Your unit website is your home on the web and one of your best recruiting tools, if it is done right. That is a big if. If it is not done right, if you let your content go stale, it is no help at all. So, do it right and here are a few things to know about doing it right.
1. You don’t have to hard sell. People who come to a Scout unit’s site are looking for Scouting already. Just tell your story and that will bring them in.
2. Your website should reflect your unit. If you thrive on camping then tell great stories with pictures. If you live Pinewood Derby, make it the cherry on top of your site.
3. Be careful about too much clutter. Clutter looks disorganized and, since your site tells about your unit, it shows your unit is disorganized.
4. Pictures paint a thousand words, but be careful to protect your Scouts. There is no need for the public to know the names of your Scouts.
Now you need to get people there. Try a test. Open another browser tab and search for “Scouting near me” or “Cub Scouting near me” or “Venturing BSA near me”. This will tell you how much work you have to do. Google and other search engines have an algorithm to rang pages. The algorithms consider a lot of things including:
- Content is Still King. Content Quality. we talked about that…
- Backlinks. This is how many other sites link to yours. Help each other out. A Cub Pack can post a link to the Troop(s) their Scouts cross into and the Troop(s) can reciprocate. North Shore will be happy to link to your unit site.
- Rankbrain. This means that the more often searches click on your page inm the search results, the higher in the rankings you go.
- Freshness. Update your content regularly. Stale content is your enemy.
- Mobile Friendliness.It is a new world now. You should not ignore mobile.
- Page Speed. Too many pictures affect page speed. Using large pictures especially.
Of course, there is more, but these will give you a great start.
