 So, welcome to everybody here. I assume most of you came through the meetup group for our net squared Toronto meetup, which is a program of TechSoup, and a little bit about NetSquared. I'm your NetSquared organizer for the Toronto area. I've been an organizer now for just over a year. I got started with TechSoup and NetSquared just before the pandemic, so I was looking forward to hosting in-person events, but unfortunately that quickly switched online. So, we've been running some online events since last year, and hopefully when things change back, we'll get back to having some in-person events. And I've been fortunate to have some great speakers, including Bob, who's with us today. A little bit more about NetSquared. It's a global network of tech-for-good meetups, and it is also a nonprofit that basically helps other nonprofits to get, implement, and use technology effectively. There are NetSquared groups, and I have a feeling this number is actually bigger now. I need to double check with Eli, but over 120 cities across the world that have NetSquared meetups, and it's a really interesting program. So, especially now that everybody's online, you can even go check out some of the other cities and countries meetup groups for their events and what they're holding. A little bit about our NetSquared values, we welcome everyone. We put community first, so we're here to support each other. A lot of our members are working in the nonprofit space, or they're in technology, and we work together to help each other. Our goal is essentially to build stronger nonprofits, and technology is one of the tools we use to do that. We love to have people participate, so I know if we've got Dan here, he presented for us earlier this year on his software for nonprofits as well. So, if you have something to contribute, if you have ideas for future events, if you know of any speakers that are interested in sharing something technology-related to our group, please reach out to me, and I'll give you my contact information later. We can learn from everybody, right? And finally, we obviously treat each other with kindness and respect, and I think for the most part, most people are great at doing that, so it doesn't need to be said, but there it is anyhow. It's a little bit about TechSoup. If you haven't been over to visit them yet, that's their website there, TechSoupCanada.ca, and TechSoup is where you will go as a nonprofit to get some really amazing discounts and even freebies on technology. If you are Google for nonprofit, not for profit, if you're part of that program, you would have to validate through TechSoup, same with Microsoft products and all these that you see here, plus many, many more. So, if you haven't checked them out yet, head on over there and check it out. There is also a forum on their website. Now, I need to double check because I have a feeling their website address may have changed recently, but if you Google TechSoup, you'll find them. They had some tech updates over the last couple of months, so I think I need to update my slides, but there's a forum there as well, and if you have questions for technology-related items, you can find some support there as well. I kind of mentioned we can all work together to host events like this, so I'm more than interested in hearing from you if you have any ideas or if you have something you would like to present, please reach out to me. And a little bit about me, if you haven't been to one of our meetups before, my name is Sandra, and I've been working in the IT space for over 20 years, and my focus is on implementing operational systems. I've worked full-time in the corporate world. I currently work for a government agency as well, but I also run a small business for all of that systems where I focus on helping nonprofits implement smaller projects that are more geared towards smaller nonprofits. One of the things I really like to help with is helping nonprofits get on Google. It's a free offering out there from Google once you validate through TechSoup, and it provides you some really great tools in order to help run your nonprofit. It kind of gives you that technology foundation to get things going. And I've always been passionate about helping nonprofits as well as other businesses, small, large, any size, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs work smarter, not harder. There's always a more efficient way to get things done so that you can have an easier time of running your organization. As I mentioned, I'm the Toronto organizer for these events, and I am also the president of the One Parent Families Association of Canada, which is a nonprofit that supports single parents and their kids through a variety of activities. So that's a little bit about me, and now I'm going to pass it over to Bob, who has a lot of great info to share with us. So Bob, over to you. Thank you, Sandra. So, so glad to be here again for a second time. I've known Sandra for years. We've known each other for 10 years, so it's exciting to see where I knew Sandra and where she is now. It's what an amazing growth you've experienced. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share my screen because I've created a really pretty presentation that I'm completely proud of. So just bear with me here. I'm a little sluggish on the Zoom features right there, and hopefully you all should be able to see my screen at this point. Is that right? Yes? Cool. Love it. Awesome. So today we're going to talk about how as a not-for-profit or social enterprise, but for businesses that do good, how can you really leverage SEO style components to be able to stand out as a trustworthy source? So really just letting you guys understand there are a ton of nonprofits in a ton of different spaces. It's become quite a crowded market. And we're only talking about Canada. Imagine when you really start thinking globally. There's a lot of causes that deserve attention. So what I'm going to talk about today is how to really leverage three key things on your digital marketing so that you become the prominent not-for-profit