Progress - the blogs are listed

Well, that was fast - which proves these methods work, I guess! The blogs - even the wordpress one that I quit posting on a month or so ago - have both been indexed in the search engines.

Not the Website yet, and neither blog has a google pagerank. Plus, I haven't optimized for my keywords. But - still, not bad for 24 hours.

So - why is it important that you get started blogging and working on a content Website for your nonprofit organization?

Because you want people - and not just any people - you want the RIGHT people to find your site and take action.

It all goes back to strategy. (Or at least, the chapter in the book on "Harnessing the Power of the Internet" goes back to strategy). What are the top 3 reasons you want to drive "targeted" traffic to your Website?
For example, you might want to:

• Inform your local community about your issues
• Recruit volunteers for an upcoming event
• Publicize your program, or attract donors

The thing is, you start there. Figuring out what you want to do, and why.

Then, every word you write needs to accomplish one of those three purposes.

And your next step is to begin optimizing your keywords - based on your strategy. That way, once people start doing a search for your keywords - they find you.

Pretty simple, right?

Well, guess what? There's a catch. If you do it wrong, one of two things could happen.

1. Nothing. Nobody notices, nobody comes, nobody does anything.
2. You could get banned from the search engines. It's called "black hat" SEO (remember SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization"), and it's not only wrong, it's stupid. Why go to all that work, and take chances on getting your Website banned, when you can use "white hat" SEO, and go after the "long tail" searchers.

Well, more about that later. I'm going to go and start doing my keyword searching. And this afternoon, I've got to write my first press release. Wanna watch?