Visitors needed

Norfolk_Jim

Hi, I'm part of a small charity working with the most vulnerable poor in Malawi, orphans, widows and promoting self help through agricultural projects. Our web site has been up and running for quite a while now but search engines just dont find us. Our visitor numbers have been very low but it might help if more people paid us a visit at www.aid-africa.co.uk
I'm told that the all important Google stacks up searches according to how many links there are to a particular site, so if anyone has a links page and feels sympathetic towards our work, please consider posting a link to the above on your links page in the hope it may make us more visible to Google. As you can probably tell, I'm no techie and we dont have funds to pay for admin stuff like this. Thanks.

littleowl

You have a great site - I have visited and enjoyed reading. Thank you.

oldtoolie

Hello Jim,

It isn't easy to get started with something like this. Frequent updates are one thing that helps raise your rank. You could look into Google AdWords -- they have some deals and some freebees for charities and new accounts.

But, optimising your site for Google is a bit of an arcane art -- I'm not an expert so I'm going to comment on some other things.

On the bigger picture -- no one will ever stumble up your website through Google or any other search engine. Your traffic comes from all of the other publicity you do. People see an item in the local news, parish bulletin, internet discussion group (like this) and then go to look for your website to find out more. So be sure your web address is mentioned in all publicity.

Looking at your website, I had a hard time getting an idea of who you are and why you are doing this. That there is poverty and hardship in Malawi is evident but why should I trust you with my money to do something about it?

People give money to people. So you need to show yourselves and tell your stories. You need to show the people you work with even more and let them tell their stories.

Good luck,

Larry Boyd
Tools for Self Reliance
www.tfsr.org

Thanks to Money Saving Expert for supporting Tools for Self Reliance

ahai1

Google adwords is a good idea but there are others like the one from yahoo.

Norfolk_Jim

Thanks for the responses, I've passed on the comments to the trustees and team members. There are 8 of us in the UK and another dozen or so staff in Malawi. We've included the details of our field team, Dave & Lynda Mills on the web site and always intended to add details of the trustees and staff in Malawi, but theres always so much to do, haven't done that, so made note to get on and try and do it - None of us are particulary techie. I'm probably the most techie but dont really understand about building web pages - ours is still a work in progress. We are waiting for this years accounts be approved and go through to the Charities Commission and after that I intend to put on a page detailing what was spent and where. Because we are small and people based, so far we've been able to follow the principle that 100% of gifts given for a specific purpose is spent on that work, no deductions. All our overheads and 1 paid staff is covered by our charity shop here in Holt, Norfolk. It worries me though that when people read about us in a news column or on the radio, they'll remember Aid Africa, punch that into google and get, well Zilch. The closest domain we were able to get was aid-africa.co.uk , the .com had already gone both with and without the hyphen so its not an especially rememberable address! When I try it I get a site listing various aid agencies and were not on it (I think they want paid for it)
Thanks to all who visited and comments, all constructive stuff and appreciated.