or at least the voice of the cause that you're supporting using these techniques. And again, as a really competitive market, consumers are really overrun with the idea of people saying, hey, could you contribute to our cause? Could you help our cause? And it's no different as well for donors and sponsors, especially corporate. They've been experiencing an increase in the number of assets that they get. So what I'm going to talk about today is three key things you can do in your digital marketing. Now I know that this is generally a tech-savvy group. What I'm going to talk about is not tech-savvy. It's actually designed to help the person or the nonprofit executive director, perhaps board members who are participative, who may not have a heavy tech background implement these things in their regular digital media strategy. So for those that have not attended one of my webinars before, I usually suggest if you want to turn off all distractions, because when I speak and I teach, I tend to go a little bit fast. I try and keep it pretty moderate, but I want to make sure that you don't miss on anything great. This session is being recorded. And from what I understand from Sandra, it is being live-streamed as well. So just be cognizant of that. And of course, washrooms are wherever your washer might be. I'm so used to doing this at live events. I did have to adjust the slide a little bit. And everything that I share here on this slide deck, it's not proprietary. Please feel free to take screenshots or snap selfies and share them on social. The more that we can get out to the world what it is that this knowledge can do, the better. I believe it is. And then of course, as I'm teaching or as I'm presenting, I do have a short slide deck. I'm going to try to keep it to 20 to 25 minutes, because I like to spend more time answering your very specific questions about this topic. So if you have questions, please feel free to throw them in the chat. I probably won't see them. I'm not ignoring you. I promise once we're done at the end of the presentation, I'll jump over to the chat and we'll address questions that way. So for those that don't know who I am, I'm Bob Minhas. I've been an entrepreneur for 18 years. I have spent time as well as an executive director in the not-for-profit space. So everything that I'm going to talk to you about today and everything that I'm going to teach you comes from pure experience, meaning I've done all of these things. I've had wildly successful businesses and I've had wildly not successful businesses. So I know what the mistakes are that you need to avoid and I'm going to talk about the best practices that actually will get you results, the same best practices that I give to my clients on a regular basis. What I want to ensure is that I set your expectation, what you're going to get for today, which is really understanding three key factors of how to use SEO techniques. The first one is going to be understanding how to come up with key phrases and how to leverage key phrases in terms of building trust and building that authority. We're going to talk about understanding how you build backlinks and how that works for your not-for-profit website. And then of course we're going to finish off with understanding the value of citations. So by the time we're done this webinar, you will have three tactical and practical things that you can implement on your non-profit website or social media that should enable you to get a lot more attention and really build that credibility and trust as the go-to expert for what your cause is. And see that's the key factor there, right? Is understanding that when you're in a sea of other non-profits, you're not simply trying to pick someone based on local or based on the severity or importance of your cause, you want to be known for, we are the go-to authority or the go-to expert of the go-to place for this particular cause. And that's what tends to lead to more visibility, which eventually leads to more donors and of course consumers as well. But before we start, I just want to make sure I outline the basic premise of how Google places organic results. So I'm not going to talk about paid result solutions today. I'm simply going to talk about someone entering a Google search and the results that appear after the ads and the Google My Business appear. So those organic results that show up because ideally we want you to be on a top-level list of those. So results by Google are based on three key factors and that's location, relevance and prominence. So when someone is searching for something that relates to your non-profit, especially if it's related to the specific cause you support, the idea here is Google will rank your website based on how relevant it is to that cause, how prominent you are to that cause, meaning how much I'm going to be honest with you, credibility and visibility, how cool of a kid are you. And that's how that works in the digital space and then location. So location we're not going to talk about today, but for the most part Google really wants to create organic, valuable local results. So what that means is you may not come the top of the list for a consumer or a donor that lives 100,000 miles away. I don't even know that might be across the world, but you certainly will within your local area. So the first key to understand of the three key phrases to SEO is key phrasing. I'm bumbling my words. So to understand what keywords and key phrasing are is to understand that those are the words that make you relevant to Google, but more importantly, those are the words or phrases that people who believe in your cause or support your cause relate you to. Simple ones like cancer, heart and stroke, autism. So, you know, major hot button issues tend to proliferate key words and key phrasing, which is totally understandable. But what about not-for-profits that are a little bit more specific or a little bit more niched? Let's look at Sanchez, for example. She works for or she leads a not-for-profit. That's about supporting single parents. So obviously the prominent words