Link Building for Charities:
What You Need to Know

Are you a charitable organization or business? Are you looking to grow or increase your website traffic to benefit your charity?

Having a link building strategy is critical for all online businesses, but it is especially important for charities in order to help them rank on Google (or other search engines.)

Luckily, many charity websites have success with link building because other sites recognize that the charity is doing important, often life-changing, work for the positive benefit of others. When they recognize this, most sites are happy to link to and support them.

For these reasons, and many more, let's talk about how important it is for charity websites to have a link building strategy in order to successfully get their message out into the community.

Why You Need a Link Building Strategy for Nonprofits

As a non-profit organization or charity, you have an important message to share to your local community or even at a national level. In order for that message to be heard, you have to consider the reach your website is getting, and that means you need to worry about rank.

Simply put, if you rank higher on Google, more people will see your page. It is not often that someone will visit pages 2, 3, or even 4 for what they are looking for. You need to sit solidly on page one for your target keyword so that people will see and click on your website link within the search results.

How does Google rank websites? It uses the strength of the site to determine rankings. Strength is measured in various metrics, but includes some of the following:

• Readability - Google prefers high-quality, readable content that can be shared easily with others. This includes how clear and understood the writing is, as well as the ease of read.
• User-friendliness - A user friendly website is easy to navigate, is free of clutter or distracting design elements, allows the viewer to move gracefully throughout the content, and functions properly.
• Page Speed - A page that loads quickly and efficiently is an ideal page for Google to rank. Slow load speeds and pages that seem to take forever to deliver the full content are not what Google wants to promote.
• Links - Internal, external, and backlinks are all necessary for a highly ranked page on Google. Internal, as it sounds, is the linking to other pages on your own site internally. External means linking to pages on other external sites. Backlinks refer to other pages linking to your site. Sites with high-quality, relevant links will be ranked higher in SERP results.

There are countless other metrics involved in how Google chooses to rank websites (all composed within an advanced algorithm). However, the emphasis within this article is all about building backlinks to your charity website, further helping your site to rank higher and reach more viewers.

While all businesses should have a link building strategy, it's especially important for non-profit pages because it could make the difference in your site being seen by the right organizations and individuals versus going unnoticed.

Nonetheless, having a solid link building plan to increase your organic presence is critical, regardless of your website's goals.

Tactics Used for Link Building

There are many different methods often used for building backlinks. These methods are used interchangeably throughout various industries because they work across them all.

However, the most common include:

Searchant implements the suggested methods above in our top-tier link building service. Not only can we assist both local charities and national charities, we are experts in link building and can deliver results.

Benefits Charities Have in Link Building

There are countless benefits a charity can receive and provide when implementing successful link building strategies.

What to Avoid When Link Building for Charities

In order to gain links from other websites, it's important to follow SEO best practices to ensure the success of both your online reputation and Google's webmaster guidelines.

Avoid the following when building your backlink profile, whether or not you are a charitable organization, local chamber, or donation page.

1. Trading links - Trading links, or "reciprical link exchanges", with other websites is not recommended. While both sites might want a backlink and know that this is an important SEO strategy, Google doesn't support the "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" method. Instead, natural linking is preferred when it organically supports the content and provides value to the reader.
2. Cloaking Content - The term "cloaking" when it comes to digital marketing refers to giving the appearance of helpful, quality content when in actuality, it is disguising content attempting to boost a sites domain authority or ranking. Avoid obtaining links from sites that could be cloaking.
3. Paying for links - Many web businesses think that if they offer an incentive with their request for a link, that the website will do so to earn money. This is against Google's webmaster guidelines and should not be used as a method to gain or give backlinks. Paid links are certainly tempting, but will not represent your organization in the best light.
4. Using link farms - Link farms are a poor way to build backlinks and should not be used when attempting to improve your organic visibility or ranking. Participating in link farms is considering "spam" or "untrustworthy", so avoid any requests to participate.

How to Evaluate a Good Link When Link Building

If you want to appear higher in organic search results, build domain authority, and obtain more high quality backlinks, learn how to evaluate a good link opportunity through the following methods:

• Page authority - First, understand a sites page authority. Page authority refers to the strength of the sites content specifically. It is accessed via logarithms that rank each page and produce a combined score (between 1 and 100). The higher the score, the better the sites page authority.
• Domain authority - Similarly, domain authority matters when it comes to obtaining a backlink. Domain authority refers to a website's overall authority. Much more data is considered when giving a composite domain rating. You can learn of a sites domain rating using various SEO tools.
• Outbound links - Does the site you are looking to acquire a backlink from have many outbound links already? You will get a good idea of the likelihood that they will consider linking to you based on their current amount of outbound or external links. You can view a sites list of external links by using various SEO tools, such as Ahrefs.
• Price - Like previously mentioned, paying for links is not recommended. If a site is requesting payment in order to add your link to their site, don't accept the offer. It's not best practice or going to benefit you long term.
• Niche - Your niche audience will always be an important factor when you work to build links. Look for sites that have your same niche audience so that a backlink to your site will provide value on that page. For example, a children's boutique will not share the same niche audience as a tractor supply company, but a children's craft and costumes idea page would.

Link Building with Searchant

It's no secret that link building and other SEO strategies are complicated and intertwined. If you're trying to determine the best way to improve your backlink profile for your nonprofit and avoid a headache, let the team at Searchant help you. By providing link building for charities with our expert knowledge, we can deliver the results you are looking for.

Our team at Searchant uses various link building methods, but often starts with:

• Skyscraper
• White-label
• Ecommerce

Why Work with Searchant

Do you want experts in your industry helping guild you to an authoritative site along the way? With our highly trained and diverse team, there is no industry or topic that we can't help support during a link building project.

Similarly, we have a team of writers capable of creating content on any topic. From emergency supplies to healthcare, real estate to plumbing and everywhere in between, Searchant deliver quality, accurate content to all of our clients.

Additionally, our methods are effective and we have a track record of success. Because of our experience in the industry and our network of resources, we are able to improve the rankings of our clients faster. When it comes to building relationships that last, we are experts.

Lastly, we enjoy helping you save time and money. The demands of your nonprofit business or charity keep you busy and your efforts are needed elsewhere. Let Searchant take care of your link building needs and allow you to focus on more important things.

Schedule a one-on-one today to get started with Searchant.

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