you e-mail out of the blue

• Be careful if a company is secretive

• You should never have to link to an SEO

• Be sure to understand where the money goes

• Make sure you’re protected legally



5 Questions to Ask Your Prospective SEOs

• Do you create pages that are not built into the navigation of my site?

• Does your technique involve showing a different page to the search
engine than to my visitors?

• Do you guarantee that you won’t work with my competitors while
you are working with me?

• Outside of rank for a search on my keywords, how do you measure
success and ROI?

• What, exactly. does your service provide: rankings, traffic, and/or
conversions?



5 Basic Steps to a Great SEO Campaign

1. Research keywords

2. Build optimized content

3. Solicit new inbound links

4. Create a positive online reputation

5. Track your position and success



III. The Basics of
Keyword Research



Keywords: The Nucleus of SEO

• Single most important part of SEO

• The more effort you put into keywords, the greater your ROI
• Drawing more traffic, better leads to your site

• Determine whether or not you reach your target audience(s)

• Can save you money when purchasing ads on search engines



Search Engines’ Analysis of Keywords

• No one knows for sure; dynamic updates = no guarantees

• Instances of exact keyword/key phrase
• Keyword density

• Keywords in near/far proximity to each other

• Keyword word roots/stems

• Other keyword variants, misspellings

• Keywords occurring in HTML headers, link text, bold/italics, lists



Getting Started with Keywords

• Brainstorm with your colleagues

• Analyze your partners’ and competitors’ keyword choices

• Use web analytics to examine referrer logs for keywords

• Avoid ambiguous or overly broad keywords



Identifying Your Competitors

• Off-line competitors vs. online

• Once you’ve selected your keywords, search on them
• Which oranizations/sites appears above yours?
• What is their content like?
• Who links to them…
• And why aren’t they linking to you?

Tip: To view a web page’s code, right-click anywhere on a page and
choose “View Source” from the pop-up context menu



Selecting the Best-Performing Keywords

• Choose keywords for which you can produce compelling, useful,
engaging content for your target audience(s)

• Choose keywords that many users search for daily (popular)

• Choose keywords that have less competitors than others (niche)
• Ex. “stop climate change” vs. “climate change stop”

• So: How do you discover this search data?



Demo: Using Wordtracker for Research
1
When you login to
Wordtracker, you’ll
see a lot of research
options.

Today, we’ll walk
through the
Keyword Universe
function to look at
how you can use
Wordtracker to
research keywords
for your SEO
campaign.



2
Enter the Keyword
Universe and type
one of the words
from your self-
generated list into
the textfield on the
left.



3
Wordtracker will
return a list of terms
that are related
keywords for your
original entry.

These terms may be
variants, synonyms,
or otherwise related
terms to your original
entry.



4
Click on one of the
related keywords
and Wordtracker will
generate data on
the most popular
keywords in the
table on the right
side.

Select the keywords
that you’d like to
research further to
add them to your
cart.



5
Wordtracker shows
you which keywords
have the greatest
potential for success
via the Keyword
Effectiveness Index
(KEI) score.

Strong keywords
have a high amount
of daily searches
performed on the, yet
have a low amount
of competition.



IV. Introducing Search Engine
Optimization [SEO]



SEO Mechanics Work on Many Levels

• Text: keyword density, coding practices





• Page: <TITLE>, META information, structure






• Site: architecture, navigation






• Site: architecture, navigation

• Topical community/Sector: strategic linking, site positioning



What Do You See on the Web?

• Design

• Page layout

• Interactivity

• Photos

• Graphics

• Colors

• Type size



What Does a Search Engine See?

