The bottom line to successful search engine optimization services consists of the following six steps to effective internet marketing in search.
6 STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
Since the inception of the Internet, one of its most popular uses has been Search. As a result, Search Engines, such as Google, Yahoo and Bing have became prevalent and Search Engine Marketing has become a viable way for businesses to market themselves online. But due to fact that you usually have extensive competition when participating in Search Engine Marketing, the successful company needs to know, and adhere, to all of the following practical steps, in order to be successful in search and related internet marketing ideas.
1) Conduct Comprehensive Keyword Research
Preparatory to undertaking your Search Engine Marketing Program you must devote the time, money and energy to conducting comprehensive Keyword Research. Start with the Google Keyword Tool which is free to utilize. You may go through mulptiple rounds of research to really find all the terms that relate to your company, but don't worry. A really good set of keyword research may turn up nearly 1500 search terms that work for you...maybe even more. One client we did Keyword Research for had nearly 50,000 applicable terms at the end of their keyword research project. Once you have completed your Keyword Research, prioritize the search terms into winnable keywords for your company, meaning those you have a probable chance of winning a Page One ranking.
Obviously, determining winnability is a vital step, so we use three strategic indicators to help us weed down our list into those that we might potentially win a page one ranking on in Google, Yahoo or Bing. 1st is any term under 2500 a month in Google Global Search Volume. 2nd is any term costing under $2.25 per Google PPC. And 3rd is any term ranking under 45% per the SEOmoz Difficulty Ranking.
2) Search Engine Optimize Your Website
To enhance your chance for success in any organic page rankings, you need to optimize your website pages for two or three of the winnable terms you chose. In general, figure that each page is going to be optimized for 2-3 terms. This process will increase your Page Rankings in Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL and Ask, thus bringing qualified potential visitors to your website site. There are multiple tools to help you SEO your website, so Google Top 10 SEO Software Tools or go here to start your SEO research project for online mareting tools.
3) Launch Google Pay Per Click
Google PPC (aka AdWords) is a wonderful form of online marketing, as you only have to pay when someone actually clicks on your ad and goes to your site. What I like most about Pay Per Click is it allows you to run live tests on multiple search terms to discover which terms are getting you leads, sales or conversions! Once you have ascertained this information, these are the terms you will want to pursue in the other four areas of search engine marketing: SEO, blogging, linking, and social networking.
4) Begin Keyword Blogging
As much as possible, you want to blog about the terms you are trying to win! There are, typically, a wide number of variations on a keyword theme, which will allow you to write about the terms from slightly different perspectives. The key here is to develop depth of content in your Keyword Marketing, so that when you are targeting keywords you are blogging in detail about your subjects, and developing your expertise on the subject.
5) Start Social Media Marketing in Facebook, then Twitter
The first step here is to acquire your Company “Real Estate” as soon as possible. Get your company acounts in Facebook and Twitter first. If you can, also Claim your company listings in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Once that land grab is accomplished, the next step is to develop your social media strategy. Think of yourself as an ambassador for your company in Facebook and Twitter. You need to abide by the appropriate "rules" of the various channels you opt to concentrate on as you look for ways to represent your company to those markets.
6) Perform Ongoing Link Building
While concentrating on your Keyword Terms and Phrases, you need to approach Back Linking with a four-pronged attack:
a. Develop Volume Links back to your company website.
b. Develop Deep Links to subpages of your site.
c. Pursue Authoritative Links if possible—If you are a Sporting Goods Store and get backlinks from SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, FIELD & STREAM and DUCKS UNLIMITED you will have Authoritative Links!
d. Establish Local Links within Local Niche and Business Directories
To validate the success of this link building undertaking, you will want to monitor results at least monthly if not weekly! Links will bring you traffic to your site and improve your standings in the search engine results. Be sure to alt-tag your terms whenever possible.
For other small business marketing strategies, visit my blog covering a variety of methods for business marketing and promotion online, or call my arizona internet marketing agency at 623-322-3334 for help by the phone. Ask for Randall Mains
Posted Wednesday, December 29, 2010 by
Floyd Allen
Search Engine Optimize Your Website
At the request of my Pastor I created a 20 Step program for Marketing our Church on the Internet. To make it as inclusive as possible, I recruited the assistance of Randall Mains of Pathmaker Marketing LLC. Realizing that the results of our efforts would be beneficial to a number of Churches, I decided to do a 20 part series and place it on the Internet so as many people/churches as possible can be Blessed by it!
To date we have discussed launching a blogging process and doing keyword research. Today, I want to discuss search engine optimization - both what it is and why it is important to you as part of your church marketing program. As we discussed last time, the paradigm shifts in our society mandates that churches utilize small business marketing strategies, and an effective website is an excellent church outreach Idea!
In a nutshell, SEO is used to receive Page One rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo which facilitates more people to “click through” and find your website and all that you have to offer. As many people think they know a lot about SEO, there are three myths that I would like to dispel at this point in regard to the topic:
MYTH #1: As long as you Google your Church Name and come up “#1” you are in fact, search engine optimized.
The reality is that the major search engines treat your church name as a "gimme.” As a result, this means that in the realm of search engine optimization, this gives you virtually zero clout! In fact, if you don’t get page one ranking when you type in your church name you have a real problem!
MYTH #2: Search engine optimization can be achieved quickly!!!
Actually, nothing could be further from the truth!! It is a long, slow, and sometimes tedious task that leads you to the finish line in this race! There are, as you will learn, several steps involved, each time consuming in their own right. BUT the results are well worth the effort! As you schedule your SEO Program, you will want to allot at least six months to accomplish the task!
MYTH #3: You can accomplish SEO for Free!
The confusion in this realm is the fact that visitors come to your site for free, but the competitive nature of SEO mandates that you either hire professionals to achieve the rankings you desire, or that you plan on investing huge amounts of time and energy to accomplish SEO to your satisfaction!
The myths aside, SEO can be a tremendous boon to the success of your church. If you, through your SEO efforts, you can attain a #1 ranking on a Google search you will get a lot of click through traffic! This may lead to visitors who will, of course, greatly “enhance the chance” of your church growing!
Understanding that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of words related to a church, your goal is to make sure that yours shows up for as many of these words as possible when a potential parishioner is searching them, and that is where your keyword research that we discussed in Part II comes into play!
While the Internet is evolving daily, SEARCH ENGINES is one of the two items that tends to remain constant. Being well positioned allows people to discover exactly what it is that your church has to offer. To better understand this concept, consider the Internet a Super Highway with millions of people zooming along it every day. Your SEO program serves as a billboard, advising them of what awaits if they will take the “proper exit” and wind up at your place! Unless they can find you, however, they will always be “potential parishioners ” and never “your parishioners!” If you aren’t showing up in searches, you don’t have a Billboard! The first step is to conduct a keyword research project, which will allow you to find the rigth terms in order to have a website that is optimized!
As you can see, targeting keywords can lead to more visitors, which strengthens your church outreach. I know this may all seem overwhelming, and would suggest that if you have any questions that you e-mail Randall Mains at randall@pathmakermarketing.net, as he is more of an expert in this realm than even I am.
At the request of my Pastor I created a 20 Step program for Marketing our Church on the Internet. To make it as inclusive as possible, I recruited the assistance of Randall Mains of Pathmaker Marketing LLC. Realizing that the results of our efforts would be beneficial to a number of Churches, I decided to do a 20 part series and place it on the Internet so as many people/churches as possible can be Blessed by it!
To date we have discussed launching a blogging process and doing keyword research. Today, I want to discuss search engine optimization - both what it is and why it is important to you as part of your church marketing program. As we discussed last time, the paradigm shifts in our society mandates that churches utilize small business marketing strategies, and an effective website is an excellent church outreach Idea!
In a nutshell, SEO is used to receive Page One rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo which facilitates more people to “click through” and find your website and all that you have to offer. As many people think they know a lot about SEO, there are three myths that I would like to dispel at this point in regard to the topic:
MYTH #1: As long as you Google your Church Name and come up “#1” you are in fact, search engine optimized.
The reality is that the major search engines treat your church name as a "gimme.” As a result, this means that in the realm of search engine optimization, this gives you virtually zero clout! In fact, if you don’t get page one ranking when you type in your church name you have a real problem!
MYTH #2: Search engine optimization can be achieved quickly!!!
Actually, nothing could be further from the truth!! It is a long, slow, and sometimes tedious task that leads you to the finish line in this race! There are, as you will learn, several steps involved, each time consuming in their own right. BUT the results are well worth the effort! As you schedule your SEO Program, you will want to allot at least six months to accomplish the task!
MYTH #3: You can accomplish SEO for Free!
The confusion in this realm is the fact that visitors come to your site for free, but the competitive nature of SEO mandates that you either hire professionals to achieve the rankings you desire, or that you plan on investing huge amounts of time and energy to accomplish SEO to your satisfaction!
The myths aside, SEO can be a tremendous boon to the success of your church. If you, through your SEO efforts, you can attain a #1 ranking on a Google search you will get a lot of click through traffic! This may lead to visitors who will, of course, greatly “enhance the chance” of your church growing!
Understanding that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of words related to a church, your goal is to make sure that yours shows up for as many of these words as possible when a potential parishioner is searching them, and that is where your keyword research that we discussed in Part II comes into play!
While the Internet is evolving daily, SEARCH ENGINES is one of the two items that tends to remain constant. Being well positioned allows people to discover exactly what it is that your church has to offer. To better understand this concept, consider the Internet a Super Highway with millions of people zooming along it every day. Your SEO program serves as a billboard, advising them of what awaits if they will take the “proper exit” and wind up at your place! Unless they can find you, however, they will always be “potential parishioners ” and never “your parishioners!” If you aren’t showing up in searches, you don’t have a Billboard! The first step is to conduct a keyword research project, which will allow you to find the rigth terms in order to have a website that is optimized!
As you can see, targeting keywords can lead to more visitors, which strengthens your church outreach. I know this may all seem overwhelming, and would suggest that if you have any questions that you e-mail Randall Mains at randall@pathmakermarketing.net, as he is more of an expert in this realm than even I am.