for that may not be single parents. It might be, but it may be other words that are specific to that cause. So when we want to come up and figure out what are the keywords, a key phrasing that's important to me, I have a three pillar model that I like to use. Most SEO specialists are just going to use the last pillar. As a business consultant, my goal is to ensure that whatever we're doing, it has some sort of return on investment. And of course, it's something that I've actually done myself. So first of all, when coming up with keywords and key phrases, you want to know the people that you help and the donors that you're looking for, what are the words that they assign as relevant to you? And the best way to know is, for those of you that have nonprofits that are currently running and are active, you want to actually talk to the donors in your space or the donors you've worked with in the past. You also want to talk to those that are impacted positively, those people that you help. And you want to ask them this key question, which is, hey, John, Samantha, this is what my not-for-profit does. So what I want to ask you is, if you were to search for someone that does what I do or what we do, what words would you put into Google? And you will be, I promise you, you'll probably be pretty surprised at the words of the phrasing that they're using. Because as not-for-profit leaders, we are all specialists in what we do. So we know our industry jargon. We know the words that are key to us. But we forget how someone outside of our organization is actually looking at us. What words and key phrases are they using to get to us? They may not be searching heart and stroke. They may be searching heart attack support. They may be searching other words around that. So you want to be really mindful of what those words are and what better way to know what those words are by asking the very people your organization supports and works with as a joint venture and donations to say, hey, this cause is important to you. What would you search on Google to find this cause? And you'll get a list, a ton of words and a ton of phrases. You want to write them down and note that. And then you want to move on to the next component, which is really understanding based on those cause, on those words. What's the specific niche? Now, I know that in not-for-profits, you'll say, well, Bob, we're not a for-profit business. That's more for for-profit businesses. But a niche is really, really super powerful in the not-for-profit space as well. So if you say to me, well, Bob, I support single parents, well, that's great. But can we dig deeper into that? Do you support single parents in the York Region area? Or do you support single parents in the York Region area that are people of color? So the more you can really start focusing on a particular cohort that you want to support, or that you know that you can give the most impact to, the more that you can really look at these words and phrases you've asked people to give you and understand which ones are relevant. So now at first, I had said people when they're looking for parental support, they might be looking for single parent support, parental resources, single parent resources. But if you niche down, maybe these are people who are looking for single parent resources for people of color, single parent resources for new immigrants, the new immigrants or newcomers. So when you niche down, you really start getting clear on the specific audience that you want to help and support. And ideally as a not-for-profit, you already know that. But also it gives you clear messaging on what to tell your donors. And most of all, what we're talking about right now, it gives you a list of keywords and key phrasing that we can start to pepper throughout your website, throughout your social media, throughout your marketing material, throughout any speaking or podcasting that you do. This becomes what feeds into your messaging. This becomes the core of your messaging for the most part. So really thinking about that. And folks, I understand this is super hard. As a not-for-profit, I'm asking you to focus on a particular cohort when you generally are people who want to help everybody. And that's wonderful. But you really got to start thinking about if I want to support everybody, can I support everybody? If I try and support everybody, I may end up supporting nobody. Whereas if you really start to look at focused niches and who you could really have the most impact on and deliver the greatest impact to, and you niche down, you may find that you're starting to get even better results. And by the way, here's a little bit of a hint. You may actually start finding funding models or funding methodology specific to your niche. So instead of saying I just help single parents, there might be funding modalities that focused on single-parent newcomers, single-parent people of color, single-parent families in rural communities, regardless of their background or ethnicity. So really keep in mind that look at what it is that you can do and look at those keywords that you can build out of that. And when you come up with that niche, sometimes what you want to do is to really articulate what's going to work best for you, is you really want to understand the demographics and psychographics of two people. Demographics are those characteristics that you, that those statistical characteristics that make up people. Psychographics are those psychological things, the way people think. And the two factors you want to look at, what are the demographics and psychographics of the people we help? So the people that we support, if you're supporting animals, you might be looking at the people who are looking for your support because they need to find a new home or re-home their animals. But what are those statistical makeup? So think about gender, think about age, think about education. It's as if you're running a for-profit business, who are the people that you want to effectively talk to and communicate with? And the second person you want to build out a demographic