Traffic up 463% and donations on the rise for nonprofit

Snapshot

A unified web presence, from dozens of websites to a single domain, grows organic sessions by 463% for a national nonprofit.

The American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA) is the largest grassroots network dedicated to fighting Parkinson’s disease and works tirelessly to assist the more than 1 million Americans with Parkinson’s disease live life to the fullest in the face of this chronic neurological disorder.

They came to us in Q4 2015 to merge a microsite related to young onset Parkinson’s disease into their main domain. What started as a web migration project turned into ongoing SEO services, and eventually, restructuring their entire web presence for their organization and national chapter partners.

They are the friendliest, up-beat, talented individuals. I highly recommend them for their excellent work on all ends of our partnership—from SEO to Google Ads, web development, and writing content, to creating a user-friendly experience for our staff and users, and for always looking for ways to better our website.

Nancy Braun

The challenge

They compete with many national and international nonprofit organizations in the Parkinson’s space in organic search. Because the content is medical in nature, they also compete with larger online health websites, such as WebMD and Mayo Clinic.

All their best content was on a microsite geared to helping people with young onset Parkinson’s, so it wasn’t benefiting their entire organization. Additionally, much of their best content was in PDFs, making it harder to access by users and search engines.

Our approach

Our solution was spread out over multiple phases spanning multiple years.

• The first phase was migrating content from the microsite to apdaparkinson.org and mapping redirects to transfer as much domain authority and traffic to the main site as possible. This first phase created the first initial jump in traffic from 111k organic sessions in 2015 to 341k in 2016.
• The next phase was a rebuild of the entire website, while absorbing dozens of separate chapter websites all under one roof. This included a large-scale overhaul of the website architecture, content, and even branding.
• The current phase is built around continual optimization of existing content while building a body of authoritative articles related to the nuances of Parkinson’s disease.