Posted Monday, February 22, 2010 by
Karen Randau
Search Engine Optimization is a specialized field that helps your website get higher rankings in search engines. Your goal in search engine optimization is to capture as much of the page 1 real estate in searches relevant to your business. Whether you’re developing a new website or updating an existing site, you should keep the following guidelines in mind as new content is developed and coded.
1. Structure your site appropriately to be found by search engines.
Google webmaster guidelines say that your site should have a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
2. Make navigation easy and clear.
Google recommends a site map with links that point to the important parts of your site.
3. Remember that “content is king.”
It’s easy to get bogged down in attempt to make the site look great and forget that search engines are looking for content, not looks. Google recommends that you create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
4. Think Through and Liberally Use Appropriate Keywords.
Google recommends that you think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it. Pathmaker Marketing can help you carefully research keywords; we regularly uncover keywords for our clients that they may not have thought of and that have a higher likelihood of being found in search engines. Call us at 623-322-3334 to see if we can help you do a more thorough job of researching appropriate keywords for your business.
Designers love to create headlines in fonts that aren’t available in HTML. They do it by making your headlines images, and this is one sure way to harm yourself when it comes to search engine rankings. Google recommends that you use text instead or at least use the <ALT> tag to include a few descriptive words of the image.
5. Make sure <TITLE> and <META> tags are used appropriately.
These are HTML codes that search engines look for when ranking sites. The <TITLE> tag should not be the same for every page of your site (for example, merely the name of your company). It should contain keywords that have been carefully researched. <META> tags contain specific information that search engines look for when deciding what each page of your site is all about. There is a <META> tag for description, and you should supply your coder with a short paragraph to describe why someone would want to visit this page of your site – it may not be used in ranking, but it could be displayed under the title of the page to help potential visitors decide if they want to click on your listing. These should contain words that actually describe the page content to avoid being penalized by search engines.
6. Check for broken links and correct HTML.
Your will severely hurt your rankings in search engines if you have broken links in your site or if your HTML cannot be read by search engines. Your coders need to be sure to check all code and clean up any extraneous codes left by edits or inserted by HTML generators. Several people should click on every single link in the site to make sure there are no broken links, and it should be re-done every time the site is edited. Also, Google recommends keeping down the number of links on any given page to fewer than 100.
7. Keep parameters short on dynamically-generated pages.
These are pages that are automatically generated from a database. The URL of this type of page will have a “?” in it. Google warns that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages and recommends that the parameters be short and few.
8. Be straightforward in your site structure.
Some sites create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content thinking they’ll trick search engines into believing there is more content on the site than there is. You’ll get found out of you do this – so the best advice is to avoid it. Google recommends that you avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. If you site participates in an affiliate program, you need to develop your own content that adds value and gives potential users a reason to visit your site rather than the hundreds of others who also participate in the same affiliate program.
9. Make your photo captions text rather than embedding inside an image.
Search engines can’t read text that is part of an image. There rarely is a case when you need to make a photo caption part of the photo, and you’ll benefit in search engine rankings if you keep the captions to HTML text.
10. Use <ALT> tags and descriptive names for all photos and images.
This was briefly discussed with the tip about headlines. All images should have an <ALT> description so search engines will consider the images when ranking your site. These tags need to contain useful information about the subject matter of the image. You also need to use photo names that describe the content. Google states, “my-new-black-kitten.jpg is a lot more informative than IMG00023.JPG.”
Pathmaker Marketing offers a full range of website design, search engine optimization services, fundraising services, Internet business marketing promotion, Christian marketing, non profit fundraising and more. We would be happy to discuss with you how we might be able to help you get the highest rankings in search engines or any other topic about your fundraising needs. Give us a call at 623-322-3334.
1. Structure your site appropriately to be found by search engines.
Google webmaster guidelines say that your site should have a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
2. Make navigation easy and clear.
Google recommends a site map with links that point to the important parts of your site.
3. Remember that “content is king.”
It’s easy to get bogged down in attempt to make the site look great and forget that search engines are looking for content, not looks. Google recommends that you create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
4. Think Through and Liberally Use Appropriate Keywords.
Google recommends that you think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it. Pathmaker Marketing can help you carefully research keywords; we regularly uncover keywords for our clients that they may not have thought of and that have a higher likelihood of being found in search engines. Call us at 623-322-3334 to see if we can help you do a more thorough job of researching appropriate keywords for your business.
Designers love to create headlines in fonts that aren’t available in HTML. They do it by making your headlines images, and this is one sure way to harm yourself when it comes to search engine rankings. Google recommends that you use text instead or at least use the <ALT> tag to include a few descriptive words of the image.
5. Make sure <TITLE> and <META> tags are used appropriately.
These are HTML codes that search engines look for when ranking sites. The <TITLE> tag should not be the same for every page of your site (for example, merely the name of your company). It should contain keywords that have been carefully researched. <META> tags contain specific information that search engines look for when deciding what each page of your site is all about. There is a <META> tag for description, and you should supply your coder with a short paragraph to describe why someone would want to visit this page of your site – it may not be used in ranking, but it could be displayed under the title of the page to help potential visitors decide if they want to click on your listing. These should contain words that actually describe the page content to avoid being penalized by search engines.
6. Check for broken links and correct HTML.
Your will severely hurt your rankings in search engines if you have broken links in your site or if your HTML cannot be read by search engines. Your coders need to be sure to check all code and clean up any extraneous codes left by edits or inserted by HTML generators. Several people should click on every single link in the site to make sure there are no broken links, and it should be re-done every time the site is edited. Also, Google recommends keeping down the number of links on any given page to fewer than 100.
7. Keep parameters short on dynamically-generated pages.
These are pages that are automatically generated from a database. The URL of this type of page will have a “?” in it. Google warns that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages and recommends that the parameters be short and few.
8. Be straightforward in your site structure.
Some sites create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content thinking they’ll trick search engines into believing there is more content on the site than there is. You’ll get found out of you do this – so the best advice is to avoid it. Google recommends that you avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content. If you site participates in an affiliate program, you need to develop your own content that adds value and gives potential users a reason to visit your site rather than the hundreds of others who also participate in the same affiliate program.
9. Make your photo captions text rather than embedding inside an image.
Search engines can’t read text that is part of an image. There rarely is a case when you need to make a photo caption part of the photo, and you’ll benefit in search engine rankings if you keep the captions to HTML text.
10. Use <ALT> tags and descriptive names for all photos and images.
This was briefly discussed with the tip about headlines. All images should have an <ALT> description so search engines will consider the images when ranking your site. These tags need to contain useful information about the subject matter of the image. You also need to use photo names that describe the content. Google states, “my-new-black-kitten.jpg is a lot more informative than IMG00023.JPG.”
Pathmaker Marketing offers a full range of website design, search engine optimization services, fundraising services, Internet business marketing promotion, Christian marketing, non profit fundraising and more. We would be happy to discuss with you how we might be able to help you get the highest rankings in search engines or any other topic about your fundraising needs. Give us a call at 623-322-3334.
Posted Monday, February 22, 2010 by
Karen Randau
A virtual tour can be an interesting and valuable addition to your website, and if you do it properly, it can be a valuable part of your internet marketing ideas.
But if you’re thinking of adding a virtual tour to your non profit website design, you’ll need to take a number of issues into account before getting started.
1. What is the goal for your tour?
If your Internet marketing idea is to showcase your business, then you’ll want a lot of photos of your campus – this is a more informational type of tour. But if your Internet marketing idea is to tell the inspiring story of how your ministry, church or business started, you’ll want to have more drama in your tour – and this could add to the bandwidth as you include more sound effects and perhaps video.
As you begin to compile information for this particular Internet marketing idea, you’ll want to always keep your specific goal in mind and organize that information in the tour so that it will be easy to present and experience. And you’re going to want to focus on what makes your campus, business, product, etc., unique.
Whether you include a virtual tour in your website as an informational or inspirational Internet marketing idea, you’re going to need to provide a real guided tour – not just drop people off and make them find their own way around on their own. This brings up another point, some people will want to be dropped off and explore, meaning you're going to need a visible map so anyone can find their way around ... and include the words "Begin Here" in the map.
2. Who are you trying to reach?
If your non profit is a university primarily for people directly out of high school, this Internet marketing idea should showcase the sorts of things that appeal to younger people. But if you have a combination of younger students plus people coming back for some mid-career training to stay relevant, you may be talking about two different tours. You need to think this through so filming day takes the approach for the generation you’re attempting to reach, and you’ll want your script, and the narrator, to have the voice of the generation you’re trying to reach. Any information you provide is going to need to be relevant and interesting to your specific audience – from their point of view, not yours.
3. What kind of interactivity will your audience most appreciate?
Some people, especially younger people, want to be in control of their browsing experience. They’ll appreciate choices – where can they click to find out more information? Some older people may want the tour to completely load and allow them to sit back and watch with few needs on their part for making choices. Your tour should be more than QuickTime videos with some text. It should be a special production that integrates many different kinds of media – videos, text, maps, photos, etc.; but these should be done in a seamless way so the viewing experience is appropriate for the audience and flow well. And provide choices for people who want to sit back and watch your tour as well as those you want to get dropped off and do a more self-guided tour.
4. What kind of bandwidth will you be working with?
Your IT department will be very unhappy if a virtual tour suddenly goes online that you have not discussed with them because they have a specific amount of bandwidth to work with, and you need to make sure your project is going to be well served without taking from other functions of the server.
Pathmaker Marketing is a professional fundraising company that serves ministries, non profit organizations and a for profit businesses. We offer search engine optimization services, fundraising services, blogging services, business marketing promotion online, and many Internet marketing ideas. Give us a call at 623-322-3334 to see how we can assist you, whether with a virtual tour or any other kind of website design or online fundraising services.
But if you’re thinking of adding a virtual tour to your non profit website design, you’ll need to take a number of issues into account before getting started.
1. What is the goal for your tour?
If your Internet marketing idea is to showcase your business, then you’ll want a lot of photos of your campus – this is a more informational type of tour. But if your Internet marketing idea is to tell the inspiring story of how your ministry, church or business started, you’ll want to have more drama in your tour – and this could add to the bandwidth as you include more sound effects and perhaps video.
