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Thoughts on Improving SEO on NationBuilder Sites

by May 10, 2022

Thoughts on Improving SEO on NationBuilder Sites

This post is an archive of the May 10, 2022 edition of my Unofficial NationBuilder Expert Newsletter. Please sign up now, or follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter, to make sure you don’t miss future updates.

Good morning, NationBuilders!

I have a few quick thoughts to share with you this morning, and a new format to try. 

  1. An actionable NationBuilder tip.
  2. Something to think about and/or discuss.
  3. A note about something I’m working on.

I’d love to get your feedback on whether that format’s interesting or helpful to you. Just hit reply or shoot me a tweet and let me know.

NationBuilder Tip: How to Set up SEO in your nation

Out of the box, NationBuilder has some powerful SEO tools to help you reach and grow your community on Google and other search engines.

But in my experience, SEO is probably the single most overlooked part of the content creation process — potentially costing you significantly in your long-term returns on your NationBuilder investment.

NationBuilder’s official HOWTO on “setting up SEO in your nation” is a good starting place for making sure you’re taking advantage of these no-code features. It’s well worth an hour of your time, and could make a significant impact in the growth of your movement over time.

Screenshot: NationBuilder SEO Settings
Screenshot: NationBuilder SEO Settings

Digging Deeper: Google’s Rich Snippets in Search Results

Looking further into SEO for NationBuilder sites, I’ve been investigating the possibility of building modular Custom Theme plugins for Google’s “Rich Snippets” in search results.

What are Rich Snippets? 

Rich snippets are distilled, aesthetically appealing search results that add additional information alongside the title, description, and URL. The extra information comes from structured data on the page and attempts to answer the searcher's question directly within the results.

Screenshot: Google Rich Snippets (Credit: https://ahrefs.com/blog/rich-snippets/)
Screenshot: Google Rich Snippets (Credit: https://ahrefs.com/blog/rich-snippets/)

These optimizations could be done at the Theme Level so that your website would automatically send this data to Google when you publish a new page via the NationBuilder Control Panel.

If that sort of NationBuilder Theme Plugin would be interesting to you, please reply to this email or shoot me a tweet and let me know.

Quick Note About Custom Themes

When it comes to NationBuilder Custom Themes, customers fall into two categories:

  1. Enterprise Customers: These are well-funded organizations that are looking for a Custom NationBuilder Theme to meet their unique and well-defined needs. They typically have large budgets and medium- to long-term timelines. NationBuilder Custom Theme project timelines can range anywhere from 1–6 months based on a variety of factors.
  2. Standard, Pro, and Political Campaign Customers: These are startup organizations that need a Customized NationBuilder Theme to match their branding. These customers have common needs and use cases, and often prioritize the speed of project completion (i.e., they are in a hurry). They are often working with tight budgets, and project timelines are often measured in days.

Both types of customers have valid needs and expectations, and I want to be able to support them both in a way that exceeds their expectations.

To that end, I’ve spent the past week building a new, fully modular Custom NationBuilder Theme Framework based on the Momentum Theme.

This Theme Framework is fully internationalized, and currently offers support for English, Estonian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. 

I expect that it should be ready to launch within 1 to 2 weeks, and I plan to use it to create Customized NationBuilder Themes for Standard, Pro, and Political Campaign Customers looking for affordable themes in a hurry.

  • Estimated Project Timeline: 1 Week or Less
  • Estimated Cost: $1,500+ (flat rate, depending on features/services)

If you’d like to learn more, or if you have ideas about features you’d like to see in this theme, please reply to this email or shoot me a tweet and let me know.

Conclusion

That’s a wrap for this week’s newsletter, which turned out to be somewhat of a long one.

Thanks again for subscribing!