SEO Quick Wins for Associations: A Practical Guide

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) might sound like something only big teams and expert digital marketers can achieve. But there are some straightforward strategies you can use if you’re a small association or nonprofit team to incorporate SEO tactics into your day-to-day work.  

In a recent episode of The Member Engagement Show, I sat down with Romeo Talento, expert advisor at Higher Logic, to unpack SEO strategies tailored for associations. 

We pulled some of the tips from this episode to create this guide to quick, impactful SEO wins. Even if you’re short on time, budget, or a dedicated digital team, you’re sure to find ideas for leveraging SEO to improve your association’s visibility. 

Why Does SEO Matter for Associations? 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. 

It’s the process of making your website and content easier for people to find on search engines like Google or Bing. 

Imagine someone goes to Google and types: “Best professional association for healthcare managers.” If your association’s website is well-optimized for search, it has a better chance of showing up on the first page of results — and that means more people will find and visit your site. 

Romeo laid it out clearly: even a beautifully designed website won’t be found by your audience without SEO. It’s more than a buzzword – it’s a strategic tool for attracting new members and donors, building credibility, and maximizing the value of all the content and benefits your association has. 

SEO helps ensure that your audience finds your content when they need it — whether they’re Googling industry updates, best practices, resources, or upcoming events. 

What Are Some SEO Tools to Help Make Things Easier? 

Implementing effective SEO strategies doesn’t require a large budget or a dedicated digital team. Numerous affordable and easy-to-use tools are available to help association professionals enhance their online visibility.  

Romeo and I mentioned a few of the tools they’ve used regularly as part of their SEO strategy: 

• SEMrush: A comprehensive tool that, even in its free version, provides valuable data on organic search, paid search, and display advertising. It’s particularly useful for tracking SEO performance and page ranks, competitive analysis, keyword research, and checking backlinks.  

• The paid version also offers pretty cool AI-powered features you can use to evaluate content drafts, or write search optimized content from scratch. 

• Yoast SEO Plugin: A popular WordPress plugin that guides you in optimizing your content for SEO, readability, and social media sharing. It provides real-time feedback and suggestions as you create content. 

• Any tools that integrate with your CMS: anything that’s built into the tools you already use for your website content will be easier to work into your day-to-day. 

Some additional popular (and budget-friendly) SEO tools include: 

• AnswerThePublic: This tool visualizes search questions and autocomplete searches, offering insights into the queries your audience is making. It’s excellent for generating content ideas that address specific user interests.  

• Google Keyword Planner: This tool from Google (integrated with Google Ads) is excellent for identifying keywords related to your business and provides data on search volume and competition.  

• Google Trends: This is a valuable tool for tracking keyword popularity over time, helping you anticipate trends and understand user search behavior.  

• Google Search Console: Essential for monitoring your website’s presence in Google search results. It helps identify indexing issues, security problems, and provides data on search traffic and performance. ​  

• QuestionDB: By aggregating questions from platforms like Reddit and Quora, QuestionDB can help uncover the topics your audience is curious about, enabling you to create content that directly addresses their concerns.  

• Rank Math: An alternative to Yoast, Rank Math offers advanced features like schema markup, keyword ranking, and integration with Google Search Console, all within a user-friendly interface. ​ 

• SEOquake: A browser extension that provides instant SEO metrics for any webpage, including keyword density, backlink information, and page health diagnostics. It’s useful for quick audits and competitor analysis. ​ 

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: A desktop program that crawls websites’ links, images, CSS, and more from an SEO perspective. The free version allows crawling up to 500 URLs, making it suitable for small to medium-sized association websites. ​ 

• Google PageSpeed Insights: Input any URL to check the speed and see if you need to improve. If you’re a little more technical, PageSpeed Insights actually runs on Lighthouse, an open-source, automated tool that you can use directly for improving the quality of web pages. It provides audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, SEO, and more. 

• Moz Link Explorer: Offers insights into your website’s backlink profile, domain authority, and helps identify link-building opportunities. Understanding your link profile is crucial for improving search rankings.  

• Ahrefs Backlink Checker: Known for its robust backlink analysis capabilities, Ahrefs offers a free version that allows limited access to its extensive database, aiding in understanding your site’s link profile and identifying areas for improvement.  

• XML Sitemap Generator: XML Sitemaps Generator allows you to automatically create XML sitemaps for websites. These sitemaps can be uploaded to Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools to help search engines like Google, Bing, and others crawl and index your site’s pages more efficiently.   

10 Easy SEO Strategies 

You don’t need a full digital team to make meaningful changes. Here are some low-effort, high-impact “SEO Quick Wins” from the episode: 

• Structure content with headers (H1, H2, H3) for readability and SEO. Great tip: Limit your webpage to only one H1 header. 

• Review page titles to make sure they’re clear, relevant, and keyword-focused. 

• Test all links — broken links can hurt your rankings. 

• Incorporate data and stats into blog posts to increase credibility and visibility. 

• Seek backlink opportunities by seeking media mentions (and following up with media outlets that mention you without linking back to your site) and looking for opportunities to guest blog. 

• Use UTM links to track performance. 

• Add descriptive alt text to all images. 

• When you add links, make sure they’re set to open links in a new tab to keep users on your site. 
• Update old pages if you can. Add new links, change/update metadata to enhance search results. Small changes and improvements to existing webpages help boost your rankings.

• Online communities are naturally great for SEO, especially if you strategically leave some parts of your community open to non-members. Because your members (your ideal audience) are asking and answering highly-relevant questions, your online community is ripe with SEO-rich content. Even if you don’t want to open your community to non-members, your community will give you insight into common questions your audience is asking, which you can then use to inform the content you create. 

If you have more bandwidth to dedicate to SEO, or you’re looking for more ideas, SEMRush has a great SEO Checklist with 41 Tips to Optimize Your Website. 

What’s Changing in SEO? The Importance of Planning for AI and Voice Search 

On the episode, Romeo and I also explored some of the changes in the SEO landscape, pointing to insights from a recent discussion with Higher Logic CEO, Rob Wenger, and a recent Higher Logic webinar, How the Rules of SEO Are Being Rewritten in 2025, with Alec Cole, Founder of Salt Rock SEO. 

The main takeaways is it’s important for associations to think about the growing role of AI summaries and voice search in shaping how people find information.  

Users are increasingly asking questions verbally of assistants like Alexa, Google, and Siri. They’re also turning to AI chatbots and consuming the AI summaries that now appear for most web searches. That’s going to impact how much search traffic actually reaches your site. 

Romeo and my advice: 

• Create content that answers common questions. 

• Ensure your site uses clean code and structured formatting. 

• Use natural language and FAQs to optimize for both AI and voice search. 
• Lean into the things associations do well to ensure you’re still a go-to resource for members and potential members. AI can’t replace the value of human connection and the innovation that comes from giving your members a place to problem solve together (like an online community). 

SEO Is an Ongoing Practice 

SEO isn’t one-and-done — but, again, you don’t have to be an expert to start making improvements. Whether you’re a communications manager, membership director, or event planner, take a few minutes each week to ask yourself how you can incorporate SEO quick wins into the work you’re already doing. As Romeo put it, treat SEO like a daily habit. Over time, small SEO efforts build into big results.