SEO for Charities
Found by the people who need you, and the people who fund you
SEO for charities has two jobs. Being found by the person who needs your help at the moment they search for it, and being found by the person ready to give, volunteer or refer. Most charity websites do neither well, because they are written for the trustees. We do SEO & AI for charities: service pages that answer the question someone in trouble is actually typing, a donation route that search can reach, and the trust signals that funders and AI tools now check.
From £499 per month on a fixed-price SEO & AI package.
- Which needs and searches Google can actually see you for
- What we would fix first, and why
- No hard sell. A straight read on where people are losing you.
Four quick answers and we will tell you what we would fix first.
What SEO for charities gets you
The people a charity exists for rarely search for the charity. They search for the problem. ‘Help with rent arrears’, ‘bereavement support for children’, ‘where to get a food parcel near me’, ‘free debt advice’. Whoever answers that search plainly, with a next step, is who they contact. Donors and volunteers search differently again: the cause, the area, ‘volunteer opportunities near me’, and then your name to check you are real.
That makes SEO & AI for a charity different from generic SEO. You are not ranking one homepage for your name. You are ranking each service for the need it meets, in the places you serve, for a reader who may be frightened or ashamed and reading on a phone at midnight. And you are making the giving route findable and trustworthy for someone who has three tabs open and a Charity Commission page in one of them.
The point is not visits. It is the person who needed you finding you, and the person who wanted to help finding somewhere to click. Those are the outcomes trustees actually ask about.
Where charity websites leak the people who matter
The site is written for the trustees, not the person in trouble. Mission statements, strategy documents and ‘our impact’ pages rank for nothing anyone types in a crisis. The person searching ‘help with rent arrears’ needs a page with that title, what you can do, who is eligible, how to get in touch and what happens next. Each service you provide needs a page written from the need outwards, in the words the person uses, not the funder’s.
Services are lumped under ‘what we do’. A charity that runs a helpline, a drop-in, a befriending scheme and a benefits advice service has four different searches from four different people. One ‘what we do’ page with a paragraph on each cannot rank for any of them, and it makes the person in need scroll past three things that are not for them. Separate pages, one per service, each with its own eligibility and contact route.
The donate button is the only giving content. ‘Donate’ in the header is not a page Google can rank, and it answers none of the questions a donor has. Where the money goes, what a monthly gift pays for, Gift Aid in plain words, how to leave a legacy, whether you take corporate support. A proper giving section with real pages ranks for the cause searches donors make and converts far better than a button.
Trust signals are scattered or missing. Donors and referrers check the registered charity number, the Charity Commission page, the accounts, who the trustees are and whether the address matches. If the number is only in the footer, the trustees are not named and the details differ between the site, the Commission and Google, both people and AI tools hesitate. Put it all on one page, keep it consistent everywhere, and link to the Commission entry.
Local need with no local pages. A charity serving three towns says so in a sentence on the about page. The person searching ‘food bank Aylesbury’ or ‘mental health support High Wycombe’ gets a national directory instead. A page for each place you actually serve, with the services available there, opening times and how to get there, is what local need searches want. We built our own area pages the same way, so we know what makes one rank and one get ignored.
Where a charity serves a defined area, our local SEO service supports the website and Google Business Profile as one search journey.
AI search and GEO for charities
People now ask AI tools the questions they were too embarrassed to ask anyone: ‘where can I get help with food this week’, ‘is there free counselling for teenagers near me’, ‘which charities help with funeral costs’. Donors ask ‘which charity should I support for X’ and ‘is this charity legitimate’. The answers cite organisations whose service pages state plainly who they help and how, whose details match the Charity Commission register, and whose eligibility and contact routes are explicit rather than buried in a PDF.
For a charity to be legible to those tools, the basics have to be spelt out. NGO or Organization structured data with the registered charity number, the area served and the services listed. The same name, number, address and phone on the site, the Commission register, the Business Profile and every directory. Service pages that answer the need in the first paragraph. A giving page that explains where the money goes. Nothing locked in a downloadable PDF that only the funder was ever going to read.
We treat this as part of the same job, not a separate invoice. AI SEO for charities is what good charity SEO & AI looks like now, and nobody can promise your organisation will appear in an AI answer. What we can do is make sure the answer engine does not have to guess who you help, where and how to reach you.
Rather diagnose it yourself first?
Our guide to why a charity website is not getting donations walks through the same checks we run, in the order we run them. Read it, fix what you can, and come back for the rest.
Read the guideThree services, done properly
Most charities start with SEO & AI, and many already have a Google Ad Grant that nobody is running properly. We can help with both.
SEO & AI
Service pages written from the need, a giving section that ranks, trust and structured data, and local pages for the places you serve.
PPC
Google Ad Grant management for eligible charities, so the grant reaches the people and donors it was meant for rather than lapsing.
Social Media
Stories, appeals and volunteer recruitment, for the supporters who need to feel the work before they give.
No mystery. Here’s the order.
We look at each service against the searches people in need make, the giving route, Search Console, the Business Profile, the Commission entry and any Ad Grant account.
Service pages first, then giving, then trust and local. Biggest gap first.
We rewrite the service pages from the need outwards, build the giving section, sort the trust page and structured data and get every listing consistent.
We watch contacts by service and donations by page, not just visits, and keep going where people are still not finding you.
Fixed SEO packages, no mystery retainers and no padding. Larger charities with many services or sites may need a custom plan, and you will know why before you commit.
See the packagesWe’d rather show you than tell you
No testimonials wall. Here’s what you actually get.
We write for the person searching, not the funder
Charity copy is usually written to satisfy a grant application. We write the service pages for the person typing the question at midnight, and keep the funder language for the funder.
A free look first
The Website Leak Review shows you where search is leaking before you spend anything with us.
No long-term lock-in
We recommend giving SEO time to work, but you can cancel with 30 days’ notice.
Straight talking
If something is not likely to move the commercial outcome, we will tell you. A bigger traffic number on its own is not the goal.
SEO for charities FAQs
Is SEO worth it for a small charity with no marketing budget?
Often more than for anyone else, because the people you help search for the problem, not for you, and the fix is mostly writing the pages properly rather than spending on ads. Many small charities also have a Google Ad Grant they are not using. We will tell you honestly whether the site is the bottleneck before you spend anything.
Should our service pages be written for beneficiaries or for donors?
Both, on different pages. A service page is for the person who needs it, in their words, with eligibility and a next step. The giving section is for the donor, with where the money goes and how to give. Trying to do both on one page fails both readers.
Can SEO help us get more volunteers?
Yes. ‘Volunteer opportunities’ plus your town and cause is a real search, and a proper volunteering page with the roles, the time commitment, the training and how to apply ranks for it. Most charities have a form and no page.
What does the Website Leak Review look at for a charity?
Which needs and cause searches you appear for now and which you do not, whether each service has a page written for the person searching, whether the giving route is a page or just a button, the state of the trust signals against the Charity Commission entry, and where people in need or donors drop out. Plain-English findings, whether or not we work together.
Not a charity?
Charities sit within our professional services SEO work. See that page for the wider sector, or every industry we support through our small business SEO services hub.
Professional services SEO Every industry we coverReady to be found by the people who need you?
Tell us which services and which supporters you want more of and we will take a proper look at the site. Clear next steps and honest feedback, whether or not we end up working together.
Free review · No lock-in · No sales waffle
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