Google for Nonprofits Blog: 2010

Ring In The New Year With Accessible Content: Website Clinic For Non-Profits

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Cross Posted on the Webmaster Central Blog

In our previous post, we did some source code housekeeping -- just in time for the holidays. But once users have landed on your site, how can you make sure they’ll know how to get around?

As it turns out, easily accessible content on your site can make a big difference. Users tend to have a better experience when a site helps them find and understand its content. Having an accessible site not only empowers users, it also helps search engines understand what your site is really about.

So if you’ve resolved to boost your site’s user experience and online presence for the new year, improving your content accessibility is a great way to start. Thankfully, there are tons of features you can add to make your site more accessible. In this post, we’ll highlight three of them:

Intuitive navigation
Concise, descriptive anchor text for links
Unique, accurate page titles throughout the site

Intuitive navigation

Help users avoid confusion by providing them with intuitive navigation, so that when they arrive at your site, they’ll know where to click to find the information they’re looking for.

Here are three features you can implement in order to lead your users down the right path:

Navigational menu: Having a menu with links to the site’s most important pages is the fastest, easiest way to show users where to click next.
Text-based links: While drop-down menus, image-based links, and animation-based links can be appealing, keep in mind that users on text-only devices and some search engines may not be able to see or understand these links. Thus, many users prefer text-based links, which are also easier for search engines to crawl and interpret.
User-viewable site map: 59% of our submissions did not have a user-viewable site map. By providing one, you display the structure of your site and give the user easy one-click navigation. If users are having trouble finding specific pages on your site, a site map can help them find their way. Don’t send your users into the wild without a map!

Let’s explore how these features can make a site’s navigation more intuitive by looking at one of our submitted sites, Philanthropedia.

Thanks to this site’s clean navigational menu, users can find all of the site’s important pages within a few clicks. Wherever users end up on the site, they can always click on the “Home” button to return to the main page, or on any of the links in the menu to return to the site’s important subpages. Like all of the links on this site, the links in the navigational menu are text-based links, which make it easier for both search engines and users to access the site’s content. Finally, Philanthropedia has included a user-viewable site map, shown below, in case visitors are looking for a specific page not listed in the main menu.

Concise, descriptive anchor text for links

Anchor text -- the clickable text of a link -- can help users quickly decide which links they want to click on and find out more about. Meaningful anchor text makes it easier for users to navigate around your site and also helps search engines understand what the link’s destination page is about.

20% of our submissions could improve their sites by improving the anchor text used in some of their internal links. When writing anchor text, keep two things in mind:

Be descriptive: Use words that are relevant to the destination page, avoiding generic phrases like “click here” or “article.” Make sure the user can get a snapshot of the destination page’s overall content and functionality by reading the anchor text.
Keep it concise: Anchor text that contains a few words or a short phrase is more attractive and convenient for users to read than a sentence or paragraph-long link.

Let’s take a look at how anchor text played out in two user-submitted examples:

Organization	Anchor Text Examples	Anchor Text Behavior	User Friendliness
The Mosaic Project	Work for Mosaic Order Our Curriculum Guide Outdoor School	Active verb phrases and rich nouns accurately describe the pages that the links are pointing to.	High: Users can get an accurate idea of the content on the links’ destination pages just by reading the anchor text.
Asian Liver Center	Learn more here	Generic phrases give little insight into the pages that the links are pointing to.	Low: The anchor text is too generic and does not give users an idea of what the linked-to content is.

You can learn more about anchor text and internal linking strategies by checking out this blog post on the importance of link architecture.

Unique, accurate page titles throughout the site

Each page on your site is different, so flaunt your site’s diversity by giving a unique title to each page. Giving each page a unique title lets search engines know how that page is distinct from others within your site. In our analysis, over 28% of sites could have improved their site quality by adding unique page titles.