As you begin to compile information for this particular Internet marketing idea, you’ll want to always keep your specific goal in mind and organize that information in the tour so that it will be easy to present and experience. And you’re going to want to focus on what makes your campus, business, product, etc., unique.
Whether you include a virtual tour in your website as an informational or inspirational Internet marketing idea, you’re going to need to provide a real guided tour – not just drop people off and make them find their own way around on their own. This brings up another point, some people will want to be dropped off and explore, meaning you're going to need a visible map so anyone can find their way around ... and include the words "Begin Here" in the map.
2. Who are you trying to reach?
If your non profit is a university primarily for people directly out of high school, this Internet marketing idea should showcase the sorts of things that appeal to younger people. But if you have a combination of younger students plus people coming back for some mid-career training to stay relevant, you may be talking about two different tours. You need to think this through so filming day takes the approach for the generation you’re attempting to reach, and you’ll want your script, and the narrator, to have the voice of the generation you’re trying to reach. Any information you provide is going to need to be relevant and interesting to your specific audience – from their point of view, not yours.
3. What kind of interactivity will your audience most appreciate?
Some people, especially younger people, want to be in control of their browsing experience. They’ll appreciate choices – where can they click to find out more information? Some older people may want the tour to completely load and allow them to sit back and watch with few needs on their part for making choices. Your tour should be more than QuickTime videos with some text. It should be a special production that integrates many different kinds of media – videos, text, maps, photos, etc.; but these should be done in a seamless way so the viewing experience is appropriate for the audience and flow well. And provide choices for people who want to sit back and watch your tour as well as those you want to get dropped off and do a more self-guided tour.
4. What kind of bandwidth will you be working with?
Your IT department will be very unhappy if a virtual tour suddenly goes online that you have not discussed with them because they have a specific amount of bandwidth to work with, and you need to make sure your project is going to be well served without taking from other functions of the server.
Pathmaker Marketing is a professional fundraising company that serves ministries, non profit organizations and a for profit businesses. We offer search engine optimization services, fundraising services, blogging services, business marketing promotion online, and many Internet marketing ideas. Give us a call at 623-322-3334 to see how we can assist you, whether with a virtual tour or any other kind of website design or online fundraising services.
Posted Thursday, August 27, 2009 by
Karen Randau
The secret to targeting keywords on your business, church or non profit website is this: research.
Many people think they just need to build their website, and search engines will lead people to your doors or online store. Those who take time to optimize their homepage for their business, church or non profit name may also be missing the search engine bus. And the keywords you think might bring the most people to your site may not work at all!
So what’s a website manager to do? Targeting Keywords through thorough research is essential.
Start by thinking about the keywords and terms you would enter into a search engine to find your competitors' rather than your own site. Compile a short list of targeting keywords, and then actually look them up in your favorite search engine to see what kinds of results these keywords return in a search.
Next, get some help growing your targeting keywords. This is where some online tools can help by suggesting targeting keywords that pertain to words you feed the online tool. One good tool is Wordtracker, which offers a free trial period for their subscription service. Google also offers a good free keyword research tool. Whether you choose a free or subscription tool, you can enter words into the tool and get back suggested targeting keywords for your optimization efforts. The benefit to a fee-based system is that you also get a more robust set of analytical tools, and a better idea of how competitive the targeting keywords are.
And that’s the next bit of research you need to do: find out how competitive the targeting keywords are. The free Google tool will give you some of this data, like Global Monthly Volume and estimate Cost Per Click charges, (both indicators of probable competitiveness) but subscription based services will give you a more in-depth analysis. This step is important because different combinations of words can be less competitive than the ones with which you initiatially start. This will make a significant difference in getting your site listed in the top 10 search results.
Once you’ve thoroughly searched your list of targeting keywords, then you’re ready to start optimizing various pages of your website for each keyword.
If this all sounds like a tedious process to you … well, it can be. Pathmaker Marketing LLC is here to help you find the right targting keywords and put those words into your site in just the right places and combinations to get higher listings in search engines. Give us a call at 623-322-3334 to help you get your targeting keywords process down.
Many people think they just need to build their website, and search engines will lead people to your doors or online store. Those who take time to optimize their homepage for their business, church or non profit name may also be missing the search engine bus. And the keywords you think might bring the most people to your site may not work at all!
So what’s a website manager to do? Targeting Keywords through thorough research is essential.
Start by thinking about the keywords and terms you would enter into a search engine to find your competitors' rather than your own site. Compile a short list of targeting keywords, and then actually look them up in your favorite search engine to see what kinds of results these keywords return in a search.
Next, get some help growing your targeting keywords. This is where some online tools can help by suggesting targeting keywords that pertain to words you feed the online tool. One good tool is Wordtracker, which offers a free trial period for their subscription service. Google also offers a good free keyword research tool. Whether you choose a free or subscription tool, you can enter words into the tool and get back suggested targeting keywords for your optimization efforts. The benefit to a fee-based system is that you also get a more robust set of analytical tools, and a better idea of how competitive the targeting keywords are.
And that’s the next bit of research you need to do: find out how competitive the targeting keywords are. The free Google tool will give you some of this data, like Global Monthly Volume and estimate Cost Per Click charges, (both indicators of probable competitiveness) but subscription based services will give you a more in-depth analysis. This step is important because different combinations of words can be less competitive than the ones with which you initiatially start. This will make a significant difference in getting your site listed in the top 10 search results.
Once you’ve thoroughly searched your list of targeting keywords, then you’re ready to start optimizing various pages of your website for each keyword.
If this all sounds like a tedious process to you … well, it can be. Pathmaker Marketing LLC is here to help you find the right targting keywords and put those words into your site in just the right places and combinations to get higher listings in search engines. Give us a call at 623-322-3334 to help you get your targeting keywords process down.
Posted Friday, August 14, 2009 by
Karen Randau
Before I began working for a search engine optimization agency, I wasn’t really sure how to get qualified traffic to the non profit website for which I was responsible a few years ago. I’d heard larger organizations were raising significant funds online, and I could see that the site I managed was at least as professional looking as the others (albeit smaller), but the art and science of bringing qualified traffic to the site (and then converting them to assets) was a mystery to me.
If you’re in a similar situation, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned while working in a search engine optimization agency.
First, remember that search engine optimization, or SEO as professional online fundraisers like to call it, is indeed both an art and a science. It isn’t enough to have a killer website design or to write witty and professional text. Search engines look for keywords for which people are searching, and you need to have those keywords in all the right places – not too many times and not too few times.
Just one example of a common mistake that a search engine optimization agency can help yo overcome is makng sure you don't put headlines into graphics. When you do, you’re giving up opportunities for your headlines to help get you into the top 10 listings for searches that apply to your content. Content trumps design when it comes to search engine optimization.
Pathmaker Marketing uses a tool for professional web developers to help clients analyze and impelment strategies that (1) identify the best keywords for your organization to target and (2) get those keywords into all the right places on your site so you show up in the top 10 results of searches in major search engines on those keywords.
But that’s only one of the ways a search engine optimization agency can help your non profit website. SEO should be part of an overall Search Engine Marketing strategy that includes optimizing the site, developing a targeted-keyword blog, building strategic links to and from your site, strategically using social media accounts and and implementing a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign.
You can call Pathmaker Marketing at 623-233-3334 to schedule an appointment to discuss how a search engine optimization agency can get your non profit website consistently into the top 10 results for searches on keywords that apply to you – thus turning your site into a much more significant player in your overall fundraising efforts.
If you’re in a similar situation, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned while working in a search engine optimization agency.
First, remember that search engine optimization, or SEO as professional online fundraisers like to call it, is indeed both an art and a science. It isn’t enough to have a killer website design or to write witty and professional text. Search engines look for keywords for which people are searching, and you need to have those keywords in all the right places – not too many times and not too few times.
Just one example of a common mistake that a search engine optimization agency can help yo overcome is makng sure you don't put headlines into graphics. When you do, you’re giving up opportunities for your headlines to help get you into the top 10 listings for searches that apply to your content. Content trumps design when it comes to search engine optimization.
Pathmaker Marketing uses a tool for professional web developers to help clients analyze and impelment strategies that (1) identify the best keywords for your organization to target and (2) get those keywords into all the right places on your site so you show up in the top 10 results of searches in major search engines on those keywords.
But that’s only one of the ways a search engine optimization agency can help your non profit website. SEO should be part of an overall Search Engine Marketing strategy that includes optimizing the site, developing a targeted-keyword blog, building strategic links to and from your site, strategically using social media accounts and and implementing a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign.
You can call Pathmaker Marketing at 623-233-3334 to schedule an appointment to discuss how a search engine optimization agency can get your non profit website consistently into the top 10 results for searches on keywords that apply to you – thus turning your site into a much more significant player in your overall fundraising efforts.
Posted Tuesday, July 14, 2009 by
Randall Mains
1. Identify three of our five principles of good non profit website design and communications:
a. Consider banner advertising
b. Link relevant content to search-centric promotion
c. Search engine-optimize your site
d. Develop your email communication tools
e. Build Interactivity into your website
2. What are some incentive-based offers for your email signup page? (choose all that apply)
a. Discount coupons
b. Topical e-newsletters
c. Free downloads
d. Cash rewards
e. Special premiums
f. All of the above
3. What is search-centric content?
a. Website content that is relevant to web searches
b. Website content that conveys your needs and central passions
c. Website content that shows up in search engine results
4. Which ways below will NOT help you build interactivity on your non profit website?
a. Prayer Walls
b. Wikis
c. Your best building photographs
d. Forums
e. Games
f. News reports and updates
g. All of the above
5. Which of the following will help you develop your email fundraising and communication tools?
a. An incentive-based email offer page
b. Implementing an electronic welcome series
c. Developing effective transactional email
d. Learning to use surveys
e. Improving landing page conversion
f. A, B, and E
g. All of the above
a. Consider banner advertising
b. Link relevant content to search-centric promotion
c. Search engine-optimize your site
d. Develop your email communication tools
e. Build Interactivity into your website
2. What are some incentive-based offers for your email signup page? (choose all that apply)
a. Discount coupons
b. Topical e-newsletters
c. Free downloads
d. Cash rewards
e. Special premiums
f. All of the above
3. What is search-centric content?
a. Website content that is relevant to web searches
b. Website content that conveys your needs and central passions
c. Website content that shows up in search engine results
4. Which ways below will NOT help you build interactivity on your non profit website?
a. Prayer Walls
b. Wikis
c. Your best building photographs
d. Forums
e. Games
f. News reports and updates
g. All of the above
5. Which of the following will help you develop your email fundraising and communication tools?
a. An incentive-based email offer page
b. Implementing an electronic welcome series
c. Developing effective transactional email
d. Learning to use surveys
e. Improving landing page conversion
f. A, B, and E
g. All of the above
Posted Sunday, July 12, 2009 by
Randall Mains
An example more relevant to not for profit organizations might be a Prayer Wall, such as the Prayer Walls at Presidential Prayer Team that we’ve discussed, or the Prayer Walls at Gregory Dickow Ministries. This online initiative provides effective internet marketing, a way to interact with your members, while also retaining relevance with your ministry site objectives. At GDM, each Prayer Wall is sent an email thanking them for their participation and welcoming them to the broader GDM ministry through their electronic Welcome Series.
