Cold runs SEO for charities, from local causes with one paid member of staff to regional organisations with shops, services and a fundraising team. A charity site has more audiences than most: people looking for support, supporters ready to give, volunteers, partners and funders. We plan search around the ones that matter most to your strategy this year, then measure the work against them.
This is an instant, live ballpark quote calculator. You’ll see a project range and flexible payment options, including pay over time and monthly retainer costs.
Step 1 of 2Enter your website (or the one you’d like) to start:
National charities own most of page one for cause-related searches, and they have content teams to keep it that way. Smaller organisations end up invisible for the very services they run locally. Plenty of charity sites were built by a volunteer or a kind supporter years ago, with service information buried in PDFs, an events calendar still showing last year's dates and a donate page Google barely knows exists.
We start by agreeing what search is for: referrals into services, donations, volunteers, event sign-ups or shop visits. Then we audit what the site earns now and which organisations take the searches you should be winning. Technical fixes first, then service and fundraising pages, then local SEO and links from partners who already know you. Retainers begin at £1,000 a month, and the pricing calculator will show where you're likely to land.
More people finding your services when they need them, and more supporters arriving at the donate page with their mind already made up. Trustees get a monthly report that ties search to outcomes they recognise: referrals, gifts, volunteer applications and event places. Pages that rank keep working without a campaign budget behind them, which matters when every pound has to be justified.
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Charity searches fall into a few groups. People who need help ('bereavement support for children'), people who want to give ('donate old laptops'), people who want to do something ('volunteer this weekend') and people reading up on a cause. We map each group to your services and fundraising, note which questions AI answers now handle in full and focus on the searches where your organisation is the right answer.
A service page should say who you help, where, how to get referred and what happens next, in words a stressed person can follow. Fundraising pages need the same clarity about where the money goes. We write both with your staff, add your registered charity number and Fundraising Regulator badge where they belong, and back every claim about impact with your own reporting.
Older charity sites often run on unsupported themes, with hundreds of news posts, duplicate event pages and annual reports saved as giant PDFs. We fix speed, indexing and structure, turn the important PDFs into proper pages and add NGO schema markup so search engines and AI assistants understand who you are. Accessibility fixes come with the territory, because many of your visitors rely on them.
Most charities serve a place, even when the cause is national. Every office, hub and shop should have its own Google listing, with accurate hours, services and photos, and your details should match the Charity Commission register and the local directories that councils and GPs use for signposting. Shops need listings too, because 'charity shop near me' is a search people make every single day.
Charities earn links more easily than businesses, because people want to help them. We go after the ones you're owed: partner organisations, funders' grantee pages, local councils, corporate supporters, schools and community groups. Stories about your work go to local press. Every link is listed in your report. We never buy links, however tempting the offer in your inbox.
Your report starts with outcomes: referrals and enquiries into services, online donations, volunteer sign-ups and event registrations, each traced to the pages and searches that produced them. Where you use JustGiving, Enthuse or Donorbox, we track the hand-off so gifts don't vanish from the data. Search positions and visits follow, along with how often AI tools mention you. You'll get the first one 30 days in.
Weeks one and two: we review the website, your Google listings and whoever outranks you, and talk to your team about which audience comes first this year. You get a short written plan at the end of it.
Technical problems get fixed next, and the service and fundraising pages are rewritten alongside them. Each one goes to the staff member who runs that service before it's published, so nothing goes live that misdescribes what you do.
By month two the new pages are live and outreach to partners and press has started. Monthly reports follow, written for trustees as much as staff, and we keep moving effort to whatever is bringing people in.
People rarely choose a charity the way they choose a supplier. Supporters give because of a personal connection, a story or a friend running a marathon, then look you up to check you're legitimate. People who need help search in a hurry and often on a phone. Funders and corporate partners read your site before a meeting. Each of them makes a judgement in seconds, and the site has to pass all of those tests.