Let’s check out a few more examples to see what a difference unique, accurate page titles can make:

Organization	Page Title Examples	Page Title Behavior	User Friendliness
VAMS International	Upcoming Events \| VAMS International Request Service \| VAMS International FAQ’s \| VAMS International	Concise, rich language joined with the organization’s name accurately describes the corresponding pages. The titles show how each page is unique while also acknowledging that they are all associated with one organization.	High: Each page’s content is relevant to its title, and the user can get a good idea of each page’s unique offerings and functionality.
MHCD Evaluation and Research	MHCD Evaluation and Research	This page title is too general and does not accurately describe the content on each page. The same title is used across all the pages on this site.	Low: This site contains a lot of diverse content and rich functionality; however, the uniform page titles do not convey these strengths.

Wrapping things up

We hope that this blog post has given you some ideas on how to ring in the new year with improved content accessibility, which can boost the user experience and online presence for your site.

To learn more about the features discussed here and in our previous two site clinic posts, check out our SEO Report Card and SEO Starter Guide.

This blog post wraps up our website clinic for non-profits. We send our warmest regards to all the great non-profit causes you are working on, and thanks to everyone who took the time to submit their sites and read our posts!

Posted by Jen Lee and Alexi Douvas, Search Quality Evaluation Team

Contributors: Aditya Goradia, Brandon Falls, Charlene Perez, Diara Dankert, Michael Wyszomierski, and Nelson Bradley

Holiday Source Code Housekeeping: Website Clinic for Non-Profits

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Webmaster Level: BeginnerCo-hosted on the Webmaster Central Blog
As the holiday season comes around, we all have a bit of housekeeping to do. This is precisely why we wanted to focus the second post in our site clinic series on cleaning up your source code. Throughout our analysis of submitted non-profit websites, we noticed some confusion about what HTML markup, or tags, to use where, and what content to place within them, both of which could have significant impact on users and how your website looks on the search results page.
Before you deck the halls, deck out your <title> elementsOut of all the submitted non-profit websites, 27% were misusing their <title> elements, which are critical in letting both Google and users know what’s important to your website. Typically, a search engine will display ~60 characters from your title element; this is valuable real estate, so you should use it! Before getting into the actual code, let’s first take a look at how a great title element from one of our submitted sites, Sharp, will appear in the search results page:

Ideally, a great <title> element will include the name of the organization, along with a descriptive tag line. Let’s take a look at some submitted examples:

Organization	<title> source code	User Friendliness	Tag Behavior
Sharp	<title>Top San Diego Doctors and Hospitals - Sharp HealthCare</title>	Best	Includes organization’s name and a descriptive tag line
Interieur	<title>Interieur 2010 - 15-24 October Kortrijk, Belgium</title>	Good	Includes the organization’s name and a non-descriptive tag line
VAMS International	<title>Visual Arts and Music for Society \| VAMS International</title>	Okay	Includes only the organization’s name

If you don’t specify a <title> tag, then Google will try to create a title for you. You can probably do better than our best guess, so go for it: take control of your <title> tag! It’s a simple fix that can make a huge difference. Using specific <title> tags for your deeper URLs is also important, and we’ll address that in our next site clinic post.

Keep an eye on your description meta tags

Description meta tags weren’t being utilized to their full potential in 54% of submitted sites. These tags are often used to populate the two-line snippet provided to users in the search results page. With a solid snippet, you can get your potential readers excited and ready to learn more about your organization. Let’s take another look at a good example from among the submitted sites, Tales of Aussie Rescue:

If description meta tags are absent or not relevant, a snippet will be chosen from the page’s content automatically. If you’re lucky and have a good snippet auto-selected, keep in mind that search engines vary in the way that they select snippets, so it’s better to keep things consistent and relevant by writing a solid description meta tag.

Keep your <h> elements in their place

Another quick fix in your housekeeping is assuring your website makes proper use of heading tags. In our non-profit study, nearly 19% of submitted sites had room for improvement with heading elements. The most common problem in heading tags was the tendency to initiate headers with an <h2> or <h3> tag while not including an <h1> tag, presumably for aesthetic reasons.

Headings give you the opportunity to tell both Google and users what’s important to you and your website. The lower the number on your heading tag, the more important the text, in the eyes of Google and your users. Take advantage of that <h1> tag! If you don’t like how an <h1> tag is rendered visually, you can always alter its appearance in your CSS.

