May 17, 2022
GRF Cybersecurity Risk Assessment and Scorecard Blog Series
While web ranking is not necessarily a security concern, having insight into the popularity of your website helps measure the success of ad campaigns, assess visitor engagement with your content, and identify opportunities for growth. Web ranking sites include Alexa, Cisco, and Majestic, and each site ranks on different criteria. Alexa ranks websites based on a combined measure of page views and unique site users. The Cisco Ranking creates a list of the most popular brands and websites. The list contains the most queried domains and differs from Alexa. Majestic ranks every website in the world based on the number of citations or links from other websites.
Screenshot of the web ranking report
Web ranking includes all websites in the world, so it may be difficult for smaller organizations to break into the top rankings, but you can still see where you stand and see improvements over time.
Along with web ranking, another beneficial tool is Google Page Speed Insights, which is used to measure the website’s performance and usability. It measures desktop speed, mobile speed, and mobile usability. Each is used to give a ranking 0-100 and can be summed up by:
- Good – The page applies the most performance best practices and delivers a good user experience.
- Needs work – The page is missing common performance optimizations that may result in a slower experience.
- Poor – The page is likely to deliver a slow performance.
When comparing to best practices, Google Insights will assess the items that you are currently using and list tools you’re not using but should, so you can improve your website experience for users.
Google PageSpeed measures a site’s performance and usability.
Increasing traffic
The best way to increase your web ranking is to increase your web traffic. This can occur through ads or search engine optimization. There are many things that your organization can do, but this article from HubSpot helps to outline 7 things to increase your online presence.
- Encourage visitors to search for your brand
- Many nonprofits have a niche target audience, but there are keywords that you can use to gain the attention of a larger audience and drive traffic to your website.
- Update your content
- Search engines are continually improving their algorithm to find relevant searches for users. If your content is old and rarely updated, it will be hard for your organization to show up on the top search results page. It is crucial to use new information and statistics and regularly update your content and webpage.
- Analyze keywords beyond search volume
- You may think that certain keywords have the most potential to drive traffic to your site, but it is important to do your research before targeting a keyword to write content about. It is good to recon and test the topics actual opportunity to drive traffic. Certain words may already have a connotation to other organizations, so it is important to know what words can positively impact your organization.
- Prioritize internal linking
- Within your content, there should be logical linking to help Google understand what words relate to one another.
- Form strong relationships with your developers and designers
- SEO is dependent on the content that is being created, and if you have a good relationship with your web designer, then you can work better with them to increase your online presence and make your content SEO friendly.
- Prune content after long periods of growth
- If you are constantly churning out content, it may be a good idea to remove or refresh your old articles on your website to increase the speed and performance.
- Optimize search-friendly content
- When the opportunity to drive organic traffic is greater than the time invested, then you should focus on that. Since search engines won’t look for your ads or landing pages, having search-friendly content can drive them to your page to help market your organization.
There is always room for improvement in increasing traffic to your website. Read more tactics to improve your search engine results.
Areas of opportunity
Google offers in-kind advertising for eligible 501c3 organizations. Google Ad Grants provide nonprofit organizations with $10,000 per month in search ads shown on google.com. This is an opportunity for eligible nonprofits to take advantage of and help grow their organization. The steps for applying are included here.
- Apply for Google for Nonprofits
- Activate Ad Grants
- Launch a successful Ad Grants campaign
Various Google certifications can be obtained to help improve your Google Ads campaigns and drive traffic to your website. Utilizing these can help you make the most of the opportunity.
How GRF Can Help
We can provide you with details on where your organization stands compared to other organizations so that you can gauge your organization’s visibility and opportunities for growth. Each of the categories impacts the score and helps to create an easy-to-read report. The report will identify possible risks, remediation steps, and best practices to increase your score. Web Ranking is one component of GRF’s Cybersecurity Risk Assessment and Scorecard, a dashboard that continuously monitors internet-facing systems to identify any vulnerabilities.
For more information on GRF’s Cybersecurity Risk Assessment and Scorecard, or about our cybersecurity capabilities, reach out to our IT & Risk Supervisor Darren Hulem, CISA, CEH, Security +, or Risk Analyst Tom Brown, CAPM, through our contact us page.
The digital transformation happening in the workplace requires heightened awareness of your organization’s cybersecurity posture. Managing the risks has become another full-time job. The GRF Cybersecurity Risk Assessment and Scorecard helps identify possible weaknesses and vulnerabilities by evaluating risk in 20 different categories. The scorecard will evaluate your cyber posture, propose remediation steps, and help eliminate vulnerabilities that your organization is facing.