Forty second answers with no jargon. Anything else, ring the office and ask whoever picks up.
Yes, and it's often the most useful thing it does. People looking for support search in plain words, usually on a phone and often late at night. We write service pages around those words, keep your opening hours and referral routes accurate and make sure the map results show you. For local services, the map results can matter more than the website itself.
Our retainers start at £1,000 a month. Where yours sits depends on how many services, sites and shops we cover, and on the state of the website. Some organisations fund SEO from a digital or capacity-building grant, and we can help describe the work for an application. You'll have the monthly fee in writing before anything begins.
It should rank for your own name plus words like donate, give or support, and on older sites it rarely does. People who already know you search that way, then land on a news post or someone else's fundraising page. We make the donate page fast, clear about where money goes and properly linked from the rest of the site.
Usually. Eligible organisations get free Google search advertising every month through Google for Nonprofits, and it can cover searches you won't rank for quickly. The programme has strict rules on click-through rates and keyword quality, and accounts get paused when they slip. We can set it up and run it next to SEO, so paid and organic stop competing for the same searches.
Local services usually show signs of life within a quarter, and a bigger shift tends to arrive around month six. Pages held back by technical faults often move first. National cause searches are slower, sometimes up to a year, because the largest organisations hold them. After the audit, we'll tell you which searches are realistic.
Yes, and we'd encourage it. Fresh event pages, service updates and impact stories all help search. We set up simple templates, show the team how to write a page that ranks and check in monthly on what's been published. Nobody needs to learn SEO jargon to keep things current.
Search can find a charity new supporters, volunteers and the people it exists to help, without eating the budget. We plan pages around what each group searches for, fix the technical problems that hold small charity sites back, and report on donations and sign-ups rather than traffic alone, so trustees can see what it's worth.
Search works best on a site that's easy to use and quick to give through. Our charity website design covers the build, and digital marketing for charities handles Google Ad Grants, email and social appeals.
Smart design decisions, great communication, and fast turnarounds, even over the Christmas break. Everything was scoped clearly, delivered on time, and they went above and beyond with extra refinements.
They delivered a professional, high-quality website and continue to provide excellent ongoing SEO support. Communication is clear, results-driven, and they genuinely understand our business objectives.
I couldn’t be happier with the outcome and highly recommend their team. I would absolutely work with them again (and likely sooner than they expect!).
They delivered far beyond what I was expecting, and I’m honestly over the moon with my new website.
The final product met all our expectations and clearly reflected their creativity, attention to detail, and dedication to delivering quality work.
We were most impressed with Cold | Digital Agency's creativity.
We're impressed with their enthusiasm for success.
They brought our identity to life in a way that felt authentic and future-focused.
Our SEO and Google rankings have improved significantly, and we’ve had a big increase in quality leads coming through the website.
They’re extremely attentive, they listened to what I wanted and brought it to life amazingly.
Superb service for my business and such a professional team.
Excellent service and really delivered on the brief I gave them. Designed the logo and my website, very happy with the result and would highly recommend.
Their whole purpose was to listen to me and deliver.
They provided professional and personalized services to suit my needs.
They consistently delivered all items on time and kept me informed throughout the process.
Overall, we were pleased with the service provided.
Cold | Digital Agency couldn't cater to my needs anymore if they tried.
I have been nothing but greatly satisfied with the work he has done for me, everything has been carefully considered and tailored to me!
They had it built much faster than I was expecting with lots of amazing features, couldn't have asked for a better site and I was very surprised at the great price for the quality they provided.
| SEO Local charities | SEO Health and care | SEO Children and young people |
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| SEO Housing and homelessness | SEO Arts and heritage | SEO Charity shops |
This is an instant, live ballpark quote, not a final proposal. It can cover branding, websites and marketing. You will see a project range and flexible payment options, including pay-over-time. Takes about 3 minutes.
Prefer to skip the calculator and ask a quick question? Drop us a line and we'll be in touch.
