Homelessness SEO Sector Deep Dive

Charities in the homelessness sector serve to help people facing or experiencing homelessness, and those people supporting the homeless. Each charity has a unique set of objectives, including providing information for those who want to access support and services online, and those seeking donations and support for their campaigns from people who want to help end homelessness.

As part of our audit, we looked at the SEO health of the following charities:

• St Mungo’s
• Shelter
• Crisis
• Framework
• Centrepoint
• Single Homeless Project
• Depaul

Reflections on our data

The Domain Authority (simply defined as the overall strength of a domain) of the charities across this sub-sector averaged 52/100, which is the lowest of all the sectors we have reviewed. The charity with the highest DA within the homelessness sector is Shelter with 68/100, followed closely by Crisis with 65 and Centrepoint with 63.

Average monthly organic traffic for this sector currently stands at around 50,000 monthly organic sessions, which is among the lowest figures across all sectors we reviewed. Shelter is by far the most popular, with more than twice as many monthly visitors than the rest of the websites in this sector combined.

Websites in the Homelessness sector perform mid-table for Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV) scores – with an average of 41 out of 100. We’ll explore this in more detail.

The experience of searching online when facing homelessness

Organisations in this sector must consider what the experience of accessing information and services online is like for people experiencing homelessness. That’s why it’s important for homelessness charities to design content with digital inclusion in mind, considering accessibility, connectivity and digital skills.

When we talk about “people experiencing homelessness”, we are referring to people who might be “living rough”, living in hostels or emergency accommodation like shelters, living in temporary accommodation, staying with family and friends due to lack of housing, and more. They could also be at risk of homelessness, and searching for possible next steps.

Accessibility of information and services for people experiencing homelessness

As expert, trustworthy organisations, the charities we’ve reviewed have a duty to ensure their accurate and reliable information is:

• Visible and accessible at the point of search. Charities should design content to rank highly for the queries people are searching for.
• Highly relevant and easy to understand. Improving how content appears in search results will help signpost people to the right content, and encourage people to click through to the site.

If this isn’t the case, people might receive the wrong information, or not find the information they are looking for. Challenges that people experiencing homelessness face include limited time and resources to access information, as well as for some a lack of digital skills. According to a 2021 study, 49% of people experiencing homelessness said that they had low or very low confidence using the internet, and they “highlighted a lack of training and reading ability in the use of internet-based services and information”.

Experiencing homelessness often means navigating complex legal systems at a time of high uncertainty and anxiety. These can impact on concentration and cognitive processing, making it difficult to process information and distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources.

The value of Featured Snippets

Appearing in featured snippet answer boxes is a way to showcase advice and content in search engine results pages (SERPS), and help people looking for quick definitions, advice and answers.

Shelter owns the featured snippet for 607 search queries – the highest number of all the websites we reviewed, and 19% of all opportunities. For example, they have the featured snippet for the query 'who pays court costs for an eviction uk':

However, there is room for improvement. There are 2,568 current opportunities for Shelter to rank for featured snippets, including searches for 'tenant notice to end tenancy uk'.

Crisis only owns 2% of featured snippet opportunities, presenting a big opportunity for the charity. There are 1,088 possible featured snippets to win, many around volunteering opportunities like: 'volunteering to help the homeless.

Another accessibility consideration centres around supporting non-English speaking people experiencing homelessness. Shelter provides content in Welsh on https://sheltercymru.org.uk/cy/. Crisis has an auto-translate feature in the footer of their website, which translates the content on the page into different languages. This is useful for the user when using the website; however the content isn’t available or accessible via search engines.

Connectivity challenges for people experiencing homelessness

People experiencing homelessness may also have connectivity challenges. Considerations include: higher use of mobile, temporary or disrupted access to internet-connected devices (e.g. battery life and charging), and reliance on public internet and wifi. In a study published in 2021, only 15% of people experiencing homelessness “were able to maintain a phone and an internet connection consistently”, and 25% “stated that they could only charge their phone and connect to the internet for a few hours a week”.

All of the charities we’ve reviewed face challenges with page load speed, mobile responsiveness and overall site speed (all ranking factors). Framework Housing Association has the best website experience and page speed, with an average Core Web Vitals (CWV) score of 81/100. Depaul, Centrepoint and St Mungo’s have a lot to improve on – with low scores of 19, 23 and 26 out of 100, respectively. Websites with a higher score (and better user experience) have the edge when it comes to ranking highly, and are likely to be favoured in search results.

These charities need website content that is accessible to people with connectivity challenges, through:

• A responsive website and web services (e.g. forms are easy to use on mobile)
• Quick loading pages that don’t waste resource – for example using up mobile data on unnecessary images
• Clear, easy to read content that is optimised to appear easily in SERPS

Information hubs – offering housing support and advice

Informational content hubs are important for charities in this sector. Grouping topically relevant pages together under a “hub” page increases the website’s relevance for that term, helping it rank highly.

Homelessness charities use informational content hubs in a variety of ways in order to be visible in search. By designing helpful informational content with SEO in mind, these charities are signposting their advice and answers to people’s questions high up on the search engines results pages.

