The sources of this traffic can be broken down into a few basic categories:

1. Search Engines – People type in certain terms in a search engine, and websites connected with your cause come up as search results.  Example: A person types “how can I help African children” into a search engine, and one of the Shoes-for-Africa entries comes up as a result, with a web page explaining how their donation will help get shoes to African children.
2. Direct referrals from other websites – Example: Another charity which provides food to poor children has a website called www.food4all.org, (another made-up name at the time of this writing) which has a page with links to other charities.  One of these links leads to to www.shoes4all.org. A person visits www.food4all.org, arrives to the “links” page, and clicks on the link to www.shoes4all.org .
3. Word-of-Mouth and Offline Advertising – This includes offline referrals, where people tell friends and contacts to visit the Shoes For All website, people emailing each other about the Shoes for All movement, people passing around business cards or flyers with URLs of Shoes for All websites, and notices and billboards which advertise and give the address of the website, and even bumper stickers, T-Shirts, or coffee cups with the website address printed on them.
4. Direct Traffic – This would occur if a visitor directly types in the address of < strong>in his or her browser, in order to reach the website.  This usually would occur when the person already knows about the website and remembers its address, or when the person is being referred through an offline channel as in point #3 above.

The first method – search engines – is possibly the most important one because of its potentials to reach anyone and everyone who might be interested in the Shoes for All movement (even if they have never heard of the movement before).

Your goal is to have your organization’s websites come up as often as possible in search results, whenever people search for related keywords.

There will be a few principle keywords that result in traffic to your site, and there will be some variations of those keywords.  For example, your site might receive traffic from these main keywords:

A bar graph of these keywords would look like this:

Why am I showing you this? So I can explain an important term which I will be using in this book. That term is Long Tail Keywords.

Long tail keywords are the variations of keywords which can be used to find your organization’s websites, when each variation in itself does not get a large volume of searches, but all combined, they get a considerable amount of traffic.

Why are they called “long tail keywords?” Look at the bar graph above and imagine that it is a picture of a blue animal, perhaps a dog, with the left side being the head, and the right side being a long tail. All of those keywords which make up the “tail” of our bar graph are called “long tail keywords.”

Good. Now that that is out of the way, I can use the term “long tail keywords” and have some confidence that you know what I am talking about.

My point right now is that you will want your organization’s websites to come up as often as possible, when people type related search terms in to Google or other search engines.

Why do People Search?

One could consider that, when people type in a search term, they are stating a problem or a question. They are looking for a solution or an answer.  When your website appears in the search result, it should give the solution to that problem or the answer to that question, as often as possible. Searchers may have never heard of your organization before. All they know is that they are looking for information on something, or they are trying to solve some kind of problem.

If your organization has a solution or an answer to that problem, it should come up as a result when people type in those search terms.

That seems obvious but it is far too often overlooked.

When a person types in “charity for children” your organization should be amongst the search results, as it should be when they type in “shoes for children,” “help Burmese kids,” “donate to charity in Ecuador,” or whatever the case may be – providing that the organization has branches in those areas and runs programs which help solve those problems.

If you work for the organization in question, or if you are the webmaster of one of their websites, its important to understand this.

But what if you don’t? What if you are simply a member of the public who supports the Shoes for All movement? Where do you come in? Can you make a difference in the SEO of the Shoes for All movement? 

Yes, you can.

In fact, you can make a big difference, and with far less technical knowledge than you might think. 

The reason for this concerns the subject of my next post in this series.

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at How People Find Your Organization on the Internet.

What is a Search Engine?

A search engine is basically a computer program which helps people find information on the internet.  If you go to www.google.com, enter the word “dog collars” in the blank, and hit “enter,” you will get a long list of links to websites.  The program that provided that list for you is the search engine which belongs to Google Inc.

Strictly and technically speaking, Google itself is not a search engine, but a company which owns a search engine (among other things).  However, in day-to-day use, people use the term “search engine” to refer to the companies which run search engines, and the websites where visitors can find search engines.  Therefore, one would say “Google is my favorite search engine” as opposed to saying “my favorite search engine is the one run by Google.”  It’s much simpler to refer to it this way.

The Purpose of a Search Engine

When you go to a website like Google and type a word or phrase into the search engine, you probably are hoping to find results which are:

• Relevant
• Good Quality
• Helpful
• Informative
• Useful
• Varied

Imagine if you went to a search engine and typed in “dog collars,” but then got results such as the following:

• Links to websites about coffee cups
• Pages written in unclear English with bad grammar, which are difficult to read, and uninformative.
• Links to same website appearing over and over in the top 10 positions, instead of links to a variety of different websites with information on dog collars
• Or, even worse yet, pages of incoherent gibberish which simply have the word “dog collars” repeated over and over in their text.

