A charity website has more than one audience, and each of them searches differently. Someone looking for help types the problem they have, a supporter types the cause they care about, and a volunteer types what they can give and where. I help UK registered charities make sure each of those people finds the right page, trusts what they see and can act on it without friction.
How people find a charity on Google
Very few people search for a charity by name until they already know it. Most arrive through a need or an intention, and the words they use rarely match the words a charity uses internally. Nobody searches for “beneficiary support pathways”. They search for “help paying energy bills”, “dementia support groups near me” or “free counselling for teenagers”.
In practice I group the searches a charity needs to be found for like this:
- People who need your services. Problem-led searches, often urgent, often on a phone, sometimes from someone searching for a relative. These usually matter most and are the ones charity sites most often miss.
- Donors. Cause-led searches (“donate to a children’s hospice”, “best charities for homelessness in London”), seasonal appeals, giving in memory of someone and gifts in wills.
- Volunteers. Searches that combine a role, a place and sometimes a time commitment: “volunteer at a food bank in Hackney”, “weekend volunteering for students”.
- Fundraisers and event participants. People looking for a charity place in a run, a trek or a challenge event, or ideas for fundraising at work.
- Charity shop customers and donors of goods. Local searches such as “charity shop furniture collection” or “where to donate clothes”, which are answered by Google Maps as much as by the website.
- Partners and funders. Companies looking for a charity partner, and grant officers checking who you are before they read an application.
Each group needs its own page with one clear purpose. When a single “Get involved” page tries to serve donors, volunteers and corporate partners at once, it usually ranks for none of them. Working out the search intent behind each query is the first job, before any copy is written.
What is different about SEO for a charity
Trust is checked, not assumed
Donors are cautious, and many will look you up on the Charity Commission register (or OSCR in Scotland, or the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland) before giving. Your site should make that easy: the registered charity number in the footer and on donation pages, the legal name as it appears on the register, trustees and accounts within a click or two, and a plain explanation of where the money goes. These same signals help search engines connect your website to the organisation they already know about, which is where organisation schema earns its place.
Some of your content is advice people rely on
If you publish information about health, money, housing, legal rights or crisis support, Google holds it to a higher standard because a wrong answer can hurt someone. Pages like these need a named author or reviewer with relevant expertise, a date they were last checked and sources where claims are made. This is the practical side of E-E-A-T, and it protects the people reading as much as it helps the page rank.
Safeguarding comes before traffic
For some charities, being visible is not the only concern. A domestic abuse service may need a quick-exit button and careful wording about browser history; a service for children has to think about what personal stories are published. I treat these as fixed requirements and fit the SEO around them, never the other way round.
Rules on fundraising, advertising and data
Fundraising copy on your site sits under the Fundraising Regulator’s Code of Fundraising Practice, and claims in appeals are covered by the CAP Code like any other marketing. Analytics and tracking on a UK charity site need consent under UK GDPR and PECR, so measurement has to be set up with a proper cookie banner and consent mode rather than assumed.
Donations often finish on another website
Many charities take gifts through JustGiving, Enthuse, Donorbox or a CRM-hosted form on a separate domain. That is fine for the donor, but without cross-domain tracking your analytics loses sight of the donation and you cannot tell which pages led to it. I fix this early, because every later decision depends on knowing which pages lead to gifts.
How I run charity SEO work
- Agree who matters most. Services, donations, volunteers, shops or campaigns. Most charities have a priority order, and the plan follows it.
- Audit the site. Crawling and indexing, page speed on mobile, duplicate and outdated pages, tracking and consent. The technical SEO issues on a charity site are usually ordinary ones, built up as different volunteers and agencies have edited it over the years.
- Research the language people use. I map the terms your audiences search for to the pages that should answer them, and flag where two pages compete for the same thing.
- Restructure and rewrite the pages that matter. Clear service pages, a donation page that explains impact plainly, volunteer roles described one by one. Where you need new material, I plan it through content SEO and strategy so each piece has a job.
- Sort out local presence. Charity shops, community centres and local branches need accurate Google Business Profiles and location pages. A single site is covered by local SEO; a network of shops needs the same work repeated consistently for every branch.
- Earn links from the work you already do. Research reports, local press coverage, corporate partners and event listings can all produce genuine links. I help you ask for them in a way that stays within Google’s guidelines.
- Report in terms the board understands. Enquiries to services, volunteer applications and donations started from search, not just traffic.
Many charities have one or two people looking after digital alongside other jobs. I write recommendations so that a volunteer or a part-time comms officer can act on them, and I say plainly which tasks need a developer.
Mistakes I see most often on charity websites
- Key information locked in PDFs. Service details, eligibility and impact figures sit inside annual reports that search engines index poorly and people rarely open on a phone.
- Internal language in headings. Page titles use programme names the public has never heard of, so the page cannot match what people type.
- Years of old news and event pages. Hundreds of thin posts for past events dilute the site and bury the pages that matter.
- Separate microsites for every campaign. Each one starts with no authority, and when the campaign ends the site is abandoned, often with its links.
- A donation journey nobody has tested on a phone. Slow pages, long forms and a Gift Aid declaration that is hard to understand all cost gifts.
- No way to tell what search produces. Analytics installed years ago, no conversions set up and no consent banner, so nobody can say whether the website helps the mission.
Charity SEO alongside your other channels
Search works best as part of a wider plan. Eligible charities can apply for Google Ad Grants, which provides free search advertising subject to Google’s rules; I can advise on that alongside the organic work through my Google Ads services. For appeals, volunteer recruitment and awareness among people who are not searching yet, paid social usually does more, and I cover that under Facebook and Instagram ads for charities.
If you would like to know where your site stands first, request a free SEO audit. I will look at how your services, donation and volunteer pages appear in search and tell you what I would fix first.