5 Essential SEO Actions Necessary For Your Website To Rank

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5 Essential SEO Actions Necessary For Your Website To Rank

If you wish your real estate company’s website to compete with your competitors for top rankings on Google then you will need a plan in place for SEO. This can often seem like a huge task, and in most cases, it requires expert advice from SEO specialists, such as those over at www.seoperthexperts.com.au, however, even they will tell you that you can make great progress with your SEO by ensuring you take actions in 5 distinct areas.

We are not saying that just these 5 actions alone will rocket you to the top of Google, but they provide you with the platform needed to do so. From there you can build upon them and further optimise so that cumulatively they improve your rankings..

Comprehensive Keyword Research

There is little chance of your website ranking for anything if you do not know what you want it to rank for in the first place. Some of those keywords will be obvious to you, but we guarantee you there are dozens, or even hundreds more, that your real estate company’s website has the potential to rank for.

Apart from keyword research tools producing a list of relevant keywords, there are some tools that literally allow you to discover every keyword your competitors are ranking for, and more importantly, how they are optimising for those rankings. With that knowledge, you know what keywords are easy pickings and which might take a bit more effort.

Building A Network Of Backlinks

Backlinks from high-authority websites are like votes of approval, and when Google identifies these, it brings the desired improvements to your website’s ranking a step closer. When building a network of backlinks, the first principle is to go for quality rather than quantity. 20 strong backlinks from well-established websites are worth a lot more than 200 spammy links from one-page link farms, with another critical difference being that they will not harm your rankings either.

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The Parking Lot Facilitation Tool

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Group of creative business people having meeting from overhead

Being respectful of your board members’ time and energy is important to retention. The “parking lot” is a useful facilitation tool for keeping your meetings on track and on time. It allows open issues or ideas not on the agenda to be “parked” for discussion at a later time, keeping the meeting on track. But more importantly, it sends a message that everyone’s contributions are important, even if they aren’t on the agenda.

Determine where to keep your parking lot. In person, a whiteboard or flip-chart allows everyone in the room to see the parked items and watch as the list grows. In a virtual meeting, tasking someone to jot items down in a notepad will suffice. Either way, assign a parking lot attendant to write down the items and note their contributor.

During the meeting, add items to the parking lot when the issue or idea arises but doesn’t adhere to the agenda or the conversation is moving off subject. By adding a note to the parking lot, the item will not be forgotten and the contributor can be assured their idea will be addressed at the appropriate time. The meeting facilitator, likely your board chair, will need to take responsibility for keeping the meeting on track but anyone can suggest that an item be added to the parking lot for later discussion.

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Nonprofit Expert Roundup: What is the most important thing to remember when fundraising?

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Nonprofit Expert Roundup What is the most important thing to remember when fundraising

Every nonprofit, whether they’re brand new and an established organization, has heard a wide variety of advice when it comes to fundraising. Whether seeking funds from private donors or larger foundations, nonprofit staff and board members have a lot to consider.

All of the information can be overwhelming, so we asked a variety of nonprofit experts, “What is the most important thing to remember when fundraising?”

“I think it’s crucial for all of us in the nonprofit world to remember that when we’re fundraising, we’re not simply asking for money to support our work or our organization. Instead, we are asking people to invest in their community and offering them an opportunity to direct that investment to something meaningful and impactful for them as a member of that community.”
John M

“Have a fundraising and gift acceptance policy, and review it and keep it in mind whenever anyone offers you anything other than straight cash or check with no strings attached. Lots of people try to solve their problems by disguising them as ‘donations’ to trusting nonprofits, who wind up saddled with liabilities instead of assets.”
John G

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Micro-Plans Messaging for the Here and Now

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Micro-Plans Messaging for the Here and Now

A comprehensive marketing plan brings together individual plans for marketing communications, internal communications, and stakeholder communications. They may even take into consideration things like search engine optimization, paid vs. organic traffic, and marketing automation platforms. For many organizations, developing campaigns at this scale isn’t feasible in the best of times due to the large investments of time and funding they require.

Smaller, micro-campaigns are a great tool for organizations that want something more easily designed that can be implemented swiftly. These tightly focused campaigns are intended to deliver a specific intention or motive; a perfect option for the here and now.

To frame your plan, start by identifying the business goals you intend to reach through your communications. Beginning with your goals in mind will help you market with intention.