and psychographic profile for are your donors. Now typically, the people you help in your donors have some correlation, but not always. Sometimes a corporate sponsor may have nothing to do with people who want to re-home their animals. So that's why I suggest building these two profiles, the demographics and psychographics of who you're actually helping, and the demographics and psychographics of your donors. So when you think of the demographics and psychographics of your donors, if it's a corporation or if it's a large business, you're looking for the specific demographics and psychographics of the decision maker, the person that is responsible for corporate social responsibility, or that is response, maybe even it's the CEO themselves that are leading this change, or the social responsibility office in the human resources team. So what you're doing is you're trying to make this. Hey Siri, call mom on speaker. I'm sorry? Calling mom, iPhone on speaker. Joshua, can you turn your audio on mute please? Okay, thank you. Awesome. I was like, why is he calling my mom? Is this guy telling on me? What's happening? Okay, so those are the two key make-ups that you want to understand. And when you do that, it's going to help you continue to proliferate what key words and key phrasing make up those people. So when you understand that you're the people that you want to help are single parents who maybe are low income, perhaps they're newcomers, you're going to better understand what words are they searching for to find support? Who are they talking to to find support? Who is their support network that they're approaching to to find support? And who are those people? What words, sorry, what words and phrases are those people using? So there's a lot of work that's being done here, but understand that when you do this work, and by the way, this is ever evolving work, you're not going to do it one time and be done. This is something you want to engage with on a regular basis. So you're engaging your donors and you're engaging your, the people that you help on a regular basis, ensuring that the words that you're using are consistently relevant and consistently being throughout your web and your social channels. The other part of keywords and key phrasing is you've talked to, you figured out who it is that you want to support and you figured out who it is that your donors are. You're going to talk to them about what those keywords and key phrasing are that they tend to use to find you when they're using Google to find support for what you do. But there's also this idea of secondary market research. So when you talk to people that's primary market research, secondary market research is who are the non-profits that are in a similar space to you, but perhaps on a larger level. Perhaps you're a regional nonprofit and they're a national nonprofit. And what you want to do is if they're working on the same cause as you, don't be afraid to look at their digital assets, their websites and social media and look at what keywords and key phrasing are they using on a regular basis. Now, keep in mind when you get to a national level, your niche tends to be a lot larger. So if you're on a regional level, a local level, a city level, maybe even a province level, you're not quite national. Be mindful of the keywords and key phrasing when you're looking at your other authorities in your space. Are they talking to a wider audience? So by doing that, you're going to have a good idea of what keywords and key phrasing tends to attract a lot of attention. When you look at their social channels, what's driving a lot of engagement. And as I said before, these keywords and key phrasing make up your marketing message, but it gives you that search engine optimization power so that when you're using it regularly on your digital assets, you're more likely to be found, more likely to get visibility and more likely to gain the right attention from the right people. The goal of this webinar, but especially this particular part of the webinar, is instead of you having to invest tons of time and money into asking for donations, we want to help build you as the authority or as the go-to not-for-profit for the cause that you support. I may have already said that, but that's how important it is. The other thing you want to think about when you're coming up with keywords and key phrasing is you've asked the audience that you support and you've asked your donors what words would they search. You've also looked at other not-for-profits in your space, perhaps on a larger scale, what words and phrases are they consistently using on a regular basis. But you want to make sure that when you're looking at these two factors and you're putting all of this data down in Excel spreadsheet on a piece of paper, what really sets you apart, what really becomes your differentiator when using search engine optimization and when using keywords and key phrasing, is does your keywords and key phrase solve a pain or a vision point? I'm using a lot of for-profit methodologies here, but guys, this works in the non-for-profit sector as well. What is that pain point that not only is the people that you help experiencing, so if we're talking about single parent families, maybe their pain point is isolation, maybe they feel alone, so more than just feeling overwhelmed, maybe they also feel isolated. So when you're thinking of keywords and key phrasing, you're looking at those words and thinking which of these words relate or are relevant to what I think about isolation. I might even be using the word isolated, single parent isolation, lonely, using a few words like that. And the reason why you want to make sure you're using those words as well is that's what people are searching for. So you've asked your audience, you've looked at what your competitors or other not-for-profits are doing, but you want to ensure that you're putting all of this together in a way that solves or resolves or picks at a particular pain point of the people you want to help. You also want to leverage pain point in your donors. What