Use alt text for images

Everyone is always proud to display their family photos come holiday season, but don’t forget to tell us what they’re all about. Over 37% of analyzed sites were not making appropriate use of the image alt attribute. If used properly, this attribute can:

Help Google understand what your image is
Allow users on text-only browsers, with accessibility problems, or on limited devices to understand your images

Keep in mind, rich and descriptive alt text is the key here. Let’s take another look at some of our submitted sites and their alt attribute usage:

Organization	Source Code	User Friendliness	Tag Behavior
Sponsor A Puppy	<img alt="Sponsor a Puppy logo" src=...	Best: the alt text specifies the image is the organization’s main logo	Uses rich, descriptive alt text to describe images, buttons, and logos
Philanthropedia	<img alt="Logo" height=...	Good: the alt text specifies the image is a logo, but does not further describe it by the organization or its behavior	Uses non-descriptive alt text for images, buttons, and logos, or uses alt text only sporadically
Coastal Community Foundation	<img src="...”>	Not ideal: alt text not present	No use of alt text, or use of text that does not add meaning (often seen in numbering the images)

A little window shopping for your New Year’s resolution

Google has some great resources to further address best practices in your source code. For starters, you can use our HTML Suggestion Tool in Webmaster Tools. Also, it’s always a good practice to make your site accessible to all viewers.

Posted by Alexi Douvas and Jen Lee, Search Quality TeamContributors: Aditya Goradia, Brandon Falls, Charlene Perez, Diara Dankert, Michael Wyszomierski, and Nelson Bradley

Introducing Grantspro

Monday, December 20, 2010

GrantsproWhat is Grantspro? our website.How is Grantspro different from Additional Services?What if I’m currently enrolled in Additional Services? Active Account Management requirementsour Help Center Grantspro discussion forum.

A Helping Holiday Hand: Website Clinic for Non-Profits

Monday, December 20, 2010

Webmaster Central BlogA New Year’s resolutionsubmit their organization’s siteMaking our list, checking it twiceVisions of... URLs... dancing in our heads

Keep an eye on proper canonicalization: 56% of analyzed non-profit sites could improve their canonicalization practices. You can read more about canonicalization in this blog post from a previous site clinic.

Make sure your volunteer/support sections are visible: 29% of our submissions could improve their sites by making their support, volunteer, or donation sections easier to find. A great way to accomplish this is to add a donations tab to your navigation bar so it’s just one click away at all times.

Protect your confidential information: Lots of non-profits, especially those in the medical industry, deal with some very important and confidential information. Read up on how to control your crawled and indexed content, and remember to protect confidential content through proper authentication measures.

Make your Flash sites search engine friendly: We saw some beautiful sites running on Flash. Search engines have a hard time understanding Flash files, and we’re working to improve Flash comprehension on our end, but here are some discussion points on how you can help us understand your Flash content.

Posted by Alexi Douvas & Jen Lee, Search Quality Evaluation Team

Sharing Holiday Cheer With Google Maps

Thursday, December 16, 2010

the Official Google Blogten holiday coverslocal food bank

Thanks to Christoff Niemann for inspiration.

With all of the holiday decorations around San Francisco, I enjoy walking or biking around and taking in the sights. I can send this card to my friends to get them thinking about environmentally-friendly alternate modes of transportation, and include biking directions to an upcoming dinner (after all, snow is a rare sight in San Francisco).

Finally, doing good can also mean just brightening someone’s day, so I will send this cheerful holiday greeting to my big brother in Colorado to let him know that I’m looking forward to seeing him over the holidays.

You too can share the holiday spirit with these online cards, so start sending them at googlemapsholidays.appspot.com. Happy holidays!

Posted by Kirsten Olsen Cahill, Google.org Team

Grantee best practices summary

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Google Grantees recently responded to a global survey about how they use their Google Grant and the features they’d like to see in the future. The responses took on a number of themes and we’re happy to be able to share some of the best practices with you to put into place in your organization.

Keywords
Grantees have lots of strategies for building and maintaining strong keyword lists. One organization uses brochures from industry conferences (including conferences that they themselves host) to add relevant industry terms to their keyword list.

A grantee featured on our testimonials page recommends using keyword insertion, as they’re seeing higher click-through rates immediately after implementing this feature.