Other interactivity vehicles such as chat rooms, forums, contests, blogs, libraries, photo sharing, and wikis can get people coming back to your site – building a community of people interested in your topics and endeavors.
If you'd like some help to establish a ministry Prayer Wall on your website, or improve your non profit marketing, contact Pathmaker Marketing today for assistance in getting started.
Posted Tuesday, July 7, 2009 by
Randall Mains
Link relevant content to search-centric promotion.
The reality of communicating with people online, and particularly via email fundraising, is that you have to constantly collect new email addresses. The typical growth rate in 2008 for any ministry list was 25% per year, which was comprised of 5% new names, less 3% name loss to unsubscriptions and bounces (mostly bounces). Said differently, if you’re not prospecting for new names constantly you can expect to see a 3% per month attrition in your email lists. Since people will move on for one reason or another, you need to replace them with new friends.
How to do this? Populate your website with relevant content that’s consistent with search-centric promotions that you conduct online. Relevance is key. If someone is searching the Internet for a church in Dallas, and you are one, that’s relevant. But if you’re a homeless shelter in New York or Dallas, that is NOT relevant. You need to start by targeting keywords: determine the Internet search streams that are relevant to what you offer, and then optimize your site to those searches via your site content and code. That way, your website is more likely to pop up in a Google search and get you qualified traffic from people who are looking for what you have to offer. That also means you must regularly update your website to relate to changes in relevant search terms. You might call this keyword marekting.
Practical Tip: Search engine optimize your site.
So let’s talk about optimizing your website so that you can be easily found when someone looks up terms relevant to you on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines.
If someone searches a topic such as “how to help a troubled teen,” your site can get listed in the results. But unless it’s in the top 10 results, or on the first page, it probably won’t get many visitors from those search results. There’s a whole science to getting your site listed at the top, which again is too detailed to go into here, but the basic process—known as keyword marketing via serach engine optimization—is something you should know. It involves finding the search terms related to your ministry, including those search terms in relevant content on your site, optimizing your site copy and code for the search engines, and finally submitting your site to the search engines. In most cases, this core process will result in you getting ranked higher in the results, thereby driving more qualfied search traffic to your website.
Here are some examples of what organic search term results look like:
Google: How to Help a Troubled Teen
Yahoo: How to Help a Troubled Teen
Bing: How to help a Troubled Teen
Google and Wordtracker offer free keyword online marketing tools for finding common search terms:
You can input your own keywords to see how many people are searching those terms. Don’t get tempted to expand your terms if you see people searching on a topic that doesn’t relate to your primary goal – instead, stick to what you know, and your outreach ideas will be the most effective. You won’t be sorry if you put your effort into thinking up and searching for the search terms people are looking for that relate most directly to your ministry.
What do you have within your organization relevant to what people are searching for that you can develop and put online? This is a new level of site content depth – deepening the relevance of what you’re saying overall. You may have a particular niche – maybe issues related to teens, or matters of the heart for women, or guy stuff. By deepening your content in these areas, you establish a deeper focus that is really relevant in a particular area, and then you develop it and make it search-centric.
For example, you might learn that a lot of people are searching for “war in Iraq.” If your ministry doesn’t have anything relevant on this subject, you wouldn’t want to develop it just because someone’s searching for it. On the other hand, when The Presidential Prayer Team learned that many people were searching for “soldier’s prayer” because of the war, PPT developed a printed version of a soldier’s prayer, entered into a pay-per-click advertising agreement with Yahoo and Google, and then, when people clicked to the site to get the soldier’s prayer, asked them to adopt a soldier to pray for. Visitors also could sign up for the Adopt Our Troops e-newsletter. The strategy did a great job of building their Adopt Our Troops email list.
If people find your site through a search, they will quickly leave if they don’t think the content applies to their needs. To have a better chance of helping them see your site’s relevance, avoid the common mistake of talking too much about your needs, such as ushers and gifts. Visitors want information that addresses their search needs, and that’s what you should give them.
Once you’ve learned how to get listed in the search results, your qualified site traffic will take off, giving you plenty of new friends to build relationships with. So, optimize your pages so people can find you through search engines, and then make sure your pages are relevant to those search terms. If you need assistance, Pathmaker Marketing provides search engine optimization services that will help your website rise in the search rankings.
The reality of communicating with people online, and particularly via email fundraising, is that you have to constantly collect new email addresses. The typical growth rate in 2008 for any ministry list was 25% per year, which was comprised of 5% new names, less 3% name loss to unsubscriptions and bounces (mostly bounces). Said differently, if you’re not prospecting for new names constantly you can expect to see a 3% per month attrition in your email lists. Since people will move on for one reason or another, you need to replace them with new friends.
How to do this? Populate your website with relevant content that’s consistent with search-centric promotions that you conduct online. Relevance is key. If someone is searching the Internet for a church in Dallas, and you are one, that’s relevant. But if you’re a homeless shelter in New York or Dallas, that is NOT relevant. You need to start by targeting keywords: determine the Internet search streams that are relevant to what you offer, and then optimize your site to those searches via your site content and code. That way, your website is more likely to pop up in a Google search and get you qualified traffic from people who are looking for what you have to offer. That also means you must regularly update your website to relate to changes in relevant search terms. You might call this keyword marekting.
Practical Tip: Search engine optimize your site.
So let’s talk about optimizing your website so that you can be easily found when someone looks up terms relevant to you on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines.
If someone searches a topic such as “how to help a troubled teen,” your site can get listed in the results. But unless it’s in the top 10 results, or on the first page, it probably won’t get many visitors from those search results. There’s a whole science to getting your site listed at the top, which again is too detailed to go into here, but the basic process—known as keyword marketing via serach engine optimization—is something you should know. It involves finding the search terms related to your ministry, including those search terms in relevant content on your site, optimizing your site copy and code for the search engines, and finally submitting your site to the search engines. In most cases, this core process will result in you getting ranked higher in the results, thereby driving more qualfied search traffic to your website.
Here are some examples of what organic search term results look like:
Google: How to Help a Troubled Teen
Yahoo: How to Help a Troubled Teen
Bing: How to help a Troubled Teen
Google and Wordtracker offer free keyword online marketing tools for finding common search terms:
You can input your own keywords to see how many people are searching those terms. Don’t get tempted to expand your terms if you see people searching on a topic that doesn’t relate to your primary goal – instead, stick to what you know, and your outreach ideas will be the most effective. You won’t be sorry if you put your effort into thinking up and searching for the search terms people are looking for that relate most directly to your ministry.
What do you have within your organization relevant to what people are searching for that you can develop and put online? This is a new level of site content depth – deepening the relevance of what you’re saying overall. You may have a particular niche – maybe issues related to teens, or matters of the heart for women, or guy stuff. By deepening your content in these areas, you establish a deeper focus that is really relevant in a particular area, and then you develop it and make it search-centric.
For example, you might learn that a lot of people are searching for “war in Iraq.” If your ministry doesn’t have anything relevant on this subject, you wouldn’t want to develop it just because someone’s searching for it. On the other hand, when The Presidential Prayer Team learned that many people were searching for “soldier’s prayer” because of the war, PPT developed a printed version of a soldier’s prayer, entered into a pay-per-click advertising agreement with Yahoo and Google, and then, when people clicked to the site to get the soldier’s prayer, asked them to adopt a soldier to pray for. Visitors also could sign up for the Adopt Our Troops e-newsletter. The strategy did a great job of building their Adopt Our Troops email list.
If people find your site through a search, they will quickly leave if they don’t think the content applies to their needs. To have a better chance of helping them see your site’s relevance, avoid the common mistake of talking too much about your needs, such as ushers and gifts. Visitors want information that addresses their search needs, and that’s what you should give them.
Once you’ve learned how to get listed in the search results, your qualified site traffic will take off, giving you plenty of new friends to build relationships with. So, optimize your pages so people can find you through search engines, and then make sure your pages are relevant to those search terms. If you need assistance, Pathmaker Marketing provides search engine optimization services that will help your website rise in the search rankings.
Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by
Karen Randau
Ever consider making a virtual tour a vital part of your non profit website design? The typical virtual tour is typically 360 degree still shots of the inside and outside of your facility. But Pathmaker Marketing LLC is working on a tour that is much more.
We’re serving a client whose facility in Europe represents an important part of world history. We’re working to film their regular visitor tour. We’re using the audio from that tour along with video of the docents wearing period attire. While listening to the tour, virtual visitors will be able to interact with the room to make the history come to life. This Virtual Tour will become a part of their arsenal of incredible online marketing tools.
We’re partnering with a wonderful organization to help us put together this unique tool. If a virtual tour is a part of your non profit website design future, you might want to give Pathmaker Marketing a phone call at 623-322-3334. You can find our Virtual Tour partner online at: Regal360.
