5 Critical Pieces of SEO Advice for Membership Organizations
SEO Advice for Membership Organizations
Boost your membership organization or association's search engine rankings by following the tried and true SEO advice.
No matter how attractive your membership 
organization's website is, it won't grow your bottom line if potential members can't find it. When people look to join a membership organization or association in this day and age, they start their search on the Internet. SEO, or search engine optimization, can mean the difference between being found and being totally overlooked by your target audience.
SEO is the process of improving a web page's visibility by optimizing its content and structure to achieve higher search engine rankings. But for most membership organizations, SEO is unknown territory. Many membership organization websites lack SEO basics that could help them appear more prominently in search results related to their industries. Even if you're not interested in growing your organization's membership or your organization doesn't cater to outsiders, your website could benefit from SEO. For example, on-page SEO techniques, like meta tag optimization, make it easier for your members to find internal site content.
SEO enables you to attract the attention of people who may become members of your organization, as well as assist existing members. Without SEO, people may never learn of your membership organization's existence. Here are some SEO tips that will help your membership organization get found online.
1. Ask questions
It's important to have a solid plan in place before moving forward with the SEO process. It's also critical that all of the members of your team share the same vision for your website. Here are some good questions to ask when getting started:
•What do we want our site to be?
•Why do people visit our site?
•What do we want our site visitors to do?
In order to create content and build a site that's important to your target audience, give some thought to the above questions. It doesn't matter if your website gets found if potential members end up ignoring it.
2. 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.
Avoid using industry jargon if you want to appeal to people outside of your industry. If your organization is only interested in reaching people within your industry, however, jargon may not be an issue.
3. Quality content is key
Quality content is the key to a membership organization website's success. In the long run, it's better to write content for the end user than write content that is solely designed to attract search engine traffic.
Figure out what information you'd like everyone, from the public to legislators to the media, to find on your site and then craft content around those topics. Use a keyword research tool to determine what relevant keyword phrases people are searching for and then include those keywords in the title and header, as well as towards the beginning of the content. Most readers just skim content, so avoid writing War and Peace-esque articles for your membership organization's site.
4. 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.
5. Internal linking and URLs matter
Even the smallest membership organizations can easily have websites with over 1,000 pages. To ensure that both users and search engines know which pages are relevant and that they're able to find your content, use internal links with descriptive anchor text. In addition, use search-friendly, static URLs that accurately describe page content and contain target keywords, rather than dynamic URLs that are a jumbled mix of letters, numbers, exclamation points, slashes, underscores, etc.
BOOST TRAFFIC and EXPAND YOUR MEMBERSHIP BASE with efelle's SEO Services
Increasing your membership organization's search engine visibility can help to raise awareness about your organization, drive more traffic to your site, and boost member applications and event registrations. Call 206.384.4909 or fill out our online contact form to learn more about our SEO services and schedule a free consultation.
See Also:
Website SEO Search Optimization for Business Owners
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