• Page <TITLE>

• <META> content

• Content (text-only)

• Navigation

• Headers

• Links, link text

• ALT text



Optimizing Your Page for Search Engines

<TITLE> and <META> HTML tags:
• 6-11 words, 60-75 characters
• Place your high-priority keywords at beginning
• Avoid repeating words, using the same word side by side

Inline HTML tags:
• Avoid excessive use of keywords in graphics, Flash, or JavaScript
• Use keywords in text headers, bold/italics, list items, and link text
• Use minimal coding, compliant with W3C standards

Remember: Your content should still feel very natural, not spammy



Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines

• Use search-engine friendly URLs
• Avoid URL appends, dynamic URLs, and page-level redirects

• Build links to your page(s) into site architecture
• Make them a part of universal navigation
• Use keywords as link text

• Cross-link to your page(s) from within your site
• Homepage link

• Make sure your site’s search engine can find your campaign content



When Will You See Results from SEO?

• You will never see immediate changes

• Well-ranked pages are re-indexed more frequently than others

• It may take up to 3 months for significant changes to appear

• You can speed along this process by soliciting new links from
highly-ranked, relevant sites

• The longer you wait to start SEO, the more time competitors have

• Bottom line: optimize your site now



V. An Introduction to Search
Engine Marketing [SEM]



The Difference Between SEO and SEM

• Findability, relevancy is not determined by organic results alone

• Credibility vs. accessibility

• Can’t compete on content, inbound links?

• Buy your way to the top of the page!



The Case for Paying for Ads

• Size of the market:
• 1999: $4.3 billion; 2005: $28 billion
• 2007: expected to surpass all magazine advertising

• Involvement of competitors

• Difficulty of obtaining top results in organic listings

• Organic results, paid ads not mutually exclusive

• Investment, ROI easy to track; not so for SEO

• Instant gratification



Two Basic Types of Ads

• Cost-per-thousand (CPM)
• Used primarily for affiliate advertising on other sites
• Great for building brand awareness
• Difficult to track; hard to measure ROI
• “Spend and Hope”



Two Basic Types of Ads

• Cost-per-thousand (CPM)

• Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
• Used primarily for ads on search engine results pages
• Great for driving actions, conversions
• Highly trackable; many metrics recorded
• “ROI Marketing”



Google vs. Yahoo Ad Networks

• Overall: subtle differences; use what works best for you
• Test, test, test

• Upgrades/new releases: Google has more, quicker

• Publishing ads: Google is faster, but Yahoo is less restrictive

• Bidding for keywords: Yahoo is transparent

• Reporting: Google has fast, automated, customized reports

• Payments: Yahoo offers pre-pay



Anatomy of a Google AdWords Ad

• Headline (25 chars. max)

• Two lines of description (35 chars. max/each; 70 chars. max total)

• Display URL (35 chars. max)

• Destination URL



Best practices for writing AdWords ad text

• Provide a strong, clear, and simple call-to-action

• Inform user about what makes your site different or special

• Use the keyword wildcard or manually include the keywords

• Use short, clear, non-repetitive phrases

• Always use correct spelling



Google’s Editorial Guidelines

• Very different from traditional print or TV advertising

• Programmatically enforced by Google prior to ad publication

Highlights:
• Landing page quality check; keywords must relate to landing page
• Local services must include location
• No unnecessary capitalization or repetition
• No universal calls-to-action
• No use of superlatives w/o third-party validation



Monitoring Budget and Performance

• Campaign Summary screen shows current status and performance

• Drill down into individual ad groups to see detailed data

• Individual keyword results within ad groups show you how well ads
are targeted



VI. Soliciting New
Inbound Links



How Search Engines Use Links

• Crawlers, spiders, bots all follow links from one page to another

• Only pages that have links pointing at them can get indexed

• Pages with more high-quality links to them get indexed more often

• Pages that are indexed more often gain a higher ranking



Links Support Your Business Goals

• Every link is a vote of authority, credibility, relevancy

• The more high-quality inbound links, the more trust in your content

• High-quality links from trusted, optimized sources greatly help
increase your search engine rank

• More direct links = more sources of traffic
• Local traffic
• Traffic relevant to context (good leads)



Links Improve Your ROI

• Gives you additional channels by which to reach target audience(s)

• Builds traffic to your priority web content
• Ex. Five minutes work = 50+ visitors in one day (Craigslist)
• Ex. Five minutes’ work = 1,000+ visitors in one day (Wikipedia)

• Builds greater search engine positioning

• Without new inbound links, ranking can plateau, drop

• Helps defeat traditional “slump” periods (summer, holidays, etc.)

