Link Building for Charities?

[Ignacio.Puglisi]

Hello there! I'd like to get some advice/tips about link building for charities. I am doing an internship on SEO in a charity in London and I have Moz Pro to work with. So, I have to work on the links building but I don't know how to start, what value I can offer, etc .

Thanks!

[Njnbiure45r4]

You can start by building general links like Forum links or profile backlinks to make the authority of the charity page just like I did for the page of Muslim charity.

[EGOL]

I don't know Google's position.  However, I do have thoughts about this...

Great websites link to other great websites all of the time.  If you have a great website you can feel confident about linking to another great website that links to you.... but this is usually not done by agreement, it is done for the reason of attribution [such as in a footnote or reference] or in a helpful gesture to your visitor [done instead of giving an unlinked mention because you are damn selfish or scared to link to another great website that competes in your space].  People who run great websites are too busy running a great websites and don't have time to fart around swapping links.  They don't gotta do it.

I think that obvious gaming of the system isn't going to work much of the time.  Google is smart enough to know that one crappy website linking to another crappy website is done to game the system.  Nobody links to crappy websites, except other crappy websites who can't get a link any other way AND people who are paid to link to crappy websites.

Our practice on linking is... we only link to pages on other websites that have content that is superior in some way to the content that we have on our page.... OR.... link to pages where attribution is appropriate - much like the footnotes in wikipedia.

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

Of Course! EGOL this is another extremely solid piece of advice.  I'm wishing I worked for a charity now. EVERYONE will want to publicise their giving so make sure that rather than them writing up their good work on their blog that you go over and take photos and write up the story and have that on your blog to say thanks to the business for their generous support.  They will 100% want to link to it.

You need to create the content on your site though for maximum effect.  It will not always get a link but it's a solid strategy because content is loved by google anyway.

EGOL can you confirm the position with linking in return for links.  I read somewhere at Google that it was a problem if someone links to you and you link back to them.  Because Google thinks you're just 'swapping links' and trying to game the system.  So be careful that not every inbound link has another link from you back to it because you may fall foul of a sort of algorithmic penalty.

Someone else will have to confirm this is correct though as I'm not 100% sure.

[EGOL]

Your organization will have at least one person who has lots of contact with lots of donors.  Perhaps that person would be willing to approach them about a link.  Lots of donors (though not all lf them) enjoy spreading the word about how they contributed to worthy causes (think about those photos of oversized checks in the newspaper).  These folks might be willing to write an announcement (long articles not needed) about their recent gift(s) and include links to your organization.  (You could offer to prepare it for them).  They might also use that announcement as a press release to local newspapers, local other groups who like to publicize good works.

Also, some businesses are plagued by telephone and email solicitations from charities.  We used to get several per month.  They were time wasters because we can't spend time screening charities that we have never heard of.  Then we placed an obvious link in the footer of our website about our charitable giving.  That link goes straight to an article that says... lots of people contact us about contributions...  we want to let you know that our company gives 100% of charitable giving to [name of charity].  After that link and article went live, the number of calls dropped by at least 80%, and the ones that don't notice that link and call are handled gracefully..."[thanks for calling, 100% of our support goes to [name of charity]."  Charitable solicitation calls are no longer a problem because we don't get very many and the ones that we do get are easy to deal with.  And, our favorite charity got a great article with an obvious link.

[Ignacio.Puglisi]

Hello guys!

Thank you very much for the useful information you all shared with me

Kind Regards,

[tawnycase]

Wow, lots of super helpful advice here! Thanks so much for jumping in! Tawny from Moz's Help Team here.

I also found a few links on this topic that might help, for a little further reading:

https://moz.com/ugc/charity-affiliations-and-link-bulding-how-to-get-links-while-helping-nonprofits-organizations
http://www.seodirect.org/blog/donation-links/
https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2067425/how-market-charities-online-for-free

Hope those help a bit! If you've got product support questions, feel free to give us a shout over at help@moz.com.

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

I would ignore what other people are doing.  The charity sector is not always known for it's super-efficient and industry leading digital marketing activities.  So although the advice that John Mondt gives is sound for many industries, he is right to include the phrase 'what's working' for them.  So don't just copy their link profile or go after links before carefully analysing them for quality and their potential to be relevant in the future.  I work in Dentistry and copying other dentists link profiles is more likely to land me with a penalty than take my DA anywhere special.

Charities tend to be filled with people (at the senior levels) who have pretty impressive backgrounds and CV's.  Also you're in a very strong position because charities are good for the world so no matter who you contact, you're always going to be coming from a place of positivity and wanting to make the world a better place.  This is huge.  So I would round up everyone at your charity on the board who belongs to any university, trusted organisation, professional body or other trusted domains and reach out to them for guest posting ideas and shameless plugs of your organisation.

Link building for a non for profit is about just putting together a great pitch about how you're helping the world and then asking for help to spread the word.  Don't be afraid to be totally authentic and honest about wanting to improve the visibility of your website (short of asking for links which is against the guidelines)

Hope this helps.  But I was looking at a big charity just now and there are CBE's on the board, people with honorary degrees from universities and people who are members of huge and trusted organisations.  So as a linkbuilder, i'd reach out to those people and put together a strategy of how to leverage those relationships to gain links.  Or in this case 'do PR' as white hat linkbuilding and PR are now pretty much synonymous. (used to say not synonymous, sorry, PR and linkbuilding are the same - that's a typo)

hope this helps.  PS: I love helping charities so maybe hit me up and I could help you in more detail. Obviously i'm not going to charge you but a mention from a charity website is always a great thing for us.  We just did a huge campaign for international women's day that bumped our DA three clear points.  Win!

[JohnMondt]

I would start by checking the links of similar charities.  That way you can see how they are building links and what is working for them.  Then I would move to the Fresh Web Explorer. There you can search mentions of different phrases that have to do with your topic that the charity promotes. You can then build up your network and start reaching out/link building.

You should also check out the blog.  Plenty of posts there about link building and advanced techniques.  You can even go back to the YouMoz Blog and see techniques and information from back in the day.  They are older posts,  but still valuable information none the less.