is it that your donors wish to accomplish by donating to you? Are they donating to your cause? Is it simply a social responsibility chapter for this quarter? Understanding what it is that they want to do, because when you're creating this messaging and when you're updating your website and donors are visiting, you not only want to ensure that you're really articulating what the struggle and pain point is for the people that you help, but articulating to your donors, this is how you help them by helping these people. You're the gateway. So how are you being the gateway to help these corporate donors help the people that you help? So really be mindful of what that pain point is. Now keep in mind, not all non-profits are all about pain. Some non-profits focus on vision. For example, you might have a pain point where you, again, single parent families might be isolated, but maybe you're a not-for-profit that perhaps helps young athletes make it to the Olympics. So granted, you might say, well, that is a pain point, but I look at it as a vision point because they're envisioning their future. They're envisioning something better. So a pain point is the people that you're helping are trying to escape a pain or get out of something. A vision point is the people that you're trying to help are trying to accomplish something or reach something. So be mindful of who your audience is. Are they searching for a solution to a pain point or the solution to a vision point? And as you're coming up with these keywords and key phrasing, it should all articulate those keywords, sorry, those pain and vision points as well. Now, you've got this entire list. You've probably got four or five pages of words and phrases and things that people use. Here's where you're going to get into some tech. Here's where you're going to start validating. Okay, so what does Google tell me? Or let's just say search engine in general. What do search engines tell me? Are words and phrases that are constantly searched? So I use this tool called SEMrush. You could certainly use Google Keyword Planner as well. As a not-for-profit, you probably have access to it. But I like using SEMrush. And what I do is I will take that list of words that I've just put together and phrases and articulated it, and I will put it in this search tool here. And what will happen is it will tell me a lot of stuff, but there's only two key things I care about that it's going to tell me. Number one, it's going to tell me, is this a highly searched keyword or key phrase? If it is, that's awesome. You want that. So essentially, what you're doing is you've now validated all of the words that you're ideal, the people that you help and your donors have told you, and all the words you scraped, if you will, from your other nonprofits, you're validating that these are actually highly searched words. You want that. If it's not a highly searched word, it's not going to give you the value of SEO you wish. But here's the magic. It's not just a word that's highly searched. It needs to be a word that has low competition. So when you look on this chart here, it's kind of flipping by really quick. I apologize. There's a column that says CPC cost per click. The more cost per click, the more expensive a cost per click is, the more competitive that keyword is. And the reason why you want a keyword that's not competitive, that's highly searched but not competitive, is you're more likely to get found on the search for it. You're not competing with other paid ads. You're not competing with other words. You're more likely to get found. And that's why it's important to really look at niches and really understanding pain points and vision points. Because if you're using words that are highly searched but not competitive, sorry, not expensive, people can find you much more easily. Google then ranks you at a higher level because you become relevant to those search terms, which again, we want relevance, prominence, and locality as well. So that's how I validate my keywords. Now, when you've done that keyword activity, you're going to start peppering them throughout your social media and your digital channels. And you want to make it something that you regularly do. But keep in mind, every quarter or maybe every month, but at least every quarter, you should be ensuring that you're staying connected and ensuring those words are still relevant. Here's a great example. Not for profits in 2019 had a clear idea of what their keywords and key phrasing are, but then we got hit with COVID-19. And COVID-19 changed the behavior of a lot of people. So the words that they were once searching for that same solution would have changed. Or they were no longer looking for that exact solution but something different. So you want to ensure that you're constantly on par with what's happening in your community. The second key to successful SEO, to be getting found as the trusted expert for the cause that you support, is backlinks. Now, backlinks are, it's a simple tool or a simple process. Backlink simply means when one website points to your not-for-profit website. It sounds simple, right? But there's a lot of variables that go into backlinks. So Google doesn't just say, wow, Bob has 100 websites pointing to him. So let's give him relevance and let's give him prominence. By the way, keywords and key phrase help with relevance. Backlinks is going to help you with prominence. How do you become the go-to authority? So what you want to do is you want to be mindful of what are the websites I know within my arena, whether it's within my industry or whether it's in my locality, that I know has prominence and relevance to what it is I do. So the first question you're going to ask yourself is the people that I want to help. So I'm not so focused on donors on this part, but the people that I want to help, where would I find them online? So if I know that single-parent family, I'm looking for single parents who are struggling with isolation, perhaps I'm going to dig deeper into their demographics and psychographics. And perhaps I dig into it and