We’re serving a client whose facility in Europe represents an important part of world history. We’re working to film their regular visitor tour. We’re using the audio from that tour along with video of the docents wearing period attire. While listening to the tour, virtual visitors will be able to interact with the room to make the history come to life. This Virtual Tour will become a part of their arsenal of incredible online marketing tools.
We’re partnering with a wonderful organization to help us put together this unique tool. If a virtual tour is a part of your non profit website design future, you might want to give Pathmaker Marketing a phone call at 623-322-3334. You can find our Virtual Tour partner online at: Regal360.
Posted Friday, May 22, 2009 by
Randall Mains
In my next series of blog entries, I’m going to give you five principles that will propel your ministry forward in the area of strategic online communications and non profit marketing. In the last series, we learned how good non profit website website design will save you numerous headaches while enhancing your ministry and expanding its outreach. This next series of posts assumes that we’re starting with a well-designed website, and extends the subject further to how to implement the process of good website communication and non profit marketing.
In a nutshell, my key lesson for today is this: a strategic online communication plan will strengthen existing donor relationships while building new ones to enhance your ministry and expand its outreach. To repeat: A strategic non profit marketing plan will strengthen existing donor relationships while building new ones to enhance your ministry and expand its outreach.
What this means is that your website can perform double duty in the arena of online communication. First, it can strengthen the relationships you already have within your ministry – members, parishioners, clients, customers, etc. Second, your website can also be an extraordinary non profit marketing tool for finding and developing new donor relationships. I call that prospecting. In my experience with ministries, though, I have found that most organizations are short-sighted in this very important area.
Let’s think of prospecting in terms of a highway billboard. For the most part, billboards just sit there, conveying a message and hoping people notice them. A billboard provides information, but it has no relationship with you. It definitely doesn’t know the names of the people who travel by it on the highway everyday. A billboard is similar to a website that isn’t working hard to achieve your online communication objectives. It may look nice -- even convey a nifty message – but it fails to be “hard-working” if it doesn’t develop relationships with online visitors.
Many good-looking websites are launched and even adequately promoted. If you’re fortunate, yours might be seen by thousands of people passing by on the Internet. But if the site doesn’t capture their attention and engage them in dialogue, most of those surfers will move on to other sites, without any strategic, long-term value to you.
It’s also similar to a church. Why would any pastor be content to know that thousands of people drive by your church every Sunday? Wouldn’t we rather have them inside our church, experiencing worship, hearing the Word, and enjoying fellowship with others?
Don’t misunderstand me—your website needs to both look good and convey a solid message. But it also must be designed to interact with your site visitors and develop a pattern of communicating with them. This is how you will be able to use the web to expand your outreach and enlarge your ministry.
I hope this introduction has gotten you excited about developing your website to proactively engage visitors in relationships that will translate into ministry growth. In my next post, we’ll begin with the first of the five principles of strategic Web communication and non profit marketing.
In a nutshell, my key lesson for today is this: a strategic online communication plan will strengthen existing donor relationships while building new ones to enhance your ministry and expand its outreach. To repeat: A strategic non profit marketing plan will strengthen existing donor relationships while building new ones to enhance your ministry and expand its outreach.
What this means is that your website can perform double duty in the arena of online communication. First, it can strengthen the relationships you already have within your ministry – members, parishioners, clients, customers, etc. Second, your website can also be an extraordinary non profit marketing tool for finding and developing new donor relationships. I call that prospecting. In my experience with ministries, though, I have found that most organizations are short-sighted in this very important area.
Let’s think of prospecting in terms of a highway billboard. For the most part, billboards just sit there, conveying a message and hoping people notice them. A billboard provides information, but it has no relationship with you. It definitely doesn’t know the names of the people who travel by it on the highway everyday. A billboard is similar to a website that isn’t working hard to achieve your online communication objectives. It may look nice -- even convey a nifty message – but it fails to be “hard-working” if it doesn’t develop relationships with online visitors.
Many good-looking websites are launched and even adequately promoted. If you’re fortunate, yours might be seen by thousands of people passing by on the Internet. But if the site doesn’t capture their attention and engage them in dialogue, most of those surfers will move on to other sites, without any strategic, long-term value to you.
It’s also similar to a church. Why would any pastor be content to know that thousands of people drive by your church every Sunday? Wouldn’t we rather have them inside our church, experiencing worship, hearing the Word, and enjoying fellowship with others?
Don’t misunderstand me—your website needs to both look good and convey a solid message. But it also must be designed to interact with your site visitors and develop a pattern of communicating with them. This is how you will be able to use the web to expand your outreach and enlarge your ministry.
I hope this introduction has gotten you excited about developing your website to proactively engage visitors in relationships that will translate into ministry growth. In my next post, we’ll begin with the first of the five principles of strategic Web communication and non profit marketing.
Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 by
Randall Mains
Have you ever had friends who never seem to change, never seem to rise above themselves, grow, or improve? Mere maintenance doesn’t take very much effort—and after a while, it’s not very interesting. Quality improvements and dynamic enhancements will always out-trump maintaining the status quo, and nowhere is that more evident than online.
Principle #5: Fine-tune your Web image to overcome the mistake of just maintaining the status quo.
I mentioned earlier that you should regularly change your website. You should update your site frequently—weekly or even daily is ideal—but no less than monthly. Also, you should consider a new non profit design annually. You need to remember that the Internet is a dynamic place, and make sure your site is constantly changing as well.
Practical Tip: Consider updating your website design with articles, blogs, communities, and other ways for your constituents to interact with you.
Just maintaining the status quo will give you the headache of lost potential constituents. People will lose interest if your site is always the same and if there’s no way for them to provide input. Also, don’t just add updates for the sake of updates—that’s another headache. Remember your strategy and objectives and put all site additions through a litmus test: do they help achieve your objectives or fit squarely into the strategy?
Conclusion: When my wife, Carmel, and I were struggling to overcome migraine headaches, we eventually discovered a specialist who got us the help that we needed to deal with them. Likewise, you need experts to help you overcome and avoid non profit website design headaches. I hope that with these five principles, you now have some specific handles on how to avoid website design headaches and instead enhance your existing ministry while extending your outreach.
Quiz: Five Principles of Good Non Profit Website Design
Now that we’ve finished going through the five principles and various tips on how to apply them, here’s a short quiz to see what you remember:
1. Identify three of the five principles of good non profit website design:
a. Avoid conflicting voices
b. Fine-tune your image
c. Resolve the essentials
d. Develop an attractive appearance
e. Avoid problems that occur
2. What is the optimal number of strategic objectives for a strong website?
a. One primary objective
b. As many as your webmaster can handle
c. One objective for each department in the organization
d. Three to four objectives
3. What is the best choice for your domain name?
a. A catchy acronym
b. Your company or brand name
c. A .net address
4. Which of the following non profit design tips result in good-looking sites?
a. Stick to two or three color choices
b. Choose fonts such as Ariel, Verdana, Times New Roman, or Geneva
c. Develop a clean home page design followed by two to three sub-pages that flow from it
d. Plan for growth
e. Stay relevant
f. All of the above
5. Which of the following will help you build your email fundraising list?
a. An incentive-based opt-in landing page to sign up for an e-newsletter
b. Placing critical information at the bottom of the page so it is easy to find
c. A form above the fold that asks for a lengthy amount of personal detail
d. Giving your visitor plenty of choices so that they’ll chose something
e. Both A and C
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed by website headaches, remember that we’re here to help. Pathmaker Marketing has the experience and knowledge not only to help you get rid of those pesky headaches, but to use your Web presence to maximize your outreach to potential visitors. Contact me with any questions or needs at this email address.
Principle #5: Fine-tune your Web image to overcome the mistake of just maintaining the status quo.
I mentioned earlier that you should regularly change your website. You should update your site frequently—weekly or even daily is ideal—but no less than monthly. Also, you should consider a new non profit design annually. You need to remember that the Internet is a dynamic place, and make sure your site is constantly changing as well.
Practical Tip: Consider updating your website design with articles, blogs, communities, and other ways for your constituents to interact with you.
Just maintaining the status quo will give you the headache of lost potential constituents. People will lose interest if your site is always the same and if there’s no way for them to provide input. Also, don’t just add updates for the sake of updates—that’s another headache. Remember your strategy and objectives and put all site additions through a litmus test: do they help achieve your objectives or fit squarely into the strategy?
Conclusion: When my wife, Carmel, and I were struggling to overcome migraine headaches, we eventually discovered a specialist who got us the help that we needed to deal with them. Likewise, you need experts to help you overcome and avoid non profit website design headaches. I hope that with these five principles, you now have some specific handles on how to avoid website design headaches and instead enhance your existing ministry while extending your outreach.
Quiz: Five Principles of Good Non Profit Website Design
Now that we’ve finished going through the five principles and various tips on how to apply them, here’s a short quiz to see what you remember:
1. Identify three of the five principles of good non profit website design:
a. Avoid conflicting voices
b. Fine-tune your image
c. Resolve the essentials
d. Develop an attractive appearance
e. Avoid problems that occur
2. What is the optimal number of strategic objectives for a strong website?
a. One primary objective
b. As many as your webmaster can handle
c. One objective for each department in the organization
d. Three to four objectives
3. What is the best choice for your domain name?
a. A catchy acronym
b. Your company or brand name
c. A .net address
4. Which of the following non profit design tips result in good-looking sites?
a. Stick to two or three color choices
b. Choose fonts such as Ariel, Verdana, Times New Roman, or Geneva
c. Develop a clean home page design followed by two to three sub-pages that flow from it
d. Plan for growth
e. Stay relevant
f. All of the above
5. Which of the following will help you build your email fundraising list?
a. An incentive-based opt-in landing page to sign up for an e-newsletter
b. Placing critical information at the bottom of the page so it is easy to find
c. A form above the fold that asks for a lengthy amount of personal detail
d. Giving your visitor plenty of choices so that they’ll chose something
e. Both A and C
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed by website headaches, remember that we’re here to help. Pathmaker Marketing has the experience and knowledge not only to help you get rid of those pesky headaches, but to use your Web presence to maximize your outreach to potential visitors. Contact me with any questions or needs at this email address.
Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 by
Randall Mains
A couple more tips and some examples of Principle #4: Develop a hard-working site to avoid the problems of a non profit design that’s all looks and no brains.
