Businesses and bloggers have no real issue with targeting their desired audiences in one way or another. Businesses have budgets that allow for easy paid marketing campaigns, while standard bloggers can create organic content that effectively resonates with audiences and generates viral attention.

For charities, non-profits and other organizations, the path to success is a bit more difficult. With no guaranteed income through products or services and a limited audience to target, these entities must be efficient with regard to every form of marketing.

SEO – and in particular, local SEO – can be highly effective at organically reaching audiences relevant to these groups’ endeavors. You’ll want to keep reading to learn how charities and organizations can better utilize local SEO to generate immediate improvements.

Create a Review Strategy

Any non-profit or charity faces an inherent uphill battle with respect to convincing audiences of its worth. Unlike businesses, non-profits and charitable organizations often ask for donations or commitments without providing something tangible to the individual. Because of this, trust is a huge factor.

Online reviews can be a sure-fire way to promote increased engagement from your target audience and improved SEO. Search engines love to see brands with solid reputations, so a review strategy is crucial.

To begin pinging search engines with reviews, it is necessary to make it as simple as possible for people to leave them in the first place (this can be via Google, or on a review website specifically). Next, engage with reviews in a productive fashion – whether they be positive or negative. Lastly, make sure that the reviews you’re receiving are valid: do not pay for reviews or try to solicit tons of them all at once.

Use Google My Business

Given the sheer number of people who use Google for their searches, optimizing performance via this search engine only makes sense. For organizations and charities, one of the easiest ways to rank prominently for relevant local results is to sign up for a Google My Business page. Open to any and all brands, the GMB page allows you to easily setup details about your organization and list everything from hours, address and website to services offered and reviews received.

By providing further details (such as primary industry category and locally-relevant keywords), your organization can ensure that it’s pinging search engines with local SEO potential.

Claim Your Organization’s Pages

All across the web are pages via services similar to GMB that offer businesses and brands the ability to represent themselves to local audiences. In fact, several different pages for your organization may already exist, just waiting to be claimed. It is important to do this for a couple of reasons.

First, claiming the page(s) ensures that competitors or would-be malcontents can’t vandalize your brand’s image in the eyes of local audiences or search engines. Additionally, claiming these pages will provide administrator access to them, allowing for easy edits, addition of information and control over how each detail is presented to the public. Finally, more optimized and up-to-date pages ensure that search engines can verify your organization’s existence, location and activity – which can boost local SEO substantially.

While unique challenges await any non-profit or local charity, overcoming some of the difficulty via SEO improvements is completely possible. Consider this advice and implement it if your organization could use greater visibility and traffic via local search results.