understand that they're young parents. They're not older parents. They're under 25. And perhaps they're living low-income because they have a job that pays minimum wage. So what you want to start doing is looking at stats of what each platform demographic is. I can tell you based on what I just told you, they're likely going to be on TikTok. So then you start thinking about, okay, so what are websites and what are other social media content relevant to TikTok? What are other websites that talk to this young audience outside of TikTok? So you want to now build another list of what are the websites that your potential, the people that you help are also visiting for help or for support. And it might be another competitor, but it's more likely going to be agencies where they can learn more information, gain other support. It might be influencers. It might be the website of a speaker or someone that's super popular that speaks on the topic of single-parent living as a single-parent, et cetera. So you're looking for those websites. And what you want to do is you want to make a list of those websites and find out how can you contribute to those websites? How can you participate by giving them a blog or creating a video? Maybe you're just creating a one-page resource for free that you're asking them to put on their website. But what you want to do is you want to make sure that every time you're creating these opportunities to participate on their website, it needs to be a win-win. As a not-for-profit, please don't assume people will put you on their website. You want to ensure that you're saying, hey, Bob, I saw that you have this website. It looks like we serve similar people. I've created this document about how single parents can use mindfulness to try and mitigate loneliness. Would you be interested in sharing it on your website? The only thing I ask is that you just throw in my website link. And a lot of times, if they're talking to the same people and care about the same people, they're more likely to do that. So you're looking for these websites that can give you these links backs. Now, keep in mind, not all websites will link back and not all websites offer a backlink, meaning you can be on their website, but you're not getting any Google result from it. So you want to be mindful of that as well. One of the websites that you know are traffic. Now, if you want to find out, you can go back to that SEMrush tool I used earlier, scmrush.com. Take that website and you could use the free version. Take that website, put it into that search bar, and it will tell you what the key words and key phrasing are, but it will also tell you its trust factor. It will tell you, for the most part, if it's a prominent and relevant website. And so you can determine if that's the right website you want to be a part of. Now, most of you know your community and know your cause, so you can probably look at a website and organically tell these are the people that share our core values and who we want to help. Most of you probably already can do that, but if not, use the SEMrush tool. See if you can validate that. In fact, yes, we want to be a part of this website. How do we share our content here? Maybe we do a podcast with them. Maybe we speak. Maybe the executive director speaks at a future event there. But look for ways to get listed somehow on that website. Even they might even have a directory of local services or a directory of global services. Can you get listed on that directory? But find those ways and those opportunities to get on those websites that are relevant to your cause niche. As I said earlier, you want to also look for influencers in your space. So if you are focused on mental health or single parents, who are the authors or who are the speakers or who are the people that talk on this subject? Do they have websites? Are you able to do some sort of joint venture program with them? Perhaps they become an ambassador for your not-for-profit. And if they've got a highly trafficked website, you being on that website is only going to benefit you, especially when you have the right keywords and key phrases embedded on the words you're using on their website as well. And then, of course, a couple of social media platforms. Now, I will tell you, social media platforms aren't great for backlinks. They won't necessarily give you that traffic back. But the reason why I still suggest looking for relevant social media channels as well is because it'll at least give you traffic. So it might not give you the back link, but if someone sees you on Facebook and they see your link, they're more likely to click on that link and join your website. So backlinking is a simple tool. It's simply what are the prominent and relevant websites I need to be on. My website link needs to be on that references us. And again, a very organic process, you want to ensure you're doing this consistently. I would suggest every month you're making a list of websites or influencers or joint partners where you could share your information on to get that prominence and relevance in a Google standing. So we've talked about keywords, key phrasing. We've talked about backlink. The last magic one, this is magic. And I'm telling you this is magic because I can tell you a lot of for-profit businesses don't do that. So I can imagine very rare, if any not-for-profit businesses do that, unless they're a library. And I'm about to explain why. Citations are simply database entries from other online resources. Now, the best way I can explain this is if I'm going to age myself, but there was once a time when I had to go to the library and pull out a card catalog and find a reference to a card that had a dewey decimal number that I would go find on the shelf. That's a citation for the most part. Another way of saying citation is you've quoted someone and you're giving them credit. So some people call it annotation. It could be a citation as well. What you're trying to do is you're trying to get citations across the internet to prove to Google that you are a real and authentic not-for-profit. Now, I