• Can lead to viral linking, traffic increases



Not All Links are Created Equal

• All links help get you traffic, but not all of them help with SEO

• More links are always better than fewer
• Never participate in paid link submissions, link farms, etc.

• More contextually-relevant links are always better than random links
• Ex. Link from relevant blog outperformed by 3x link from NPR

• A few very high-quality links to your page can out-perform many
poor-quality links



How to Get New Inbound Links

• Make your own links





• Ask others for links





• Ask others for links

• Piggyback on earned media coverage
• When placing stories, don’t forget to place links
• Include both traditional and new media outlets



Where Can You Create Your Own Links?

• Directories:
• Yahoo, DMOZ Open Directory

• Discussion groups/forums:
• Craigslist, Yahoo!Groups, enthusiast forums

• Social networks, bookmarking tools:
• Care2, Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon

• Blogs

• Local news, local publications, local forums and listservs



Choosing External Sites to Pitch

• Relevant, high-quality sites

• Sites that rank higher than yours in keyword searches

• Partners’ sites — you may already be linking to them!

• Sites with missions that are similar to yours

• Sites that look professional, nicely designed

• Sites that do not include ads, pop-up windows, spam, spyware, etc.



VII. Designing Your Landing
Pages for Success



Know Thy Visitor

• Profile your audience(s)

• Survey and analyze demographics

• Personalize, personalize, personalize

• Consider source site/e-communication vs. target site (your page)

• Remember: your user experience is your brand



Develop Strong, Measurable Goals

• Take “typical” conversion rates with a grain of salt

• Don’t guess/worry what your competitors are “converting at”

• Focus on getting traffic, breaking down barriers to conversion



Common Errors When Designing Pages

• Assuming that your audience is everyone

• Assuming that visitors want to contact you

• Assuming that visitors are ready to buy/donate

• Assuming that your homepage is always the best landing page

• Assuming that visitors have a lot of time to run through your process

• Assuming that visitors want to read through all of your information

• Assuming that visitors need lots of choices



Two Basic Approaches to Landing Pages

• Don’t make visitors think = focus on simplicity




• Don’t make visitors think = focus on simplicity

• Develop a strong case = persuade the visitor




• Don’t make visitors think; focus on simplicity

• Develop a strong case; persuade the visitor

• Both approaches are valid = test to see what works for you!



General Best Practices

• Place key content above the fold

• Don’t try to tell your entire story

• Share key facts, be persuasive and credible

• Spell-check and use simple grammar

• Employ a non-cluttered layout

• Give user a noticeable call-to-action

• Focus visitor on completing a single task



Creating Strong Calls-to-Action

• Effective writing: a strong hook provides incentive to click

• Content re-use: repeat keywords from SEO organic result, SEM ad

• Visual cues: looks “clickable”, uses strong color, pointer changes

• Lack of competition: no other strong visual elements on page

• Loads fast: “heavy” visual elements should load after this and/or
below the fold



Improving Landing Page Performance

• A/B testing

• Swap in/out text, graphics

• Remove unnecessary details

• Sweeten the deal: digital freebies, exclusive content, contests, etc.

• Offer second-chance for visitors who don’t buy/donate

• Customize landing page(s) for different segments of inbound users



VIII. Creating a Positive
Online Reputation



The Search Experience is Your Brand

• Searchers gain a sense of your brand’s strength through search

• 65% of donors visit the web sites of the charities they support
• 40% always go online before making a giving decision

• 92% of journalists use search engines to research stories

• Comments about your brand are continually being published
• These eventually end up in search results

• All your good work can be undone very quickly

• Just one super-activist can greatly affect your placement



From Search Findability to Search Branding

• 62% of searchers click on a link appearing in first page of results

• 90% of searchers click on a link within the first three pages

• Your goal: move from mere findability to dominating the entire
search engine results page with your results or “friendlies”



