Most website owners treat their website like a valuable tool. It’s an investment, in many cases a very valuable investment. It is the tool of their trade, part of how they make their living. It’s why they spend a lot of time and money working it. Content has to be dynamic, keyword rich, informative & relative. Meta’s have to be in place. Links have to be followed or not followed, depending on their relevency. Healthy relationships have to be developed with 3rd parties to encourage bountiful backlinks.
The same can be said about social media page owners Facebook,Google+,Pinterest, etc), shopping mall shop owners (eBay, Shopify,etsy) and pretty much anywhere someone has set up a ecommerce enterprise. These Pages/Sites are valuable assets to their owners.
The same can be said about crowdfunding Projects. You are presenting yourself to the “crowd”. You have one chance to impress those you are asking to fund your project. One chance to get it right in search engines.
When you promote your project on social networks, you have to make people want to click on it, above all the other link pollution in people’s timeline or streams. When people search for items on search engines, you not only want your project to show up in the search, you also want it to look good enough to click on. How do you do that? By providing each of the following on your crowdfunding project in a planned methodical way.
Easy for search engines to read. Easy to display so backers aren’t confused or think you are second rate. Be concise, be keyword rich, be dynamic.
How you set these up is how favourable you will be shown in search engines (like Google) when people search for things that may be related to your Project.
i.e. I like cats. I do a search for cats in Google. A list of cat websites are shown. Among them is a cat welfare project. I like cats, so I pledge on their project.
Think locally, but act globally.
How to Optimise each section of Your Project
1. Project Name – Title (also known as Meta Title)
Apart from being the name of your Project, it is also the Title of your Search Engine link & the Title of Social Media posts you make. To achieve the best results with your Title/Project Name, it should be under 40 characters in length. Normally a Title is 55 characters long, however, because most apphend their brand to the end of the Title, 40 characters is the ideal length of your Project Name.
2. Short Description / Aim – Description (also shown as Meta description)
This provides a concise explanation of the contents of your Project Page. Commonly used on search engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page. To achieve the best results and get your message across, without having the important part of your message truncated (lost), it is advisable to keep the first part of your description as the best descriptive part, with keywords that best describe your project. Search engines generally truncate snippets longer than 160 characters, we allow a maximum of 140 characters.
3. Page Content – – Project Description
Think what people would type in the search bar to find you.
- Optimise for local search
- Maximise national and international visibility within the major search engines
- Drive targeted traffic to your website and increase lead generation
- But DON’T keyword stuff. That will do you no favours.
4. Slug – Web Link / URL of project
The slug or website address (URL). This is usually generated from your Project Name. However, you can usually change it. Shorter is better, but keep it relevant with good keywords.