Do any of you do Charity work?

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Just out of curiosity...does any of you guys do charity work?

I'd like to do something like that in the future and I guess the way I could help best would probably SEO/internet stuff. However, I've been wondering if charities really need that kind of stuff? Ive heard it more than once before so apparently there is a need, but I'm wondering how a ranking in the SERPs helps a charity...

I mean..people are probably not googling for "Donate money to charity" (ok then again I just found out they are googling for "buy my house" so maybe Im wrong hehe).

But anyway..what I'm really trying to ask is if a lot of charities could use help with SEO/basic web stuff...and if for a lot of them the basics and some education on the topic couldnt help quite a bit (as in making their site search-friendly..optimizing on-page stuff (title tag, etc.)) and teaching them on how to do link building..that kind of thing.

I'd be really interested from anyone who is doing something like that. thanks!

[AussieWebmaster]

Greg Niland at GoodRoi.com did a free training conference for non-profits - and over at IM Charities we have been doing events for various charities during the search conferences... raised over 100k so far.

You may want to just look for local charities and offer to help them get better positioning in the search engines....

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

thanks for the input.

What is IM charities, if you dont mind me asking? I just googled for that name (+SEO) and couldnt find much?

Approaching local charities is what I had in mind. But I've kind of been wondering how SEO could deliver value to charities. I'll try to outline my thoughts:

What kind of search terms would people that are willing to donate money to charities search for?

I can imagine that some people might see or hear about the terrible situation of children in country x (random example). Then they might go to google and type in "How can I help children in country x?" (or something like that).

But in that case helping a certain website in those SERPs rank better wouldn't necessary help that good cause, because it wouldn't really matter through which website money is donated, helping one charity website rank higher will make other charity websites rank lower, but the amount of money raised would be the same.

Thus the only ways I can see that actual SEO (not other aspects of internet marketing) would deliver value to charities is by doing one of those two things:

- Finding websites that have a good chance of getting people to donate money (because of ease of use/no usability issues..which make it easy to donate money for example)

Or

- Helping a charity organization rank better in SERPs where that charity organization isn't competing with other charity organizations....And my main question is: Do such situations exist? Or will doing SEO for one charity organization usually just outrank another charity organization (and thus do little or nothing for the good cause)?

I'm sure such situations do exist, but I'm wondering how effective actual SEO is for charity organizations in most cases.

Will focussing on improving conversion rate/amount of money donated (which one should be able to improve through analytics & usability) do a lot more for such organizations than SEO can?

thanks!

[bradbox]

You may want to just look for local charities and offer to help them get better positioning in the search engines....

I agree with this comment - I think there are a lot of local charities/ clubs/ interest groups which may have set up a small website and really need some help. Chances are, you'll probably enjoy these projects than the professional work!

Ironically there can be extra expectation from free work than professional work, so be ultra clear on what you need from the charity's webmaster/content people up front.

Good luck.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Thanks for the warning about the high expectations hehe, I'll make sure to keep that in mind.