You would probably feel that search engine was not very useful, and you wouldn’t use that search engine again. You would look for a better one.

The people who run search engines, and who write the programs that operate them, are aware of this fact. They want their search engines to provide results which are as useful, relevant, and high-quality as possible. This will make people want to use those search engines more.  The more people use their search engines, the more money they make (from advertisers).  And its also a point of pride to give a good service.

On the other side of the coin, there are people who work against the search engines.

How and why would they do that? Well, usually these are people who own websites. They want their websites to rank well in the search engines, but they don’t want to work too hard to get them there. So they try to short-cut the system, and cheat their way to the top.

It’s okay to practice SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in order to try to get to the top. But proper SEO includes building high-quality and useful websites which will provide useful and relevant information to the people who are searching for information online. When webmasters try to trick the search engines into giving them higher rankings, or more traffic than they deserve, this is called “black hat SEO.”

In an effort to combat black-hat SEO and to maintain the integrity of their search results, search engines are continually modifying and improving their algorithms.  (An algorithm is basically a set of instructions given to a computer, which tells a computer what to do an how to do it.  Search engine algorithms tell computers how to decide which search results to offer up, when an internet user enters a search query.)

Every time someone comes up with a new trick about how to get around the algorithms, the search engine companies come out with a new algorithm in response – and so it goes.

For the most part, search engines keep their algorithms a secret, in order to make it harder for people to try to shortcut them.

Therefore, search engine optimization is an interesting field.  It is an area of constant change, some mystery, occasional or not-so-occasional guess-work, and lots of room for opinion.

At the same time, there are many key basic facts that you can learn and apply, successfully and ethically, in order to get more relevant traffic to a website or websites. 

Most importantly, keep in mind what the purpose of a search engine is – so that you can work with it, and not against it.

Good website content and good SEO go hand-in-hand. Together, they are a highly powerful combination.  One without the other is not.

What does this have to do with your message or your cause? If you want to help support and promote a cause, you may or may not own a website about that cause. But most likely, someone else does.

Did you know that you yourself have an incredible amount of power to help improve the SEO of websites which do not belong to you?  And that you can do this ethically, honestly, and very easily?

Simply by improving the SEO of websites which promote your cause or message, you are helping to get more visitors to those websites – which means more traffic, more support, and more members for those organizations.

And possibly most importantly, it means that more people will view, read, or hear the message you want them to get, and then spread it even further.

In future posts I will discuss what you can do to help improve the SEO of websites that don’t belong to you.

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at Search Engines.

This applies whether you own your own website or not, whether you are a professional Internet Marketer or a complete novice to the net.

For the sake of example through this book, we will imagine that you are promoting a fictitious organization which has the purpose of supplying shoes to children in poor developing countries. Let’s say the name of the organization you support is “Shoes for All” and its principle official website is located at www.shoes4all.org (a made-up domain name at the time of writing).

Your organization might have other chapters within it, such as Shoes for All in Africa, Shoes for All in India, etc. Thus, there might be several related websites for each of these smaller organizations.

In addition to the official websites of the Shoes for All organization, there would ideally also be websites and pages put up by supporters of Shoes for All. These pages would be created by individuals who support the Shoes for All movement. They would not be official pages, and they would not belong to the official Shoes for All organization.

Some of these pages might be dedicated to promoting the Shoes for All movement and some of them might simply mention it, discuss it, link to it, publish videos about it, etc. This can be considered a kind of a grass-roots promotion and support of the Shoes for All movement. Besides the fact that this type of promotion brings more traffic to the Shoes for All website, it also lends credibility and authority to the Shoes for All movement. It has a “branding” effect.

When people see the name and logo of the Shoes-for-All organization in numerous different places on the web, they begin to think of it as a respectable, popular, and professional organization. When they do eventually happen upon the Shoes for All Official website, or encounter the organization offline, they are likely to have more respect for it and more interest, than they would have had if they had never heard of it before that time.

In short, when people see this organization mentioned and talked about in a good way, in different locations online, they begin to become familiar with the name and logo of “Shoes for All,” and they think of it as a good thing. But we will go into that a bit more later.

As I write this series, I will refer to Shoes for All in my examples. As you read, and when you come to these examples, imagine how this would apply to you – to your organization, your non-profit, your charity, your message, or your cause.

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at Promoting a Cause.

Rather than spend my time re-explaining things to dozens of people in emails or over the phone, I’ve decided to write a simple series of posts about just that subject – how to use the internet to promote a cause.