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Creating a Simple Case Statement

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Creating a Simple Case Statement

The current state of affairs has us facing and placing large amounts of information. To make sure that your audience isn’t missing important updates from your nonprofit, your messaging needs to be focused and uncomplicated. Not only will this simple framework help you streamline your communications, but it will save you time and frustration as well.

Four Elements of a Simple Case Statement:

1. A problem that is easy to understand

Example: “Hundreds of local children go hungry on the weekends when schools close and their free meal programs aren’t available.”

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Evaluating Your Funding Mix Exercise

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Evaluating Your Funding Mix Exercise

PURPOSE AND INSTRUCTIONS
In light of COVID-19 and the new challenges it presents, many nonprofits are examining their funding sources and having to adjust their plans for the future.

By knowing exactly where your funding comes from, you can determine if you have a good mix of income streams or whether you are too dependent on only one or two sources. That way, when decisions come up and ideas for new programs or revenue sources are discussed, you’ll know how they’ll fit into the overall picture of your organization.

Print copies of the worksheet, which we’ve provided for free as a PDF. Have your Board Treasurer complete Part 1 (an example of Part 1 is provided). Distribute copies of your Treasurer’s completed version of Part 1 and a blank copy of Part 2 to each board member. Take 10 minutes to have each board member review the Treasurer’s findings in Part 1 and then fill out Part 2 of the worksheet. After the meeting, compile the answers and review at the next board or committee meeting.

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Creating A Perfect Landing Page

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Creating A Perfect Landing Page

The following are tips to creating the perfect landing page for your Google AdWords Marketing campaign.

Make it responsive to mobile devices

Your landing page should be view-able on all mobile devices, but most important of all is for it to fully function on all mobile devices. For this to happen it is important that the text fonts are set to the right size so they don’t get too small if the page is re-sized to fit a mobile phone screen. Most important is that the enquiry form is still easy to use from a mobile touch device.

A great headline

The headline is the first thing that visitors see and should have an impact to entice the visitor to keep on reading. Your headline should pose some leading question or have a compelling headline, to sell benefits. It may also refer to the place, where the visitors click to reach your page.

A clean design

A simple and clear design should be enough to make your visitor take action. Any distraction on the page, like making the design too cluttered may simply take the visitors attention away from the message of the page.

Make it easy to scan

An attractive web design and simple layout should catch the eye of your visitors. Ensure that your landing page does not have lengthy text. You should highlight key phrases with bullet points, h tags and bold text.

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Toolbox Monitoring Your Budget

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Toolbox Monitoring Your Budget

Toolbox: Monitoring Your Budget
PURPOSE
Once a budget has been adopted, it is important to monitor revenue and expenses throughout the budget cycle to ensure your organization stays within the budget. If revenue or expenses are significantly different than expected, you may need to make adjustments to your budget in mid-year.

INSTRUCTIONS
Before your board meeting, ask your bookkeeper or treasurer to prepare a Profit & Loss Statement summarizing your actual year-to-date revenue and expenses with an additional column for the current budget. The line items should be organized in the same format as your budget and cover the same time period, (this is often called a Budget vs. Actual Profit and Loss Statement that is a standard report in accounting software).

At your board meeting take 10 minutes to have all board members compare the budgeted sums to the actual expenditures to see if any adjustments to your budget are necessary.

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Mobile Banking in Australia

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Mobile Banking in Australia

Reviewing user experience of the banking sector we looked at whether the banks are providing an easy-to-use mobile experience and what tasks were supported.

Developing user experiences on mobile is an interesting challenge, because of things such as the small screen size and the need to make often complex steps as clear and simple as possible, all while considering that the mobile user is likely to be on the move.

We reviewed the mobile web experience of ten of Australia’s banks and financial institutions, including the ‘big four’. We found that Australian banks are mature in their provision of mobile access. All except the Commonwealth Bank of Australia render mobile versions of their websites and all but the Bendigo and Adelaide bank provide mobile apps for both iPhone/iPad and Android devices.

Very few of the banks used location based services for the seemingly obvious ‘locate an ATM/branch’ task. It was also surprising that only one bank offered calculators as this would seem to be an opportunity to help customers decide on the affordability of a purchase or calculate an exchange rate, which in turn is a likely driver for more business for the bank.

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