Practical Tip #3: Have your critical info appear above the fold so readers don’t have to scroll down to find it. This is a key feature of good non profit website design.
Practical Tip #4: Have a good database for holding names and critical information about visitors – typically called “the back end.” One of the most important and overlooked aspects of generating leads is having a way for people to tell others about your site, so: Add “tell a friend” functionality to improve your non profit marketing.
If the object of your site is to sell products, is your ecommerce easy to use and fully functional? Make sure all products have a photo and one sentence description. Make sure you have a good shopping cart system, with a straighforward checkout process (no nine-step checkout routines) and test it often to ensure that nothing has broken down, so you lower your shopping cart abandonment rates.
If your site is designed to generate memberships, does it accomplish that purpose well? It’s similar to name generation in terms of convincing people to fill out a form, but if you want people to become members, your site also needs to have a feeling of community. Even though it would be nice if Christians will automatically want to interact with you because of your wonderful outreach, they won’t. They need to know what’s in it for them, and visiting your site has to be easy and fun if you want them to come back.
Practical Tip #5: Install a Prayer Wall onto your site that members can update the wall with prayer requests for general issues or items specific to your ministry. Let the content be uploaded automatically, but monitor it in case you need to remove anything inappropriate.
Prayer Walls can be great non profit marketing and ministry tools.
Good examples of a Prayer Wall:
Presidential Prayer Team
Gregory Dickow Ministries
National Prayer Campaign
If you need help to pull this off contact Pathmaker for more details.
Here are some examples of hard-working websites:
Presidential Prayer Team
(Good effort at offering member benefits in exchange for name and email data. Thank You page offers a Welcome Kit in exchange for full address, phone)
Grand Canyon University
(Gets leads by convincing you to sign up and providing the means all on one screen)
eHarmony
(Excellent job of using the right images and simple text to get people to use a form and register)
The Villages at Country Club
(Real Estate site design to generate visitor leads into the showroom0
Pathmaker Marketing can help ensure that your web site is working as hard as possible. Contact us anytime for an evaluation of your non profit website design, email fundraising, or non profit marketing.
Practical Tip #3: Have your critical info appear above the fold so readers don’t have to scroll down to find it. This is a key feature of good non profit website design.
Practical Tip #4: Have a good database for holding names and critical information about visitors – typically called “the back end.” One of the most important and overlooked aspects of generating leads is having a way for people to tell others about your site, so: Add “tell a friend” functionality to improve your non profit marketing.
If the object of your site is to sell products, is your ecommerce easy to use and fully functional? Make sure all products have a photo and one sentence description. Make sure you have a good shopping cart system, with a straighforward checkout process (no nine-step checkout routines) and test it often to ensure that nothing has broken down, so you lower your shopping cart abandonment rates.
If your site is designed to generate memberships, does it accomplish that purpose well? It’s similar to name generation in terms of convincing people to fill out a form, but if you want people to become members, your site also needs to have a feeling of community. Even though it would be nice if Christians will automatically want to interact with you because of your wonderful outreach, they won’t. They need to know what’s in it for them, and visiting your site has to be easy and fun if you want them to come back.
Practical Tip #5: Install a Prayer Wall onto your site that members can update the wall with prayer requests for general issues or items specific to your ministry. Let the content be uploaded automatically, but monitor it in case you need to remove anything inappropriate.
Prayer Walls can be great non profit marketing and ministry tools.
Good examples of a Prayer Wall:
Presidential Prayer Team
Gregory Dickow Ministries
National Prayer Campaign
If you need help to pull this off contact Pathmaker for more details.
Here are some examples of hard-working websites:
Presidential Prayer Team
(Good effort at offering member benefits in exchange for name and email data. Thank You page offers a Welcome Kit in exchange for full address, phone)
Grand Canyon University
(Gets leads by convincing you to sign up and providing the means all on one screen)
eHarmony
(Excellent job of using the right images and simple text to get people to use a form and register)
The Villages at Country Club
(Real Estate site design to generate visitor leads into the showroom0
Pathmaker Marketing can help ensure that your web site is working as hard as possible. Contact us anytime for an evaluation of your non profit website design, email fundraising, or non profit marketing.
Posted Thursday, May 14, 2009 by
Karen Randau
Whether you currently have a website or not, it might be time for you to begin to think through some important non profit website design rules. Here are a few that can help.
Design – it isn’t about you. Your non profit website design should cater to what your visitors like, not you. Here are some things to avoid.
Ease of use – make it easy to find your content. Put as much time into thinking about how to organize your site as you did thinking about your non profit website design. Visitors need to be able to see easily what your non profit has to offer, get to it and navigate to other portions of the site without getting lost, confused or annoyed. If you make people click too many times to get to your non profit's unbelievably great offer, you’ll lose them before they ever see it. Be sure to put a link back to your non profit's home page on every page, along with main site navigation that is easy to find and more understandable than cute.
Copywriting – less is best. Writing tight, succinct copy for your non profit website can be a challenge. If you can’t do it, hire someone else who can. You need to say everything that needs to be said in no more than a couple of screens of text at a time. In these days of busy schedules and information overload, people won’t read more. To keep your copy interesting, use active voice, and write to about the sixth to eight grade level. (The contrasting point would be to write extensive copy about any subject that you are attempting to establish your credibility as an expert).
Interactivity – involve your visitors. Games involve people quite well, but for non profit website design, your form of interactivity might be to get users to give you information about themselves. Offer them something for free (such as a newsletter or a white paper) in exchange for their contact information. People often will get scared off if you ask for too much (it’s kind of like offering a marriage proposal with the first handshake). You can try asking for the first name and email address in exchange for downloading something they would find useful (such as a free message from your non profit's CEO). On the thank you page, you could ask them for more information in exchange for receiving something free in the mail (such as your CEO’s new book).
Technology – use it to facilitate meaningful conversation. Capture email addresses. Learn people’s likes and interests by the way they browse your site and the appeals to which they respond. Offer online polls to get opinions (and learn what visitors like and what interests them). Offer a way for your non profit website visitors to forward your information to a friend (often called viral marketing). Include a calendar of your non profit's upcoming events. Allow visitors to submit testimonials or prayers. But don't use technology in your non profit webside design just because you like the bells and whistles. That's quick way to spend a lot of money for no return. Make sure all of the technolgoy you use on your non profit website contributes to your brand.
Content – make it useful. There’s no use in making a website look good if the content turns people off and causes them to click away. Good content is something that your target audience wants or needs. In Non Profit Marketing 101, we learned that we must find a problem and solve it. That is what your website content needs to do. Your non profit has a niche, and the content needs to appeal to people to want to give to a non profit in that niche. Don't use content that you think is useful - make sure your readers think it's useful.
Design – it isn’t about you. Your non profit website design should cater to what your visitors like, not you. Here are some things to avoid.
- Blinking or scrolling text, animated GIFs and auto-loading sound do more than distract your visitors … they cause people quickly to click away from your site. If you’re slyly looking at a non profit website from a small cubicle next to your boss, do you want sound blaring what you’re up to? Neither does anyone else. As for blinking text and banners, they’re just plain annoying and scream, “I don’t really care what you like … this is fun for me to design!”
- Pop ups are so annoying that most browsers block them. Many people click away from non profit websites because they thought internal links weren’t working when the only problem was that their browsers were blocking pop-ups of your on profit's vital information.
- Large file sizes in images. They make non profit website pages load slowly, and people will only stick around for about three seconds to let photos load. Resize large images to the exact size specified in the design, and optimize them for the web to get file size down. Also, avoid using background images, since that makes it difficult to read in addition to making your non profit website load slowly.
- Long lines of text that go on forever. Lines of text should be no more than 600 pixels wide. Break it up with optimized images, bold text and sub-heads.
- Small text. If you have to squint to read a non profit website, you’ll lose visitors. Make the text at least 10 to 12 points large (that’s Size 2 or 3 in HTML). Many people who give to non profits are older, and they simply can't read anything smaller.
- Avoid all caps. They’re difficult to read, and today words in all caps are considered yelling. Do you want a non profit website yelling at you?
Ease of use – make it easy to find your content. Put as much time into thinking about how to organize your site as you did thinking about your non profit website design. Visitors need to be able to see easily what your non profit has to offer, get to it and navigate to other portions of the site without getting lost, confused or annoyed. If you make people click too many times to get to your non profit's unbelievably great offer, you’ll lose them before they ever see it. Be sure to put a link back to your non profit's home page on every page, along with main site navigation that is easy to find and more understandable than cute.
Copywriting – less is best. Writing tight, succinct copy for your non profit website can be a challenge. If you can’t do it, hire someone else who can. You need to say everything that needs to be said in no more than a couple of screens of text at a time. In these days of busy schedules and information overload, people won’t read more. To keep your copy interesting, use active voice, and write to about the sixth to eight grade level. (The contrasting point would be to write extensive copy about any subject that you are attempting to establish your credibility as an expert).
Interactivity – involve your visitors. Games involve people quite well, but for non profit website design, your form of interactivity might be to get users to give you information about themselves. Offer them something for free (such as a newsletter or a white paper) in exchange for their contact information. People often will get scared off if you ask for too much (it’s kind of like offering a marriage proposal with the first handshake). You can try asking for the first name and email address in exchange for downloading something they would find useful (such as a free message from your non profit's CEO). On the thank you page, you could ask them for more information in exchange for receiving something free in the mail (such as your CEO’s new book).
Technology – use it to facilitate meaningful conversation. Capture email addresses. Learn people’s likes and interests by the way they browse your site and the appeals to which they respond. Offer online polls to get opinions (and learn what visitors like and what interests them). Offer a way for your non profit website visitors to forward your information to a friend (often called viral marketing). Include a calendar of your non profit's upcoming events. Allow visitors to submit testimonials or prayers. But don't use technology in your non profit webside design just because you like the bells and whistles. That's quick way to spend a lot of money for no return. Make sure all of the technolgoy you use on your non profit website contributes to your brand.