Finally, one grantee suggests that a good way to optimize your keywords is to adjust and modify them based on CTRs found in your AdWords account. Determine a CTR threshold (anything higher than 1% is a good start) and then modify any terms that fall below that threshold.

Active management
Active account management, while more time consuming than creating set-it and forget-it campaigns, came up repeatedly in the survey responses and was credited with everything from increasing CTRs to being able to reach high quality leads through AdWords grants.

More than a few grantees say they’ve identified a single person in their organization to dedicate to managing their AdWords account (even if that person works on other projects and is a volunteer) and some are using a set schedule to organize updates and management tasks for this individual.

One grantee on our testimonial page sums up the feedback rather well by saying,
“Utilizing the Google Grants program requires attention to the responses to various campaigns which must be continually updated and improved. A passive approach to the program may have some positive results, but utilizing the various metrics (especially the countries and markets which are being most responsive) to improve the campaigns and (in our case) to better target audience interests is the key to success.”

Opportunities
Grantees shared great insight about how they’re making the most of opportunities available to them through a variety of outlets, beyond that of just Google Grants.

Many of you are using Google Checkout with great success and sharing that success with your founders and executive boards to get buy-in for continued marketing initiatives.

Some of you, faced with competitive markets, have even gotten budgets allocated for paid AdWords campaigns so that you can use ads on the Display Network, options not available through Google Grants.

Also exciting are those of you who are using the relevant suggestions that show up in your Opportunities tab in AdWords to try new tactics with your campaigns.

Some of the feedback we got will be answered in upcoming blog posts, so stay tuned to our blog (or add our RSS feed to your Reader) for posts covering some of the most common requests and feedback about Grants budget restrictions, managing the $1 Max CPC cap, support options, ad approvals, SEO/SEM information, measuring success and managing AdWords with time constraints.

All in all, we’re inspired by your savvy and dedication to success with AdWords and Google Grants. We hope you’ll visit our Discussion Forum to continue sharing your best practices with other grantees and submit your testimonials so that we can all learn from your experiences.

Join Your Favorite YouTube Stars And Charities For A Live Event This Saturday

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Cross posted on the YouTube BlogvlogbrothersProject for AwesomeProject for Awesome 2010daneboe of Annoying OrangeMichelle PhanPhil DeFrancoMichael BuckleyShay CarliJustineBeatbullyingDonorsChooseMake A Wish FoundationMarine Toys For Tots FoundationOpen UniversityPartners In HealthSave The ChildrenWater.orgPosted by Margaret Healy, YouTube Team

Keyword Tool Updates

Friday, December 10, 2010

The AdWords Keyword Tool has some exciting new features! Please check out the new features below.

There are three new ways to filter and refine your keyword list. With the updates you can:

Choose specific terms to include or exclude from your keyword list

Use the ‘More like these’ button to search for terms that are similar to the specific keyword ideas you’ve selected from the table

Get only results that include the exact words or phrases (and their close synonyms) you’ve typed in the search box

You can also add stars to keywords that you would like to save while you are still searching for new keyword ideas. You can review your starred keywords in the ‘Stars’ panel on the left side of the tool.

The updated Keyword Tool also allows you to view your selected keywords in text form, so that you can easily edit them and paste them in a spreadsheet or AdWords Editor. Simply select the ‘View as text’ button!

We hope you take advantage of these new features. Please provide feedback here so we can continue to make improvements.

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Google Grants Team

When Should I Make Changes In My Account?

Thursday, December 9, 2010

clicksconversionsvideo.negative keywords?AdWords Optimization Center.

App'y Holidays From Google

Thursday, December 2, 2010

The holidays are a hectic time for all of us, especially nonprofit organizations that rely on the seasonal spirit of giving to sustain operations throughout the year. As you move into this busy time, we thought you might like a few tips on how using Google Apps and other tools can help you make a change and save some time this holiday season.

To reach more donors: Use these Google Docs templates to attract and engage supporters with newsletters, event invitations, and more.

To improve operations: Try out this project planning template to save time and better organize your staff and volunteers.