The questions I have received did not come from individuals who already work online or who could be classified to any degree as computer or internet “geeks,” but from individuals with more offline lives, to whom these subjects are relatively unfamiliar.  Therefore, in writing about this subject I will not assume that you know anything about the internet or have any familiarity with using the internet to promote anything – causes or otherwise.

If you are an experienced blogger, internet marketer, or webmaster, these posts will contain a lot of what you would consider old data.  I wanted these posts to communicate to those who have very little familiarity with this field.

Why use the Internet?

The fact is, the internet is possibly the most powerful tool we have ever had for the broad-scale and rapid spread of ideas and communications on a broad scale.

Compare our current circumstances to just a few hundred years ago, and what it took to get a message across long distances or distributed to many people.  When one had to ride overland on horseback with a letter, signed and sealed in wax, and often through dangerous environments or enemy territory.  In those days, one never even knew for sure if such a message would reach its intended recipient – and if it did, the originator did not always know whether the message had arrived or not.

Just fifteen years ago, the only way for most people to communicate over long distances was through paper mail, expensive phone calls, or perhaps a fax.  In many areas of the world, no international communication was possible, even when phone lines and basic infrastructure were in place.  In some places, one still had to use a telegram service.

While it is true that there are still many areas of the modern world which do not have ready internet access, I’m sure you understand that this is not really my point.  The reach and scope of the internet is growing every day.  Even in the middle of nowhere it is technically feasible to go online.  You might need a special satellite connection, but less than two decades ago, it was not even a possibility.

Fifteen years ago, if you wanted to research a subject, or find out more information about a particular place or organization, you would most likely visit your local (or not so local) library.

These days, you sit down with your laptop – possibly in a cafe, or in your Saturday morning pajamas with your coffee – and you go online.  Or at least, most people do!

Furthermore, the speed with which ideas and communications can spread on the Internet is phenomenal.  The most famous example is the spread of one of one of the first free email services in 1996.  The service expanded from having under 500,000 users, to having over 12,000,000 users, in less than a year’s time.  The reason for this was because a simple advertisement was placed at the bottom of every email which was sent, encouraging the recipients to try using the free email service as well.

Entrepreneurs and businessmen have already caught on to the power of the internet in order to expand their businesses, earn a considerable income while working from home, or to become millionaires.

The non-profits are catching on as well.  Though, not as quickly as they could.

I am writing this series from the viewpoint of how the internet can be used to promote non-profit activities and humanitarian or charitable causes. 

Many of the concepts I will go over are basic to businesses, social purposes, and income-generating activities, but the central focus will be how the Internet can be used to promote non-profit activities and humanitarian causes.

The internet is a constantly changing playing field.  Promotion strategies which seem to work today might not work a month from now; and within a year, some “successful” techniques might become completely defunct.  However, in order to “ride the waves of change” and come out on top every time, one does not need to do any super-complex study.  One mainly needs to comprehend some very basic principles, and try to stay up-to-date with our changing times in cyberspace as much as possible – which isn’t all that hard either.

I will cover these concepts in a few basic stages.  I will begin with the concepts that are most applicable to anyone who uses the Internet, and who would like use simple techniques to support or promote a charity or a cause.  I will possibly follow up with information that is relevant to those who already have their own websites, pages, or videos published online (or who would like to).

Basic Assumptions

I will write this series from the standpoint of a few assumptions.

• I will assume that you have some interest in promoting humanitarian or charitable causes and are willing to spend some time to do this (even if just a little).
• I will assume that you are somewhat familiar with the internet, that you know how to read and respond to your email, how to search for information online, and how to start up your computer (at least most of the time).
• I will not assume that you have any more advanced knowledge than that.  Those of you who do might still find beneficial information in this book, although some of it may not be new.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, so that I can direct you to more information, add additional data as necessary.  I am also very happy to hear your feedback.

Remember, if you come to any word or term you don’t know, you can look for a definition in a dictionary or at www.onelook.com.  If that doesn’t work, try searching for the term in http://www.google.com or in a dictionary.

For example, if I used the word “dog” and you didn’t know what a dog was, you could go to Google and search for “what does dog mean” or “dog definition” or “dog glossary.”

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at Using the Internet to Promote a Cause: Introduction.

For the sake of practicality, I will change this strategy a bit. Instead of writing a separate eBook on this subject, I will be posting the information directly onto this blog, as I write them. In this way, you can leave any comments, questions, or feedback you might have, and will be able to read the posts as I write them, without having to wait until I have written everything that can be said on the subject (which day will probably never come).

This also makes things much easier for me, as I have been maintaining 10-20 websites and blogs (or at least, attempting to do so), and economics and time have made it difficult to embark on new or longer projects.

This post was originally published on The World Can Change at On Using the Internet to Promote a Cause.