Content – make it useful. There’s no use in making a website look good if the content turns people off and causes them to click away. Good content is something that your target audience wants or needs. In Non Profit Marketing 101, we learned that we must find a problem and solve it. That is what your website content needs to do. Your non profit has a niche, and the content needs to appeal to people to want to give to a non profit in that niche. Don't use content that you think is useful - make sure your readers think it's useful.
Posted Monday, May 11, 2009 by
Karen Randau
If you want to do fund raising online, your non profit website design needs to incorporate eCommerce. That may sound like a term reserved for the for profit world, but your non profit can benefit greatly from not only learning from your for profit colleagues but also taking the concept to new heights in your non profit website design. Here are some tips.
- Plan your online store carefully. As with everything else you do – including driving across town – you need to know where you want to go before you understand how to get there.
Your eCommerce strategy needs to include traditional products that non profits offer (e.g., books, mugs, pens, t-shirts, hats, etc.) along with “products” that only a non profit could offer. These include sponsorships, memberships, and aspects of your projects (e.g., buy a cow for a family in a third world country, plant a tree in the rainforest, save a whale, etc.).
Key components of your non profit store design strategy include (1) understanding the resources necessary (people, finances, education, etc.) and (2) getting commitment from the decision makes to provide and maintain these resources.
- Set up your store as professionally as the for profits do. The days are gone when you can simply create a static page on your non profit website that tells people to call to make a donation. Your non profit website design needs to include a store with a catalog, search and browsing functions, a shopping cart (and don’t be concerned that people will be offended by putting your virtual products in a shopping cart – if they buy things online, they know what this concept means and are comfortable with it) and an easy checkout process.
The search/browse function is vital to making it easy for people to find your products, whether they be t-shirts or trees in the rainforest.
Checkout is often where non profits lose donors. You need to make the process simple and collect enough information without over doing it. Initially, you may only need the name and email address, but you will be collecting more inforamtion as part of taking a credit card.
- Cross promote. You see it happen on Amazon.com: “People who bought this product also liked these.” You can do it too: “People who bought this hat also liked this book” or “People who proudly wear this t-shirt often also like to sponsor this event or provide funding for this project.” You can also offer certificates to people who buy the virtual products.
- Build relationships. As you collect information about people, find out what parts of your non profit interest them. Be sure to include a privacy policy on the site to ease people's concerns about providing their information.
Once you’ve gotten their permission, keep them informed about what your non profit is doing and what kinds of funding needs you have. Don’t abuse them by selling their information or sending too many emails, but stay in touch. You’ll want to email them a couple times a month with information that they will find valuable.
As you craft your relationship-building messages, remember people want to know “what’s in it for me.”
Posted Monday, May 11, 2009 by
Randall Mains
Have you ever gone out with someone who was a knockout in appearance, but 15 minutes later you discovered his or her vocabulary was limited to grunts or giggles? Many non profit website designs are like that too – they look great, but they have no non profit marketing substance. And that’s a major headache!
Principle #4: Develop a hard-working site to avoid the problems of a website that’s all looks and no brains.
Here are some practical suggestions for creating a hard-working website that facilitates online fundraising, non profit marketing, asset accumulation and more:
Practical Tip #1: Develop an incentive-based opt-in landing page to encourage people to sign up for your ministry e-newsletter. For example, a well-crafted non profit website design will take into account the critical functionality needed in order to achieve your original objectives. It’s not just about looks, but about smarts as well.
When I say smarts, I’m referring in part to how well your site converts your visitors into usable assets, such as lists, leads, gifts, or sales. These are the names and addresses, both email and snail mail, of people who want to hear from you, buy your products, or support your ministry through gifts, both today and tomorrow.
Believe me, if you send email fundraising letters to people who don’t want to hear from you, you’ve got big headaches in store. So ideally, everyone you deal with is someone who has opted in to receive something from you online: your e-newsletter, free information, non profit marketing re: your products, etc.
Practical Tip #2: Develop an electronic welcome series via an auto-responder email system that immediately sends your leads the information they requested.
If your site is intended to generate leads, does it fully function in that capacity? If so, it should allow people to interact with you by signing up for an offer—a newsletter or something else of value to them (not to you, to them). Your well-crafted non profit website design will have easy-to-use and convincing pages that persuade people to give you their contact information and allow them to do it easily.
Follow up your email reply with a Welcome Kit offer - a packet of information about your ministry sent through snail mail. Typical Pathmaker Marketing clients experience a 63% conversion rate of enrollment into the Welcome Kit offer after just prior having signed up for email offers. Once your welcome Kits are sent out, have someone follow up with a telephone call as the last step of an efficient lead follow-up system.
Principle #4: Develop a hard-working site to avoid the problems of a website that’s all looks and no brains.
Here are some practical suggestions for creating a hard-working website that facilitates online fundraising, non profit marketing, asset accumulation and more:
Practical Tip #1: Develop an incentive-based opt-in landing page to encourage people to sign up for your ministry e-newsletter. For example, a well-crafted non profit website design will take into account the critical functionality needed in order to achieve your original objectives. It’s not just about looks, but about smarts as well.
When I say smarts, I’m referring in part to how well your site converts your visitors into usable assets, such as lists, leads, gifts, or sales. These are the names and addresses, both email and snail mail, of people who want to hear from you, buy your products, or support your ministry through gifts, both today and tomorrow.
Believe me, if you send email fundraising letters to people who don’t want to hear from you, you’ve got big headaches in store. So ideally, everyone you deal with is someone who has opted in to receive something from you online: your e-newsletter, free information, non profit marketing re: your products, etc.
Practical Tip #2: Develop an electronic welcome series via an auto-responder email system that immediately sends your leads the information they requested.
If your site is intended to generate leads, does it fully function in that capacity? If so, it should allow people to interact with you by signing up for an offer—a newsletter or something else of value to them (not to you, to them). Your well-crafted non profit website design will have easy-to-use and convincing pages that persuade people to give you their contact information and allow them to do it easily.
Follow up your email reply with a Welcome Kit offer - a packet of information about your ministry sent through snail mail. Typical Pathmaker Marketing clients experience a 63% conversion rate of enrollment into the Welcome Kit offer after just prior having signed up for email offers. Once your welcome Kits are sent out, have someone follow up with a telephone call as the last step of an efficient lead follow-up system.
Posted Friday, May 8, 2009 by
Randall Mains
Here are more tips for achieving Principle #3: Develop an attractive appearance so you overcome the “not much to look at” criticism.
Practical Tip #6: Plan for growth and avoid complexity.
If your homepage is overdesigned, you won’t have any place to put important updates – and you should update your homepage regularly if you want people coming back. So, don’t get boxed into a restrictive non profit design or develop endlessly complex sub-pages.
Practical Tip #7: Begin with a clean, professional non profit website design for your home page and develop three to four similar sub-page variations that flow from it. Usually a relatively small amount of investment in this area can give you an enormous lift in appearance and professionalism.
Practical Tip #8: Stay relevant.
Make sure your text and images work together to tell your story succinctly and provide relevance to your reader. Have a reason for all images, and make sure they communicate your message whether they’re viewed with or without the text. Likewise, make sure the text tells the same story as the images. You need both to be in harmony with one another to convey your most central messages.
Now let’s look at some contrasting examples of good non profit website design versus poor design. I did a recent Google search on 5-9-09 for “homeless charities in New York” and here’s a sampling of what I found by browsing the results.
Some of the better Non Profit Website Design Examples:
The Hope Program
Eva's Village (simple but colorful)
My Friend's Place (simple, above the fold, pictures say it's about youth)
Robin Hood (clean, colorful, nice flash)
Coalition for the Homeless
Non Profit Website Design Examples Needing Some Help:
Dackk's Group (looks homespun)
Common Ground (needs an upgrade)
Another Google search on 5-9-09 for “churches in Dallas” produced the following results.
Good Non Profit Website Design Examples:
Watermark Community Church
Dallas Bible Church
DFW Church
Non Profit Design Examples Needing Some Help:
St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church
Lake Dallas Church of Christ
Church of God
Lastly, here’s a online reference for 25 non profit website design tips for churches:
Practical Tip #6: Plan for growth and avoid complexity.
If your homepage is overdesigned, you won’t have any place to put important updates – and you should update your homepage regularly if you want people coming back. So, don’t get boxed into a restrictive non profit design or develop endlessly complex sub-pages.
Practical Tip #7: Begin with a clean, professional non profit website design for your home page and develop three to four similar sub-page variations that flow from it. Usually a relatively small amount of investment in this area can give you an enormous lift in appearance and professionalism.
Practical Tip #8: Stay relevant.
Make sure your text and images work together to tell your story succinctly and provide relevance to your reader. Have a reason for all images, and make sure they communicate your message whether they’re viewed with or without the text. Likewise, make sure the text tells the same story as the images. You need both to be in harmony with one another to convey your most central messages.
Now let’s look at some contrasting examples of good non profit website design versus poor design. I did a recent Google search on 5-9-09 for “homeless charities in New York” and here’s a sampling of what I found by browsing the results.
Some of the better Non Profit Website Design Examples:
The Hope Program
Eva's Village (simple but colorful)
My Friend's Place (simple, above the fold, pictures say it's about youth)
Robin Hood (clean, colorful, nice flash)
Coalition for the Homeless
Non Profit Website Design Examples Needing Some Help:
Dackk's Group (looks homespun)
Common Ground (needs an upgrade)
Another Google search on 5-9-09 for “churches in Dallas” produced the following results.
Good Non Profit Website Design Examples:
Watermark Community Church
Dallas Bible Church
DFW Church
Non Profit Design Examples Needing Some Help:
St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church
Lake Dallas Church of Christ
Church of God
Lastly, here’s a online reference for 25 non profit website design tips for churches:
Posted Friday, May 8, 2009 by
Randall Mains
If you’ve ever gone on a blind date, this worry might be familiar: “What’s this person going to look like?” Someone might sound good on the phone, but it’s a different story if the person shows up looking like he or she just crawled out of a vacuum cleaner! Whether it’s fair or not, first impressions count for a lot—and a non profit website design that looks unprofessional, cluttered, or boring is a tough headache to overcome. It reflects poorly on your entire organization. Hence, our next good website design principle:
Principle #3: Develop an attractive appearance so you overcome the “not much to look at” criticism.