To raise awareness: Check out Google Fusion Tables to show impact or add a custom map to your website.

For more ideas of how Google’s tools can help expand your impact and to view cases studies from fellow nonprofits, visit the Google for Nonprofits website. Share your stories by telling us how Google products have helped your organization.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google For Nonprofits Team

Resource round-up for November

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

One agency/client experience with Google GrantsUK agency a client’s case studySocial media tipsa list Find marketing, tech and other specialists for your org’s projectsSparked.comWhat is a Networked Nonprofit?Beth KanterThe Networked Nonprofita recent meet up discussion grouphere

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

FAQs From New Google Grantees

Thursday, November 18, 2010

We offer grantees educational resources such as the Beginner's Guide and the Google Grants Help Center. We recommend referring to these resources whenever you have questions, but also wanted to share some frequently asked questions that we have been receiving from prospective grantees and newbies.

1. Does our organization already have to be established and with a developed reputation in order to be eligible for Google Grants?

No. Do not hesitate to make full use of this program just because your organization is new. Although your organization's success and reputation are of great value, we also support newly established organizations with a passion for charity. However, please be aware that we ask your organization to have a charity status in your country. (In the U.S., for example, 501(c)(3) status is required.) You can refer to our program guidelines for detailed information around eligibility requirements.

2. We do not have in-depth knowledge of Google AdWords. Should we hire an advertising agency to manage our account?

AdWords is developed to be a self-service product, and with our online resources you should be able to get started comfortably. As a participant in the Google Grants program, we require you to be responsive to our email requests and log in to your account monthly (if not more often) to review campaign performance and improve your account, tasks that do not require you to hire an agency.

3. Within our organization we have multiple projects with different goals. Can we have multiple AdWords accounts to manage these projects independently?

At this time, each organization may only have a single AdWords account. However, your organization can have multiple campaigns within your account, with each campaign focused on a distinct goal or project.

4. Can Google sponsor events organized by our organization, or other aspects of our business?

Google Grants is a program specifically designed to support charitable organizations through providing a free Google AdWords account and does not involve funding other aspects of these organizations.

Posted by Koichi Goto, Google AdWords Team

Google Grants Ad Best Practices And Policies

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Google Grantssubmitted to a new review.advertising policies.Ad creative policies:AdWords Help Centerthis Help Center article.Link policies:this new policy section

Posted by Veronica Diquattro, AdOps Team

AdWords Celebrates 10 Years: Share Your Story

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

launchedshare your storiesYouTubethe AdWords 10 YouTube channel.Google AdWords blogPosted by Janelle Kuhlman, Google Grants Team

Optimization Best Practices: Tracking Performance

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Monitoring your AdWords account performance allows you to make informed optimization decisions and is an important part of managing a successful account. AdWords provides many easy-to-use free tools that Grantees should take advantage of on a regular basis. Check out a few tips on tracking your account performance below.

Check Account Statistics

You can view your account statistics at the campaign, ad group and keyword levels. These metrics are all good indicators of how well your campaign is performing. Account statistics include clicks, impressions, CTR (clickthrough rate), average CPC (cost-per-click) and average position.

There are several things you will want to consider when reviewing these statistics and evaluating how well your campaigns are performing:

Whether or not your ads are running
Amount of impressions and clicks your ads are accruing
How your campaign’s traffic is converting into meaningful actions such as donations

Create Custom Alerts

An easy way to identify changes in your account is to create custom alerts for metrics you want to measure. Once you create an alert and specify the parameters of what you want to monitor, you will be automatically notified when certain changes occur within your campaigns and ad groups. Learn more about creating custom alerts at the AdWords Help Center.

Run Reports Regularly

You can create reports that tell you exactly what statistics you want to know at the campaign, ad group and keyword level. These reports are available through the Report Center and the Campaigns tab. You can view the reports directly in your account or download them in a variety of common formats. You also have the ability to schedule reports to be sent to you via email automatically.

Check out the following reports:

Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you identify how people found your site, how they explored it and how you can enhance visitor experience. For more details on how to use Google Analytics please check out our past blog post.

For more optimization tips and strategies please visit the AdWords Optimization Center.

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Google Grants Team

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