For most charities, being invisible on Google isn't a funding problem - it's a visibility problem. People are actively searching for causes like yours every day, but if your website doesn't appear in those results, that potential support goes elsewhere.
The good news: SEO doesn't have to cost anything. Here are 10 actionable steps you can take right now to improve your charity's search rankings.
1. Fix Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Every page on your website has a title tag and meta description - the text that appears in Google search results. If yours are missing, duplicated, or too long, Google will rewrite them for you (and usually not in your favour).
Every title should be 50–60 characters and include your primary keyword. Every meta description should be 140–160 characters and give a compelling reason to click.
Title & Meta Preview Tool
Preview exactly how your pages look in Google search results and check your character counts.
2. Run a Full SEO Audit on Your Key Pages
Before you can fix problems, you need to know what they are. An SEO audit checks your pages for technical issues, missing tags, duplicate content, slow load times, and more.
Start with your homepage, your main donation page, and your most important service pages. These are the pages where rankings matter most.
Free SEO Audit Tool
Audit any page in seconds and get a prioritised list of issues to fix.
3. Make Sure Your Sitemap is Valid
Your XML sitemap tells Google which pages exist on your site and how to find them. If it's broken, missing, or contains pages that redirect or return errors, Google may not crawl your content properly.
Quick check: Visit yourcharity.org.uk/sitemap.xml in your browser. If it doesn't load, you don't have one - and that's a problem worth fixing today.
4. Find and Fix Broken Links
Every broken link on your site is a dead end for both visitors and Google. They damage user trust, increase bounce rate, and waste the crawl budget Google allocates to your site.
Broken links are especially common on older charity websites where pages have been moved or deleted over the years without redirects being set up.
Broken Link Finder
Scan any page for broken links, redirects and errors in seconds.
5. Write Longer, More Useful Content
Google's job is to return the most useful result for any given search query. Pages with thin content (under 300 words) rarely rank well. Aim for at least 600–800 words on any page you want to rank, and focus on genuinely answering the questions your audience is asking.
6. Use One Clear H1 Per Page
Your H1 is the main heading on a page - there should be exactly one per page, it should include your primary keyword, and it should clearly tell both users and Google what the page is about. Multiple H1s or missing H1s are common issues on charity websites built with drag-and-drop page builders.
7. Optimise Your Images
Large, uncompressed images are one of the most common causes of slow-loading charity websites. Every image should have a descriptive alt attribute (this also helps accessibility), and images should be compressed before upload. Tools like Squoosh (free, browser-based) can reduce image file sizes by 70–80% with no visible quality loss.
8. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly
Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it primarily uses the mobile version of your site to determine rankings. If your charity website doesn't work well on a phone - small text, overlapping elements, buttons too close together - it will rank lower, full stop.
Test it yourself: Open your website on your phone right now. If you have to pinch and zoom to read anything, you have a problem.
9. Build Internal Links Between Pages
Internal linking means linking from one page on your site to another. It helps Google understand the structure of your site, distributes ranking authority between pages, and keeps visitors exploring your content longer. Every blog post or service page should link to at least 2–3 other relevant pages on your site.
10. Set Up Google Search Console
Google Search Console is free and gives you direct data on how your charity appears in search results - which queries you rank for, how many clicks you get, which pages have errors, and which pages Google has indexed. If you don't have it set up, you're essentially flying blind.
Setting it up takes about 15 minutes and requires adding a small piece of code or a DNS record to verify your site. We've written a step-by-step guide here.
Where to Start
If this list feels overwhelming, start with just two things: run the free SEO audit on your homepage, and check your title tags and meta descriptions. Those two steps alone will surface the most impactful issues on most charity websites.
Once you've fixed the basics, work your way through the rest of this list. SEO is a long game - but for charities, it's one of the highest-return investments you can make in your digital presence.