By coordinating the important non profit website design puzzle pieces like copy, graphics, navigation, and organization, you can create a site that is both attractive and memorable.
Example of good first impressions: www.gmtiinfo.com
Here are some practical non profit website design tips to follow:
Practical Tip #1: Be careful to balance your site ingredients. Too much of any one thing can be bad. Plus, overuse of graphic bells and whistles can cause your site to load slowly if they aren’t optimized and coded appropriately. Speaking of which …
Practical Tip #2: A good rule of thumb to follow is that you have 3 seconds or less to get a visitor’s attention. If your website takes too long to load, people will move on and miss your ministry message.
Practical Tip #3: Stick with what works rather than reinventing the wheel.
Major companies are constantly monitoring the ways people read web pages, go through the checkout process, use site navigation, and so on. You can benefit from this research without having to repeat it yourself. Preview what works for major players like Amazon.com, Google, Yahoo, and others.
One example of this simple principle is that people expect the main site navigation – the area with links to the site’s other major sections – to be located either vertically on the left side or across the top horizontally. Stick with one of these two approaches to site navigation, and visitors will find it easier to interact with your site.
Practical Tip #4: Keep colors to two or three complementary choices.
Too many colors look tacky, and too few look unprofessional. Using varied shades of a limited but appealing color palette will create the appearance of more colors while keeping them from clashing.
Practical Tip #5: Choose fonts carefully.
The range of fonts that will display properly online in text is limited, so stick with the tried-and-true ones like Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, Courier, Geneva and Georgia.
Implement these practical tips to improve your non profit website design exponentially.
Posted Thursday, May 7, 2009 by
Randall Mains
Like the television commercial where the married couple had to take showers in public water fountains, not having a home is a major headache. Can you imagine the headaches resulting from this crazy scenario?
“What’s your name, sir?” “I don’t know.”
“Where do you live, sir?” “I don’t know.”
This leads us to the next principle of good website design:
Good Non Profit website Design Principle #2: To avoid wandering around nameless and homeless on the Internet, resolve the essentials of selecting your name and address.
To accomplish Principle #2, every non profit website design needs answers to two critical questions: “What’s your address?” and “Who’s your host?”
1. What’s your address? Otherwise known as your domain name or URL, your website name is an essential ingredient. Examples of world-renowned domain names include google.com, wikipedia.com, flickr.com, and yahoo.com.
Practical Tip #1: Choose a domain name that is your company name or brand, or default to the closest derivation, and get all the extensions (.com, .org, .net, .info).
First Choice: Pick your company name or brand name as your domain, if possible, e.g., generalmills.com or cheerios.com. Or select both, but promote the one you go by publicly. People will attempt to search the name by which they remember you the most.
Second Choice: A derivation of your company or brand name. Pick short domains over long ones, and memorable/pronounceable names over acronyms, unless you go primarily by your acronym. For example, firstchristianchurch.com is preferable to fcc.com, but if you’re widely known as FCC, then get fcc.com. Better yet, get both.
Consider hyphens as a backup option, e.g., first-christian-church.com.
Avoid plurals unless you can’t obtain the singular derivation. If you select a derivation like Mysite.com or TheSite.com, be sure to advertise your site as such.
Ideally, try to find a domain where you can get all priority extensions. If you’re in charge of non profit marketing, you may want to promote your organization using .org, and then choose .com and .net as your backups.
Alternatively, if you select .com first, then use .org and .net as backups. (These choices may vary in different countries.) Picking up all domain extensions will give people the widest access to your site—in other words, they can type any of the extensions and still get to your site because you have them all. It also serves to stop your competitors from snapping up the closest variation.
Here’s a good online reference for picking domain names:
2. Who’s your host? Your website host will be the entity that stores the files (text, graphics, photos, videos, etc.) that make up your site. When someone views your site on the Internet, the host computer “serves up” your pages, based on the computer code written by whomever programs your website. Because they “serve up” the pages of your website for people to view, your host computer is often called a server.
Here are some online reference sources for finding a good hosting company:
best-webhosting-2008.com/ tophosts.com/
Before deciding on a host, it’s critical to determine the kinds of attributes you want your website to contain. For example, do you need ecommerce, databases, or email fundraising features?
Here’s a good article on the top 9 things to look for in a web host:
tophosts.com/articles/000488.html
Here’s a good article on the most commonly asked questions:
http://www.tophosts.com/faq.html
For more help on this subject contact Pathmaker Marketing.
“What’s your name, sir?” “I don’t know.”
“Where do you live, sir?” “I don’t know.”
This leads us to the next principle of good website design:
Good Non Profit website Design Principle #2: To avoid wandering around nameless and homeless on the Internet, resolve the essentials of selecting your name and address.
To accomplish Principle #2, every non profit website design needs answers to two critical questions: “What’s your address?” and “Who’s your host?”
1. What’s your address? Otherwise known as your domain name or URL, your website name is an essential ingredient. Examples of world-renowned domain names include google.com, wikipedia.com, flickr.com, and yahoo.com.
Practical Tip #1: Choose a domain name that is your company name or brand, or default to the closest derivation, and get all the extensions (.com, .org, .net, .info).
First Choice: Pick your company name or brand name as your domain, if possible, e.g., generalmills.com or cheerios.com. Or select both, but promote the one you go by publicly. People will attempt to search the name by which they remember you the most.
Second Choice: A derivation of your company or brand name. Pick short domains over long ones, and memorable/pronounceable names over acronyms, unless you go primarily by your acronym. For example, firstchristianchurch.com is preferable to fcc.com, but if you’re widely known as FCC, then get fcc.com. Better yet, get both.
Consider hyphens as a backup option, e.g., first-christian-church.com.
Avoid plurals unless you can’t obtain the singular derivation. If you select a derivation like Mysite.com or TheSite.com, be sure to advertise your site as such.
Ideally, try to find a domain where you can get all priority extensions. If you’re in charge of non profit marketing, you may want to promote your organization using .org, and then choose .com and .net as your backups.
Alternatively, if you select .com first, then use .org and .net as backups. (These choices may vary in different countries.) Picking up all domain extensions will give people the widest access to your site—in other words, they can type any of the extensions and still get to your site because you have them all. It also serves to stop your competitors from snapping up the closest variation.
Here’s a good online reference for picking domain names:
2. Who’s your host? Your website host will be the entity that stores the files (text, graphics, photos, videos, etc.) that make up your site. When someone views your site on the Internet, the host computer “serves up” your pages, based on the computer code written by whomever programs your website. Because they “serve up” the pages of your website for people to view, your host computer is often called a server.
Here are some online reference sources for finding a good hosting company:
best-webhosting-2008.com/ tophosts.com/
Before deciding on a host, it’s critical to determine the kinds of attributes you want your website to contain. For example, do you need ecommerce, databases, or email fundraising features?
Here’s a good article on the top 9 things to look for in a web host:
tophosts.com/articles/000488.html
Here’s a good article on the most commonly asked questions:
http://www.tophosts.com/faq.html
For more help on this subject contact Pathmaker Marketing.
Posted Tuesday, May 5, 2009 by
Randall Mains
As promised in my last post, I’ll be giving you a series of five principles that will help you avoid major non profit website design headaches. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Principle #1: Clarify your objectives to avoid conflicting voices.
If you don’t know what you’d like your website to accomplish, it may end up with conflicting messages and voices. These conflicting voices can lead to standstill, gridlock, and internal strife as your ministry strives to fulfill its mission. Webmasters are often pulled in numerous directions for no apparent reason on unreasonable timetables. Clarifying your objectives will eliminate these headaches and enable your team to form a crystal-clear perspective on why you want to have a web site. In order to accomplish Principle #1, you need to be able to answer the question…
What is the Primary Objective of Your Website?
● Is it a store for selling products? (amazon.com)
● Is it a website to generate leads? (sermonsonchristmas.com)
● Is it to build an online community? (facebook.com)
● Is it to serve your membership? (presidentialprayerteam.org)
● Is it to transmit news or information? (crosswalk.com) (usatoday.com) (bbc.com)
● Is it to improve customer service? (walgreens.com)
● Is it a brochure about your ministry or outreach? (pioneers.com)
● Is it a platform for non profit marketing or email fundraising?
It’s entirely possible that you may have multiple objectives. If that’s the case, rank them in order of priority so that you understand which ones are the most important to achieve.
Practical Tip #1: If you have more than one website objective, reduce your list to your top two to three goals and prioritize them. Focus on accomplishing your top priorities first, then progress to other subordinate objectives.
Practical Tip #2: Record your website objectives on paper so that if there are any changes in your website personnel, your new staffers will know the original thinking behind your site.
Principle #1: Clarify your objectives to avoid conflicting voices.
If you don’t know what you’d like your website to accomplish, it may end up with conflicting messages and voices. These conflicting voices can lead to standstill, gridlock, and internal strife as your ministry strives to fulfill its mission. Webmasters are often pulled in numerous directions for no apparent reason on unreasonable timetables. Clarifying your objectives will eliminate these headaches and enable your team to form a crystal-clear perspective on why you want to have a web site. In order to accomplish Principle #1, you need to be able to answer the question…
What is the Primary Objective of Your Website?
● Is it a store for selling products? (amazon.com)
● Is it a website to generate leads? (sermonsonchristmas.com)
● Is it to build an online community? (facebook.com)
● Is it to serve your membership? (presidentialprayerteam.org)
● Is it to transmit news or information? (crosswalk.com) (usatoday.com) (bbc.com)
● Is it to improve customer service? (walgreens.com)
● Is it a brochure about your ministry or outreach? (pioneers.com)
● Is it a platform for non profit marketing or email fundraising?
It’s entirely possible that you may have multiple objectives. If that’s the case, rank them in order of priority so that you understand which ones are the most important to achieve.
Practical Tip #1: If you have more than one website objective, reduce your list to your top two to three goals and prioritize them. Focus on accomplishing your top priorities first, then progress to other subordinate objectives.
Practical Tip #2: Record your website objectives on paper so that if there are any changes in your website personnel, your new staffers will know the original thinking behind your site.
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