For associations, it is important to keep your website up to date with relevant content, not only for good Google search results but also to keep members updated and informed on the latest industry news and information. Professional associations can benefit from SEO in a number of ways: reaching new members, educating the public, keeping your association on top-of-mind. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of improving your web presence online and your rankings in search engine results. It is an ongoing process that requires a lot of work but can also grow your website traffic in no time.
Your association needs to know about the power of strong SEO for attracting audiences to your website. Without SEO, your audience could miss out on some seriously valuable information in a sea of web content.
If you can create a successful SEO strategy, you can ensure your content will be viewed by current and new members alike.
Make your website SEO-friendly
The first place you should start when diving into SEO is your association’s own website. A SEO-friendly website is essential for prime web traffic. Your association spends a lot of time making sure its website is user-friendly, so you want to make sure your target audience is able to find and enjoy it. Here’s the best part: optimizing your website for SEO can be done at any time. You don’t have to create a new website or web page in order to have a powerful SEO. You can improve any website’s SEO whenever your association is looking for an audience boost.
Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords give brands the ability to reach very specific subsets of the audience that are not easy to market to by other means. For example, an association can use SEO keywords to target searches for “professional association management and consulting services”. A robust SEO campaign can target thousands of such long-tail keywords, with the cumulative effect of opening a line of communication with scores of micro-markets.
Acronyms aren’t good keywords
Many membership organizations assume that the acronym for their organization name is a good keyword, but they are mistaken. Acronyms often aren’t good keyword choices because they stand for so many different things. Instead, search for keyword phrases that include the whole name of your organization, as well as its industry. If your organization is regional, include terms related to the geographic location you serve. In addition, take note of the search terms for which your competitors rank.
Develop a Link Strategy
Link-building is a vital component of SEO. Search engines view links as votes and the more websites linking back to you, the better! However, it is important to keep in mind that quantity of links isn’t all that matters. The quality of the link counts as well.
Put web analytics to good use
Without analytics data, SEO becomes guesswork. It’s essential to measure the results of your SEO efforts and tweak them based on your findings. Analytics programs tell you how much traffic your site is getting, which sites are referring traffic to your site, what keywords people are using to find your site, and which types of content are the most popular among your target audience. You can also set goals in your analytics program to ensure that your site achieves desired results. Some goals that you may want your membership organization’s website to achieve include increasing membership applications and attracting more email newsletter subscribers.
