SEO for Charity – Winning Streak Continues

So I didn’t win first place in Bruce Clay’s SEO Charity Contest but I did receive an honorary mention and a free one year subscription to the SEOToolSet. I probably could have put more effort into my submission but this isn’t bad for just an hour or so of work. Below is my submission for the contest, which outlines the SEO strategy I would use to increase online visibility for my organization of choice. What would you do different?

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My girlfriend works for the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium (SFCCC) so I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity for me to volunteer and make a contribution to the non-profit’s cause. I may not have the medical knowledge to take part in day-to-day activities but a little SEO goes a long way in promoting the cause.

SFCCC Description

“The community-based, non-profit partner clinics of the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium (SFCCC) are cornerstones in San Francisco’s health care delivery system. From 1956 to 1992, these clinics were created in under-served neighborhoods to ensure that people who are at greatest risk for poor health outcomes – due to such things as lack of insurance, low-income or homelessness – did not continue to fall between the cracks in our health care system.”

Being a so-called “cornerstone” in SF’s health care delivery system, it’s imperative that the search engines represent it as such. Already I can see a lot of deficiencies with the SFCCC website and many opportunities for significant improvement both in terms of search engine rankings and branding.

Current Situation

sfccc.org is an aged domain (1998) with tons of ranking potential. It currently ranks #2 in Google for ’san francisco clinic’ and has 87 pages indexed. This is great for a site that is not optimized for search engines but SFCCC can see tremendous increases in visibility by implementing the following SEO recommendations.

Analytics

SFCCC is not tracking website visitors to its maximum potential. By collecting information about the surfing habits of website visitors, SFCCC can better use its site to cater to the needs of its customers and supporters. Google Analytics is a free program that is easy to use and provides detailed information.

Site Structure

SFCCC has poor site architecture that does not fully convey the relevency of its pages about certain topics. Because of this, search engines are unable to rank the SFCCC site appropriately for the most important keywords. Some of the possible improvements listed below would give search engines more information and help the site to rank more favorably.

• Customized title tags
• Add header tags for each page
• Meta description tags for each page
• Sitemap, HTML & XML
• Internal linking structure
• Appropriate use of Javascript & CSS
• Image Alt text

Keywords

SFCC is not using the most effective keywords on its pages to increase search engine visibility. For example, on it’s animal clinic page, the title being used is “VetSOS”. By tailoring tags and using keywords with high search frequency in on-page copy, SFCCC can receive a higher level of exposure in search engine results pages.

Local Search

SFCCC is not represented in some of the most well-known local directories such as Yahoo Local and Google Maps. It is especially important to be included because SFCCC serves a specific region and has a target audience tied to a single geographic location.

Link Building

According to Yahoo, SFCCC has only 313 backlinks. Since links are such a huge part of the ranking algorithms in search engines, it’s important for SFCCC to engage in an active link building campaign with related sites in the industry. SFCCC is a well known and authoritative organization so it will be possible to attain hundreds of links from quality sites around the web.

Of course this is just a short description of what would need to be done, but I think it provides a good general outline for the strategy needed to help SFCCC achieve higher search engine visibility. Rock on.

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