should share with you this is really only impactful if you're not-for-profit has a physical location. If you operate only online or are home-based for the most part, you may not get the best results from this because it requires you to publicly list your address. And I'm sure a lot of you don't want to list your home addresses. So if you have a physical space, a physical brick and mortar location, you could even use a UPS box or a mailbox. Again, Google doesn't like that. They tend not to give that as much value. So keep that in mind as well. For those of you that are listening, that are physical not-for-profit locations, citations are looking for those databases. So first of all, all of you should be googling free online citations. And you will be presented with a slew of resources where you can enter your citation. And the more citations you have, the more Google indexes those citations, the more Google says, wow, it looks to me like Sandra's a real not-for-profit. And here are the keywords that she's using. So everyone that uses these keywords, I'm going to give Sandra a higher ranking because citations have proved that she's an actual place and not just simply a scam website with Facebook ads. It's a validator to Google. So there's nothing really magical. I mean, it's magical in the result that it gives you, but it really is a validator. Now, here's the one key thing to citations you have to remember. The only way you get real valid, real value from citations is you enter your name, your not-for-profit name, your not-for-profit web address, definitely your not-for-profit physical address, phone number, et cetera. However you enter that information must be exactly the same in every citation. So right now, you probably also want to do a Google search on your citations and make sure none of them are not accurate. So it gets this specific. If you're not-for-profit is located on a road and you write one, two, three, four avenue road, then wherever else you write that address, it must say ROAD. If you short form it with a period, Google breaks. It cannot see the relevance of that citation. So you need to be as specific and as accurate in those citations wherever you share it. The website address, if you're using www, must be the same everywhere. If you're putting your area code in a plus one, must be the same everywhere. So you need to ensure that the citation that you're entering in these free databases are as accurate as possible. Also keep in mind, now we talked about relevance and prominence, this really helps with localization. So also keep in mind that you want to find citations in that citation databases that are as local as possible. If you're based in Toronto, Canada, and you enter citations into a database in Texas, Google's probably not going to give you as much juice as you would like. It would give you a little bit of relevance, but not as much as you'd appreciate. So what I would want you to start doing is looking for free citation databases in your local area, so Toronto or Vancouver or Calgary. And a good example might be a Chamber of Commerce. Another good example could be Yelp is more for restaurants, but we are seeing more not-for-profits, especially if they're not for profits in this food space, get onto Yelp, like a food bank, for example. Those are all places that you can do citations. So look for these, enter them, and make it a regular habit. It is a very administrative task in nature, but I can assure you the more that you do and you build on this, the more value you're going to get from Google, and the more your key phrases are going to rank you higher when people are searching for it, because you validated to Google that you're an actual place, you've created backlinks to, again, validate to Google that you're prominent, and then, of course, the key phrases are what make you relevant. So three keys to citation, looking for online databases for charities, for example. There's one that I love called catchifier.org. It's a website all about finding resource experts like myself and Sandra. There might be online databases for volunteers as well. Those act as great places for citations. And then, of course, databases specific to your niche. So if you're helping single parents, what are the other single parent databases that you can find? So be mindful of that as well. And the more that you can get onto these databases as accurately as you can, the more you're going to gain success from citations. And folks, I can't harp on this enough. You can't imagine the value of citations until you start seeing the Google juice that comes from it. So here's a little quote. I'm not going to lie to you. It's my own quote, but someone said it was cool. So I'm sharing it. But for not-for-profits in the charity space today, you need to do more than ask. In the old days, back in the 80s and 90s, you had a very important cause. You would ask people for help with that cause. And people would organically, yeah, totally, we want to help each other. But in 2021, you're now dealing with a different consumer demographic. Yes, I am calling them consumers. Boomers had one way that they approached charities. Millennials approach it completely differently. Millennials want to be part of a social cause. So if you have a charity that's related to taking action, you'll see more engagement. And now we're looking at genets and we're looking at a next level generation. What are their social entitlements, if you will? Like what is it that they feel are important to them? So understanding your keywords and key phrasing and getting into a specific niche, understanding how to build those backlinks that are very specific to your target audience that you get from primary research and secondary research, and making it a habit of doing regular citations are going to get you the ranking that you want. Now, there's so many other factors. Please keep in mind it needs to be mobile friendly. It needs to have great web speed, site speed. They're all a bunch of other factors. But if you do this, if you do these three key factors, I'm not going to