I just spent the last couple of days reviewing a web site for a substantially large non-profit organization – the Arthritis National Research Foundation – www.curearthritis.org – what a great group of folks!

Here’s an important thing to remember whenever you have a president, a director’s board, a consulting board, a scientific board . . . basically anything that has the word “board” or “officer” in it: Link Strategy, which is part of the vital SEO Off-Page Marketing strategy you need to participate in. These people on your board can help boost your site – and seriously – in the search engines.

First.
Write short profiles on each person and either categorize these profiles in a group on a single page (all the consultant board folks on one page) or, better, give each of them his or her own page so that you can assign a distinct page title and page URL to each and every one. Remember, each distinctive page URL or page title is picked up by the search engines – the more, the definitely merrier.

(And one important point – don’t resort to pop up or pop down windows that profile each person. Search engines can’t see pop windows so don’t waste the programming time or energy. Give these people real, true-blue pages in your site.)

If you have a number of boards, each with a number of people, yes, this can be intensive work. So, you might, then, decide to use both strategies, depending on pecking order of your board members. As an example, on this particular site, the ANRF has some very big, renowned names on its Science Advisory board. These folks are deserving of single page profiles because there’s a higher likelihood that they, themselves, have their own web sites or are connected to any number of web sites because of the work they’ve done to make them “renowned.”

Second.
Once you’ve created the profiles, create a link in each that (preferably) goes to Wikipedia or LinkedIn for that person – these are the two social media sites I’m finding are consistently ranking high in the engines. If this person doesn’t have a profile at either, link to his or her company or association web site. (More on Wikipedia strategy in a moment.)

Third.
Ask each board member to create an outbound link from his/her own site (or company’s site) to your site. Remember, the higher the number of web sites referring to you, the more popular you become with the search engines. This is an easy request to make and serves you beautifully in the long run.

Fourth.
Look in Wikipedia for each of your board members or the organizations/companies they’re clearly associated with. Edit into that Wikipedia page the fact that he or she serves on your board and connect the dots to your site. Voila. Instant leverage.

Fifth.
And while you’re at it, does Wikipedia have a profile page for your organization? If not, start writing! While it’s not the only sheriff in town, Wiki is here to stay for the long run and it provides very decent leverage to any entity out there – including YOURS. Get on it!