I am using my husband's accout because I know very little about any of this help and won't be of any help to anyone else. I have a non-profit and we donate Loss Kits to people that lose children to pregnancy or infant loss. We only get about 15 hits a day on our website on a good day. We really need to drive more traffic in because the more people that come the more chance we'll recieve a donation. My site is linked to from many other big sites, we do get hits from google, MSN and yahoo - just not off any big key words. It's like you already have to know what you are looking for to find us. I have keywords in all the titles of my pages. I know I should add keyword links on my index page but it always looks dumb. Is there a way I can do this with out it looking weird? What else can I do? Part of the problem is that our key words have a lot of medical information too. So when you search 'stillbirth' you are getting a lot of results from universaties and research. Also, we can't pay for anything. I'd love to able to afford SEO but, being a non-profit, we just can't swing it. The website is www.asmallvictory.org
If it's non commercial site, I will suggest you submit to yahoo directory first, it's free of charges for non commercial sites. And then you can start submit to DMOZ and other free directories. Most important, you shall make your site seo friendly.
The only thing I don't have to make my site 'SEO Friendly' is outbound links on the index page - correct? I've added them before but it always looks really bad. How can I make it look better? Thanks for the advice about the yahoo directory and DMOZ.
Best web directories has a list of high ranking sites that are free for non-profit http://best-web-directories.com/free-non-profit.htm
I don't think outbound links make your site SEO friendly. Inbound links do though. Submit your site to web directories, or try to make a larger site do a special on your cause to receive inbound links. If you are doing link exchanges, dont have the outbound links on your main page but rather on a subpage.
Outbound links to Authority, or trusted sites can help the search engines determine the topic of your site. However I probably wouldn't put them on my main page.