Your animal shelter or rescue group likely has a website – to list adoptable pets, recruit volunteers, and share information about responsible pet ownership. And you’re probably spending quite a bit of time on taking high-quality photos of available dogs or cats, crafting compelling pet bios, and writing articles to educate and guide pet owners along the way. After all, everyone knows how important great content is. But what’s just as important is visibility. Because great content isn’t useful if no one sees it, right?! That’s where SEO (search engine optimization) comes in.

Let me explain. Imagine you post an attention-grabbing photo and a clear and crisp description of an adoptable dog on your shelter’s or rescue’s website. When prospective adopters search for adoptable dogs online, your dog never shows up in their search results and they eventually adopt from somewhere else – even though your dog may have been exactly what they were looking for and a pawfect match for them. You had good, high-quality content. So, why didn’t it show up when people were looking for it?

The answer lies in search engine optimization. SEO is both an art and a science and can get quite technical and complex (and overwhelming for beginners). But don’t leave yet.  We’ll just look at a few very basic basics here. Just to highlight why you should even consider SEO for your shelter’s or rescue’s website.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to the practice of improving a website to boost its visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. In short, the goal of SEO is to get a website’s pages or content to rank higher, meaning to show up closer toward the top of a search engine’s organic results when people search for something. The optimal spot for a web page to rank is on the first page of those results. Why? Because… when was the last time you looked at anything beyond page one?

Think of it like this: If someone types “Labradors Austin TX” into their favorite search engine, they’re probably looking to adopt a Labrador retriever in the Austin area. If your Lab rescue is located nearby and has Labradors available for adoption, you’d want your web page featuring them to show up at the very top of the results that the search engine serves its users for that query.

What Are SEO Ranking Factors?

We already know that SEO focuses on improving a website to get it to rank higher on search engine results pages. But what exactly does this mean?

Simply put, optimizing revolves around ranking factors. Here are some of the main SEO ranking factors:

• content quality
• keyword placement
• backlinks
• internal linking
• loading speed
• mobile friendliness
• site security

Content Quality

The content that you include on your website should be of high quality. It should be relevant and valuable to searchers. It should be fresh and unique. It should meet search intent. Think about your audience, the people you are trying to reach with your website, and then create just-for-them content that they’ll truly find useful.

Keyword Placement

During a process called keyword research, you’ll identify the keywords you want to target and try to rank for. Your chosen keywords should then be used naturally and placed strategically throughout your content. As part of traditional on-page SEO, your primary or focus keyword (the keyword around which you’re optimizing a specific page or content piece) should appear in the following elements of a page:

• title tag
• header tags
• body (within the first 100 words)
• URL slug
• image file name
• image alt text
• meta description

While the meta description isn’t a ranking factor per se, it’s still a good idea to include your keyword there because it may entice searchers to click on the link to your page (because they’ll see the keyword that matches their search) and result in what’s called a higher click-through rate.

There’s a lot to be said about the use of keywords. Something important to keep in mind is that you should create content for people, not for search engines. This means you shouldn’t stuff your pages with a given keyword or use unnatural-sounding phrases.

Backlinks

Backlinks, also called inbound links, are links from other websites to your website’s pages. When a page receives lots of backlinks, it’s a signal that the page provides valuable content. So, you want lots of backlinks, but they should come from trusted and authoritative websites. Quality over quantity.

Internal Linking

Internal links are links from one page on your website to another page on that same website. By building a good internal linking structure and website architecture, you make it easier for both humans and search engines to find your content.

Loading Speed

It’s important that your pages load fast. If a page takes too long to load, your visitors may leave. It’s all about offering a great user experience and keeping visitors on your site.

Mobile Friendliness

So many searches are done on mobile devices these days. This means that, to offer your mobile visitors a good user experience, your site should be mobile friendly/optimized for mobile. You should make sure that your website design is responsive and displays correctly on different devices and screen sizes.

Site Security

Your website should use HTTPS. For this, you’ll need to have an SSL certificate.

How Can Animal Shelters and Rescue Groups Benefit from SEO?

Boosting the visibility of your shelter’s or rescue’s online presence via SEO can benefit your organization in a variety of ways. Depending on the content you choose to include on your site, it can, for example, help

• increase adoptions of available pets (by showing them to searchers right when they are looking to adopt),
• attract new fosters or volunteers,
• raise awareness for your organization, and/or
• establish your organization as a thought leader (think: educational articles or blog posts on your website).

In short, investing in SEO can help your shelter or rescue “be there” right when people are searching for what your organization has to offer (available pets, educational content, resources for pet owners, volunteer opportunities etc.).

Do you see value in SEO for your animal shelter or rescue group? Are you planning on learning more about search engine optimization techniques? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Marketing SEO