say regardless, but it will at least get you on a ranking level better than you were before. Certainly there's a lot of other tech aspects that Sandra can talk about that you need to be in mind when that needs to be in mind. So I just want to throw that out there. So it's 1244, I went a little long, I'm sorry. Here's my information if you want to connect and ask some questions after the fact. But I'm also going to take time for questions now because as Sandra knows, this is my favorite part, being able to ask specifically about your not-for-profits and charities. So let me go to the chat. Everyone greeting, good. That's awesome. Lindsay's from Chicago. Nice to have you here, Lindsay. Does anybody have any questions about what we talked about today? Does anybody about implementing? Yes. I just want to say that was great. I don't specifically have any questions. I mean, I have heard you do this one before. And it's great to have you back into it. But yeah. Oh, here we go. We've got one from Lindsay. Thank you. Lindsay, citationship is just if you have a location on GMB. Very good point. It works really, really well with GMB. So if you have Google My Business, citations are double the power. But no, if you are using your web address, citations can actually help your website be validated as a local relevant site as well. But yes, it has more power on Google My Business. So for those of you who don't use Google My Business as a not-for-profit, if you have a physical location, take Lindsay's advice. Please ensure you're also setting up a Google My Business. I don't talk about it here because it's a bit of a process. It is a free account. And to Lindsay's point, citations are immensely powerful there as well. Does that answer your question, Lindsay? A little confused about how to do the citationship. Which website? Okay, so your not-for-profit would have a website in of itself, right? So when you're doing a citation, when you're entering into a database, you're putting your address, which is what you had said, the Google My Business gets that benefit. But in every citation you create, every database you input into, you want to also have your web address as well. And the web address, your main web address, your main not-for-profit website address. Does that help clarify? Thank you, Sandra. I just want to make sure that helps clarify for you, Lindsay. Oh, how to find the... Thank you, Dan, sorry. How to find citation websites? I'm so sorry. So here's my trick. I just go into Google and type free citation database. I would encourage you to put your local area because as I said, it's much more powerful, especially as Lizzie put it out if you're using Google My Business, when you're using local databases. So for example, if I were in Toronto, I would put free citation database Toronto. I might even put my niche, free citation database Toronto single parents. And the more you input that into Google, the more likely you're going to come up with databases that are fairly relevant. The interesting thing about citation databases is they're generally free, but they're the most optimized pieces of Google real estate out there because people are constantly entering their information. So that's how I would find them. I would default to basics like a local chamber, a local BIA, if you're in a downtown BIA corridor, a local Yelp. So even thinking about Yelp and TripAdvisor, so if you're not for profit that deals in food somehow or food security, Yelp can work for any business, but you'll find it generally relates to businesses that are in some sort of service sector. That's what I would suggest there as well. And again, the more outside your local sphere you go, the less juice it's really going to have. So if you find a database in Texas, you can do it. But if you want to use your time more wisely, you probably want to find one in Richmond Hill if you're in Toronto, right? Because again, the more localized you are, the more relevant Google says, oh, let's give them more credit. My pleasure, Lindsay. Did anybody else have any other questions? No. Hopefully I did good. You did a great job. I hope so. Well, I have put Bob's contact info in the chat as well as mine if you need to reach out to us for more information. And did you have anything else to add? Yeah. But I was going to say any of you that are on this call or watching live, because you made time to be with us today, feel free to send me an email to talk about your not-for-profit and what we talked about today. I'm happy to donate 45 minutes of my time to talk about maybe more specific strategies for your not-for-profit. If you're watching this on the replay, sorry, not just kidding. So make sure you drop Sandra's name in the subject and please send me an email. I'm more than happy to help. I know that here in Ontario, we're in a lockdown, so I hate to say it. It's a good month for me to be able to give that time. So feel free to try and use it this month if you can. That's all I wanted to share. Well, thank you again, Bob. Great to have you here. And thank you to everybody for joining us. And again, if you have any suggestions or ideas for future speakers, please let me know. I know last month when we had an event, somebody gave me a whole bunch of great topics. So I'm working on trying to find speakers for all those topics as well. So stay tuned to our Meetup Group. There will be more events coming. We do have another one coming with Chris in a couple of weeks. I believe it's on the 21st or 22nd. So check out our Meetup Group for that. And I hope to see you all there. And I just realized I've been talking and I didn't have my camera on. Thank you, Sandra, for hosting these, as always, and giving us space to be able to teach and learn. Absolutely. I love being able to bring people together and to help other people share their knowledge and their expertise. Awesome. All right. Everyone enjoy your day. And again, please do reach out. Take me up on that offer. I'm a really fun guy to talk to. Yes, I vouch for him. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Take care, everyone. Bye.