The nightmare you didn't know you'd be having unfolds early one morning. Your boss calls you into her office and demands to know why she can't find your site on Google. You've spent money getting your organization online, but if people can't find you, your boss thinks that's money down the drain.

Don't Let This Happen to You

The good news for policy and advocacy organizations is that a few simple steps can keep you from ever having to live that scenario. It's called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and it doesn't have to break your budget.

Before You Begin

The first step, of course, is to think about search engines when you plan your site upgrade. Make high-level staff aware of the issue and involved in deciding what two or three searches should bring up your site. This prevents them from typing in some term that isn't really relevant and wondering why they don't find the site--instead they'll put their stamp on the process.

Next, choose your search terms. A dose of realism is helpful here. One-word searches are almost impossible, and if you're working on one small part of a problem, don't expect to become the first result people see when they type in "poverty". As a corollary, don't try to be found for something you don't do. An information architect should help you define the terms that best describe your content, and can do many other good things for your site as well.

Of course, you may be in between site upgrades. So you'll want to know how you can tell if you're not optimized for web search engines, and what can you do about them?

Be Friendly to Search Engines, and They'll be Friendly to You

First, relax. Modern search engines know that the web wasn't created by a bunch of catalogue librarians. They have spent years and billions of dollars figuring out how to get people to content they're looking for. Policy organizations have a distinct advantage here. By definition, most of what you do is content, and it's rich with words that can be found by your average searcher.

The main thing you'll want to do is avoid some of the practices that make search engines' jobs harder.

Do post your content as HTML. This is the easiest format for search engines to read and index, and it does a better job of drawing visitors into the rest of your site than a PDF or Word document. Searchers can simply read the content and then click on your navigation to see what else you have.

Do use the tools HTML gives you. Even if the search engine doesn't rank that text any higher, it will make it easier for people to judge whether they will find what they want when they click on your link in the search results. Also use the meta description field. It will help you write a convincing summary that Google, among others, will display after the title in the search results. Learn about the title attribute of links--the text that appears when you hover over some links. This can help describe the content behind the link and some search engines use the information to refine their results. Make sure the text you link is also descriptive. Search Engine Optimization tips is much more descriptive than click here.

Even your URLs can help you. Putting a relevant term in the URL for a page can really help you. Content Management Systems (CMSes) that produce complex URLs full of meaningless (to you) strings don't help, but a URL like http://www.yoursite.org/section/urban_housing/ is easy for people to remember and search engines are more likely to visit them.

Don't hide your content behind flashy graphics. Flash-based websites look very cool, and you may have seen some entertainment websites that were fun to use. Search engines don't have so much fun when they come across this site, because most of what they see is complicated code setting up the Flash, and no terms they can use. Similarly, having your main titles be in a groovy font with drop-shadows that your designer produces in Photoshop may look nice, but they are illegible to a search engine. Keep the text in HTML and style it with CSS, a technology your designer should be adept in.

Do encourage links from other sites that are well-known in your area. This really helps a search engine tell that your content is relevant and respected.

Don't try "tricks" to get your rankings higher. There is no substitute for good content. Search engines know these tricks and penalize people who use them. This includes putting links on fake sites that point to your site, stuffing a page full of keywords that aren't visible to the user, or paying some shady operator to leave comments on blogs that point back to your site.

Search Engine Placement Firms

Finally, there are firms that specialize in SEO. Should you hire one? It depends a lot on what you're trying to do. Most of the industry is geared toward people selling things, because, like Willie Sutton and banks, that's where the money is. Their problem is different from yours: they have a product and many competitors with exactly the same or very similar products, and they want to stand out. So any marginal advantage in search engine ranking, no matter how small, can mean big bucks. They stay on top of the continually-changing methods used by the major search engines and constantly adjust the client's site to adapt. Also, much of the content their clients have is brief descriptions and pictures.

Here is the biggest advantage policy and advocacy organizations have: your content is already created to influence people through the written word. So at most, if you're in a crowded policy area and you're having difficulty showing up despite adopting the practices I lay out above for more than six months, you may well benefit from an SEO consultant to help you figure out what your problem is or how to better structure your content to differentiate yourself from others in the field.

It's All About the Fundamentals

Most policy and advocacy organizations, once they adopt the simple measures outlined above, don't have a lot of problems becoming highly ranked. A CMS that encourages or automates these practices can really help. But be sure to give these practices time. It can take six months for the search engines to decide your new content is worth ranking highly, because consistency is something they measure.

So the best advice I can give to the communications professional trying to make sure your site is seen is like the Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm. Second, focus on what your organization does naturally, and you'll see good (search) results.