Organic Results vs. Ad Visibility

Organic Ranking Visibility: Sponsored Links Visibility:
• Rank #1: 100% • Ad #1: 50%
• Rank #2: 100% • Ad #2: 40%
• Rank #3: 100% • Ad #3: 30%
• •
Rank #4: 85% Ad #4: 20%
• •
Rank #5: 60% Ad #5: 10%
• •
Rank #6: 50% Ad #6: 10%
• •
Rank #7: 50% Ad #7: 10%
• •
Rank #8: 30% Ad #8: 10%
• Rank #9: 30%
Lesson learned: There’s more to SEO
• Rank #10: 20%
than just being the #1 result!



Organic Results vs. Ads

• A question of budget

• Organic results have greater credibility

• Ads are much more easily controlled, tweaked, tracked

• Page 1 of search results, page 2, page 3…



Build Your Brand’s Reputation via Search

• Build first page of search results for your brand with your site(s) and
friendly/partner sites

• Move unfriendly/critical sites off the first page by optimizing your
site, linking to friendly/partner sites

• Saturate channels (regular search, news search, blog search, image
search, etc.) with friendly content that links back to you
• Pitch stories to new media along with traditional outlets
• ID and enlist super-activists to help you
• Start an organizational blog



Another Site Outranks Me… for My Brand!

• If a legal use of search engine marketing, purchase ads and out-bid
your competitors

• If an organic SEO result:
• Analyze competitors’ inbound links, indexed content
• Optimize your pages, site for brand keywords
• Solicit new inbound links using brand keywords as link text



Examples of Branding via Search

• Good: Google Pontiac

• Bad: Google Splenda



IX. Tracking Your Position
and Success



Metrics to Watch in Search Engines

• Total # of resources on your site indexed in search engines

• Total # of inbound links, rate of increase in new links

• Growth in the total # of results for a search on your keywords

Note: The use of automated querying tools (such as WebPositionGold)
to find your position is officially discouraged by search engines

• Total # of places that your rankings rise

• Total # of places that your competitors’ rankings fall



Metrics to Watch on Your Web Site

• Total # of unique visitors to your optimized content

• % of unique visitors arriving from search engines, rate of increase

• Total # of referrers of traffic to your content:
• Find domains that you contacted, compare # visitors from each
• Look for domains that you did not contact (viral growth)

• Search terms used by visitors to find your content

• Cookie, segment all incoming visitors by source
• Conversion rate by segment
• “Bounces”



Helpful Third-Party Metrics

• Google PageRank

• Alexa rank, reach, and page views in relation to your competitors
• Useful only as “directional data”, not a precise measurement
• Use Alexaholic to compare many orgs at once

• SEOmoz Page Strength

• Age of your domain (via Wayback Machine, WHOis)



X. Conclusions
Hang on, you’re almost there!



What Have We Learned?

• The importance of making findable pathways to your content

• The business case and goals for using search engines, SEO, & links

• The five essential steps of SEO:
1. Research keywords
2. Build optimized content
3. Solicit new inbound links
4. Create a positive online reputation
5. Track your position and success

• How search engine presence influences brand perception



Your Web Marketing Goals

• To dominate: First get found, then get more and better traffic

• Leverage existing networks to reach out to new sites/communities

• Place priorities on most valuable audiences, sites/communities that work

• Use both organic SEO results and SEM ads to increase targeted traffic

• Saturate channels with friendly content, build positive reputation

• Monitor online reputation, respond quickly to negative influences

• Design landing pages for success on a per-audience/per-source basis

• Analyze traffic to measure ROI, revise tactics, and set strategy



Contact Information

Jonathon D. Colman
Senior Manager, Digital Marketing
703/841.2048
jcolman@tnc.org

The Nature Conservancy
http://www.nature.org/
4245 N. Fairfax Dr., Suite 100
Arlington, VA 22203-1606


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