SEO for your NGO - is your Peak number one with Google?

Last Updated (Thursday, 22 October 2009 12:05) Written by Lyndsey Jackson

I was looking for some information on the New South Wales Rural Fire Service, coming from South Australia and with all the recent talk of the Victorian Country Fire Service I typed ‘New South Wales Country Fire Service’ into my trusty search engine.

The site I wanted was nestled away in spot number five, found because one of the site information pages (not the home page) contained a combination of the words I was looking for. The top spots went to the New South Wales Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) Society. Hmmmmmmm.

This is about what the user wants and how the user expects to find information. I (the user) expect to find something as important as a state fire service very high in the Google rankings, I don’t care about semantics.

Many non-profit-organisations have a head start over businesses in that there is less competition in the key word search. For example the content, focus and level of competition between a non-profit and a commercial enterprise differ. In many ways search engine optimisation (SEO) is less tricky and can pay off quicker.

Peak bodies need to take SEO strategies seriously – the peak should be the first port of call for users.

Good SEO is about your content and strategic changes to headings, title text and site content can make a big difference. Adding the word ‘country’ to the NSW Rural Fires Services site title text (the bit up the very top of the browser) would probably have pushed the ranking to one or two; a simple, strategic consideration.