Your Non-Profit Web Presence and Learning from Big Think Tanks
CAP, Urban Institute, the Economic Policy Institute, and others are well-respected organizations that have a lot of authority with the press and on the web. We can learn a lot from big think tanks when it comes to your non-profit web presence.
Why are think tanks dominant in search? They have a ton of people asking them for comments and they have a ton of backlinks.
Why do they have so much expertise? These think tanks have online authority ratings that are higher than some publications. This, again, is mainly due to backlinks. When authority publications link to your site, your site gains authority and it becomes easier for you to rank higher in search results.
Why do they get good site traffic? Most of these think tanks explain difficult subjects in an easily understandable way. Also, their information is kept in a way you can easily find it.
So how do we learn from a think tank to improve your non-profit web presence? Follow these steps:
- Focus on being a source of information on your topic. Also, develop good relationships with the press, other issue groups, and other link generators.
- Focus on developing relationships with other sites that have a high authority. Ranking educational institutions and big media sites will be a good place to start for your non-profit web presence.
- Organize your information in a way people can actually find it.
- Write about your topic in a way people can understand it.
- Proactively answer questions on your topic.
- Your focus is more important than money. You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a website and still get little traffic. By becoming focused on putting out good content on a regular basis and promoting the content, you can harness your team to bring people to your site.
Is this hard to do? Sure, but most non-profits spend very little time thinking about how they can become more reader friendly.