Use your keywords in your page title, preferably near the start of your page title. You may want to use your keywords, related phrases, and popular keyword modifiers in your page content a couple times, but make sure the copy sounds natural, not forced. Your content should read well to humans. If people like your content and link to it, that is more valuable than getting on page optimization "perfect".
Regular keyword research tools show you popular modifiers, and some graphical tools like Quintura make it easy to visualize related words in top ranking documents.
How do You Make Your Issue Visible?
Turn your traditional approach upside down.
In this speech by Seth Godin, Seth talks about how, and why, the old ways of fund raising are no longer working. His speech is chock full of great advice, and specific examples and suggestions for non-profits.
Here are a few take-away points.
The model for non-profits for the past hundred years has been pretty simple. Target wealthy people or organizations, interrupt them with impersonal, irrelevant messages, over and over again, until they give you money. That model worked well for a long time, and there's nothing wrong with it, but is not working as well as it used to.
Why?
The sheer number of people trying to get heard.
However, the web has created new opportunities.
Seth describes a funnel model. Traditionally, you put "attention" in the top of the funnel, and hopefully, eventually, you get a donor out the bottom. But the funnel leaks. You lose a lot of attention and donors along the way.
The new way is to turn that funnel on it's side in order to create a megaphone. Hand that megaphone to your biggest supporters. The internet makes everyone a media company. It allows the word to spread from person to person.
For example, Kiva receives a lot of traffic and take-up, and what is even more remarkable is they did so with very little organizational support. What Kiva did was to empower users to talk about Kiva. The users spread the idea. Organize people around an idea, and then make it easy for them to talk about it.
In order to achieve this, be remarkable. Boring ideas doesn't resonate with people. The idea of helping someone with what seems like an insignificant amount made such a compelling impact that people have loaned out over $100 million on the Kiva platform. Three things make the Kiva story more powerful:
the costs of setting up a business in most 3rd world countries is far less than building one in a 1st world country (so an $800 loan can help build or save a business)
by breaking loans down into $25 chunks it allows people to lend to many projects without spending a lot
rather than being donations, these are loans. so they get paid back, which means...
updates on payment progress give Kiva more opportunities to interact with lenders
the amount can be loaned out again
rather than feeling like giving a hand out it feels like you are lending someone a helping hand.
Part of what you need to do, if you want people to spread you story, is to give them something new or edgy to talk about, or put a new spin on something. The people who are most likely to spread your story via the internet are the people at the edges, not the conservative people who occupy the middle. The edgy, early adopters like to use the latest tools and methods. They move first, they move fast, and they influence others.
If you give people the tools, and the leadership, and great stories to tell, they will go out and spread your message for you. In mid-2010 a webmaster named Shak tapped his friends and raised $200,000 for charity water by creating a campaign using free tools on their website.
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