How I Helped the American Red Cross
Rank #1 for “Donate Now” (and Drive a 57%
Revenue Boost from Organic Search)
Working with the American Red Cross was one of those projects that reminded me exactly why
I love SEO—because when it’s done right, it doesn’t just drive clicks or rankings—it can actually
help save lives.
I was brought in to lead organic search strategy for the Consumer Fundraising & Humanitarian
Services team. My role was to make sure that when someone felt inspired to help—whether
after a disaster or during a campaign—they could find the Red Cross quickly and easily through
search.
The Challenge
When I stepped in, the keyword “donate now”—arguably one of the most critical and competitive
terms—was buried on page 4 of Google (position 31). That’s a tough spot to be in, especially
when donations are essential to response efforts.
Beyond that, the Red Cross was in the middle of a major CMS migration, had hundreds of
content pages related to safety and preparedness, and needed help building local SEO
presence across chapters.
The goal was clear: make it easier for people to support the mission through search—nationally
and locally—and grow fundraising revenue in the process.
What I Did
First, I got to work improving our technical and on-page SEO foundation. That meant auditing
the site for indexation issues, tightening up robots.txt rules, and making sure our tagging and
internal links supported crawlability. These updates alone reduced indexation errors by more
than 60% and helped us get better control over how Google saw and ranked our content.
I also partnered closely with the CRO manager and ran tests in Optimizely to fine-tune the
donation flow. We wanted to make sure once someone clicked “donate,” nothing slowed them
down—from button color to page speed to copy clarity.
At the same time, I led the SEO checklist for our migration from a proprietary CMS to Adobe
Experience Manager. These migrations can be a minefield for SEO, so I worked alongside developers and content leads to ensure every redirect, canonical tag, and metadata field made
it over safely.
Then there was the content. Using Conductor and BrightEdge, I built out keyword research that
focused on both high-converting terms like “donate online” or “disaster relief donations,” and
evergreen educational content like “how to prepare for a hurricane.” I also worked with our paid,
analytics, content, and product teams to align messaging and reduce duplication across
channels.
One of the most rewarding parts of the project? Leading a local SEO initiative across regional
chapters. I worked with digital content leads to build and optimize new local donation pages,
which not only gave each chapter more visibility but drove a 32% increase in local online
donations.
And yes—after a year of sustained SEO effort, we took “donate” from position 31 all the way to
#1 on Google, resulting in a 57% increase in revenue from organic search.
Why It Worked
This project worked because everyone—product, content, dev, marketing—was aligned on the
same mission. We weren’t just optimizing for bots; we were optimizing for real people who
wanted to make a difference, and we made sure the path was as easy and intuitive as possible.
I also led monthly SEO meetings across business units to keep everyone informed, unified, and
accountable. That collaboration and consistency made all the difference.