How to Increase Traffic To Your Nonprofit’s Website

A website is every business’s central repository for information and action. From providing crucial information, to building credibility, to operating as an online store, a website is the single most quintessential marketing collateral to make the right impression and enable action. This is the truth for any given business including nonprofits. In this article, we’ll learn about how to drive traffic to your website in order to optimize it as a marketing tool for your nonprofit. 

Now, let’s understand how important it is to drive traffic to your website. A super awesome website with no people visiting it is as good as having no website at all. The magic happens only when people land on your site and consume the information you have provided. Another way to look at it is that your website is the only collateral that has your nonprofit’s complete story, and knowing that it is powerful stories that convince people to support your cause, it becomes extremely important to direct all your potential supporters to your website. 

There are 2 ways of driving traffic to your website – organic and paid. Organic methods essentially involve using your organization’s owned and earned media to drive traffic, while paid methods usually involve paying for online ads that direct traffic to your site. Here’s how you can make the most of both of these ways to ensure maximum traffic to your site. 

Organic ways to boost your organization’s traffic 

1. Social media platforms- whatever channel you use, there is a way to include your URL in your profile to direct people to your website. Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook allow for hyperlinks to be included in your posts while Instagram has an option to include a hyperlink only in the bio section. Besides adding hyperlinks, it is also helpful to include your URL (for example www.npox.com) as a part of your visual content. This allows for retention and it may be a good source for the contribution of direct traffic.
2. E-Signatures – Driving on the fact that most of your employees are going to be in touch with potential supporters, signatures become a great tool to help you drive traffic. Be it emails or messages on social media channels or WhatsApp, create a standard signature and make it a mandate for all your employees to use in all their work-related communication efforts. 
3. Printed collateral – here we are talking about letterheads, business cards, invoices, invitations, branded merchandise (coasters, t-shirts, pens, etc). If there is anything you are going to print, be sure to include your website URL. 
4. Guest blogs and comments – Circulating your content on relevant websites through guest articles and making sure to include links to your website is a great way to receive referral traffic. On a similar note, you could also strategically comment on other relevant blogs or social media profiles to achieve the same. 

Paid ways to drive more traffic

Ads — certainly the most obvious thing that comes to your mind when you hear paid strategies, right? However, in addition to the basics, we’ve included some lesser-known channels for you to try, so read on. Below are the channels you could include as a part of your paid strategy to drive traffic. 

1. Google ads – Increase your visibility on Google so that when users are searching for things related to your mission, your nonprofit will display prominently in the results. Though expensive, the quality of traffic is high. 
2. Social media – focus on traffic ads with a powerful story to capture attention and lead them on to your website. Instagram and Facebook ads depend heavily on captivating visuals and copy.
3. Native ads – Run ads on forums that discuss topics relevant to the cause you’re trying to support with your NPO. 
4. Partnerships – explore a few paid partnerships to insert a small snippet about what your nonprofit stands for and how to learn more. Think in-flight coupons, partnerships with restaurants, e-commerce, and so on. 

 Once you have in place a strategy to drive traffic, it’s helpful to analyze the incoming traffic to make business decisions.

• Have an easy-to-remember URL – this helps people directly keying in your domain to get to your site.
• Buy relevant URLs and redirect – if you are nonprofit.org, consider also purchasing the URLs nonprofit.com, nonprofit.co, etc. that all redirect to your site so that users will end up in the right spot even if they type in your address incorrectly. This also helps avoid competitive takeovers.