4 Ways to Optimize Your Nonprofit Website for AI Search

AI has revolutionized the nonprofit industry. It’s helping major giving teams conduct wealth screening more easily. It empowers grantmakers to secure more funding for their causes. It also is changing the way nonprofits use their websites to connect with their online audiences.

Until this era of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), nonprofits have relied on strategies for search engine optimization (SEO) to make themselves more visible, such as adding keywords to their websites so traditional search engines could find them. With the rise of AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT and Google’s AI overviews, nonprofits must adapt their website design strategies to continue driving traffic and conversions since 60% of Google queries now end without users clicking any links—they simply get their answers from an AI overview and move on.

So how can you improve your odds of appearing in AI search? This guide explores key strategies (to be used in addition to SEO fundamentals) to help optimize your nonprofit website, making it easier for supporters to find you in the era of AI search.

1. Implement schema markup for LLM clarity.

Schema markup, also known as structured data, is code added to website pages that helps search engines understand the context of the pages on a deeper level. Search engines powered by LLMs use this information to display more comprehensive search results with richer, more robust information from your brand.

In addition to providing more context for your pages in search results, adding schema to your website also increases the likelihood that searchers will click through to your main website. According to a Schema App study, “Pages with markup have a 40% higher click-through rate than pages without.”

Consider adding the following types of schema to your website and its most important pages:

• Organization schema: This type of schema clearly identifies your mission, logo, and social profiles, helping LLMs understand your organization and display more accurate information about your brand in AI search results. Add organization schema to your homepage, about page, and contact page for maximum visibility.
• Event schema: Adding this schema to your event landing pages enables you to highlight upcoming experiences or volunteer days with precise dates and locations. This helps searchers gather accurate information about your events so they can decide whether they want to participate.
• FAQ schema: FAQ schema bridges the gap between users’ questions and your organization’s answers. You can provide easily accessible answers to help searchers understand your organization’s mission on a deeper level. Search engines like Google also display FAQ information directly on the search results page, allowing your brand to take up more space and gain increased visibility.

Audit your website to identify a few pages where you can quickly implement schema, such as your homepage, FAQ page, and event calendar. Use a tool like Schema Markup Validator to ensure that the schema you add is functional and complete.

2. Prioritize author attribution and E-E-A-T.

The primary purpose of a search engine is to connect users with accurate information. That’s why sites like Google prioritize credibility and expertise in the content that they choose to show to searchers. In fact, Google itself has said that its “automated systems are designed to use many different factors to rank great content […] Of these aspects, trust is most important.”

Therefore, it’s essential to use a cohesive author attribution strategy on your website to enhance its E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust). By clearly displaying your website’s authors and their credentials, you can prove to search engines that your content is built by reliable expert sources.

Use these strategies to enhance your website’s authority:

• Use clear author bylines on every blog post. Link to detailed author bios that highlight each writer’s years of field experience, academic background, or leadership role within the organization. Simply adding an author byline does not automatically make you more visible. Bylined content that shows firsthand expertise with proper citation of sources can.
• Implement author schema. This schema ensures that AI search engines can easily understand and display author information in search results. Include key details such as the author’s full name, job title, and links to their social media profiles.
• Link to authoritative external sources. A study by researchers from Princeton University, Georgia Tech, The Allen Institute for AI, and IIT Delhi, titled “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization,” found that including citations, quotations from relevant sources, and statistics boosted source visibility by more than 40% in AI-generated responses. Your on-site content should include links to external studies or expert interviews to show that your organization’s thought leaders aren’t making up claims—they’re backed by definitive studies and expert information.

With a comprehensive authorship strategy, you can prove to AI search engines that credible experts support your organization and that your content is worthy of being displayed on page one of search results.

3. Adopt a question-first content strategy.

AI search is much more conversational than traditional search processes. Users are no longer just typing broad topics such as “hunger relief NYC.” They are asking, “How can I help with food insecurity in Brooklyn this weekend?” Users want to engage with search engines in a more personalized way that helps them answer their unique questions.

Take these steps to ensure your website’s content focuses on answering users’ questions by offering relevance and clarity:

• Audit your top-performing pages for opportunities to answer specific, high-intent questions early in the text. For example, one of your site’s most visited pages may be a guide on updating your cooking practices to be more eco-friendly. To emphasize essential strategies right away, you could include a “Key Takeaways” summary at the top of the guide that includes three bullet points of the most important sustainable cooking tips.
• Review Google’s results pages for keywords relevant to your nonprofit to evaluate the “people also ask” questions that are present. For instance, many of your target audience members may be searching for the term “volunteering at a dog shelter near me.” When you search for that term, you may see “people also ask” questions such as “Is it worth it to volunteer at an animal shelter?” and “What do shelters look for in volunteers?” You can include an FAQ page on your website to answer these questions and incorporate FAQ schema, so that your nonprofit’s answers appear on the search results page.
• Use subheadings as questions, followed by concise, factual answers, to help AI tools extract your content as a direct response. Formatting and HTML heading tags matter when optimizing your content to answer users’ questions. Keep your answers brief and accurate and use headings to break up your text into easily digestible sections.

The goal of making your content question-first is to be the primary, highly knowledgeable source for your target audience and the source AI tools can cite when they have questions about topics relevant to your mission. As a result, you can drive more users to your online donation page, volunteer form, event registration page, and other areas where they can turn their interest into action.

4. Refresh high-stakes content for accuracy and engagement.

Keeping your nonprofit’s website content updated and fresh is not only essential for serving your audience effectively, but it’s also critical for helping your website stand out in AI-driven search.

According to data from Passionfruit:

“Content freshness plays a bigger role in AI search than traditional SEO. AI platforms cite content that’s 25.7% fresher than what appears in organic results. ChatGPT shows the strongest recency bias, with 76.4% of its most-cited pages updated in the last 30 days.”

With this in mind, establish a quarterly review process for your most important landing pages in which you:

• Update impact numbers, such as the number of beneficiaries served or years of operation.
• Refresh citations of external research, especially for annual reports.
• Ensure your program details are accurate, especially if you frequently update your offerings.
• Incorporate multimedia and interactive elements, such as videos, quizzes, photo slideshows, or maps, to create a rich tapestry of content that AI tools can utilize to better understand your website.

Kanopi Studios’ nonprofit website maintenance guide recommends measuring your website’s performance by tracking key metrics, such as time on site, bounce rate, and traffic sources. You should also track AI search-specific metrics, such as brand mentions in AI overviews and sentiment analysis, to understand where your brand is appearing and whether it’s receiving positive or negative mentions in AI results.

As you implement these tips to optimize your site for AI search, don’t forget about the fundamentals of good website design. A user-focused website with clear, accurate information, cohesive branding, and functional forms and features will always serve your mission the most effectively. By designing a site that’s optimized for both users and AI search engines, you can maximize visibility and support for your mission.