Shelter is performing well here; the site covers a large number of topics that other charities are not. The charity holds over 1,259 non-brand keyword rankings in positions of 1–3, whereas Crisis holds 96 and St Mungos has just 18. These high rankings are for pages in Shelter’s ‘Housing Advice’ content hub, which has sub-hubs for each different area within preventing homelessness, such as: private renting, legal advice, eviction and repairs.

Crisis has an ‘Ending Homelessness’ hub, and they hold strong positions for ‘sleeping rough’ (200 monthly searches, ranking position 1), ‘housing crisis uk’ (1,000 searches) and ‘homelessness causes’ (350 searches). Ultimately, their strong informational content hub is supporting Crisis in ranking in position 1 for the desirable keyword: ‘homelessness uk’ (600 searches).

Centrepoint specialises in youth homelessness, categorising content under a ‘youth homelessness' content hub. They’re highly relevant in search engines’ eyes for this key term – they rank in position 1 for ‘youth homelessness’ (250 monthly searches). Centrepoint also ranks in positions 1–3 for other keywords related to youth homelessness including: ‘homeless teenager’, ‘young homeless’ ‘homeless teens’, ‘youth homelessness uk’, ‘homeless youth’ and more.

Legal housing advice – for all areas of the UK

Shelter performs well in organic search when people are searching for legal and housing advice. When people search for legal terms around ‘preventing homelessness’, they may want an overview of the term and a summary, but they may also be looking for more detailed legal information. Shelter covers both, and Google is showcasing both content types in the search engine results with an indented result.

This is how Google displays Shelter’s housing advice and legal content for ‘overcrowding’ (1,000 searches):

However, Shelter doesn’t always rank top for legal content – Citizens Advice provides housing advice and often outranks Shelter for legal terms like ‘what is a guarantor’ (2,100 searches), ‘rent arrears’ (2,100 searches), and ‘eviction notice’ (4,100 searches). An area of opportunity for Shelter is to improve their existing content to gain more visibility for these terms.

Different housing and tenancy laws apply to different parts of the UK, so it is important that users are able to find the specific information they require – and that it’s up to date. Shelter meets the needs of people in different regions of the UK by hosting regional content on separate subdomains for England, Scotland and Wales, as well as a separate domain entirely for Northern Ireland.

Real life stories by people in similar circumstances

Most charities in this sector use real life stories to foreground the voices of people experiencing homelessness. St Mungo’s has a section of ‘Real Life Stories’, SHP has ‘Real Stories’, and Centrepoint has ‘Real Youth Homeless Stories’.

Real life stories also ‘demonstrate everyday expertise’, which Google values when considering a website’s experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T ). Blog and story content also helps to demonstrate expertise and the range of support charities can offer, and inspires action from supporters, like volunteering or donating.

Crisis, St Mungo’s and Centrepoint have the most successful story hubs, ranking in positions 1, 2 and 3 on Google for keywords like ‘homelessness stories’ (50 monthly searches). However, few people actually search for the term ‘stories’ – most people search for situations, questions and experiences similar to theirs. For example, in Crisis’s real life story page ‘John’s Story, John talks about the new limit on stays in temporary accommodation. This page ranks on page 1 on Google for:

• ‘temporary accommodation rights’ (800 searches)
• ‘how long can the council keep you in temporary accommodation’ (600 searches)
• ‘moving from temporary accommodation to permanent accommodation’ (250 searches)
• ‘unsuitable temporary accommodation’ (250 searches)

Local search – ‘homeless shelter near me’

Local search results offer a huge area of opportunity for homelessness charities, by making services and accommodation available and visible within Google Maps.

Searches for homeless shelters, hostels, advice centres and other public spaces and services often trigger local listings and map packs in search results, displayed above the traditional blue link search results:

People search for nearby shelters, centres or other amenities – many of the top performing keywords for the sector include location-based modifiers like ‘near me’ or a town name, e.g. ‘homeless shelter near me’ (900 searches) or ‘edwin house nottingham’ (500 searches).

Charities with physical locations that offer in-person services include Crisis, who have local Skylight centres offering support to people experiencing homelessness, or are at risk of homelessness. When searching for ‘crisis skylight’ (350 monthly searches), the map pack appears with information about the closest centres. This is because a Google Business Profile has been created for each location.

St Mungo’s has a ‘No Second Night Out’ service operating in various UK cities including London and Brighton. Searches for this service or location (e.g. ‘st mungos brighton’, 200 searches) don’t display on a map view, and it requires a lot of investigation, clicking on various search results, to find a phone number or address.

Homelessness at Christmas – key campaign moment

Christmas is a key moment for homelessness charities, in seeking donations and fundraising through organic search, and encouraging people to volunteer. Searches for queries like ‘homeless at christmas’ or ‘buy a homeless person christmas dinner’ spike in the lead-up to the festive period.

Crisis performs particularly well for this topic, due to their ‘Crisis at Christmas’ campaign. They rank in position 1 for ‘homeless at christmas’ (1,600 searches in December), and they also rank well for Christmas appeal keywords that don’t mention homelessness, e.g. position 1 for ‘christmas charity’ (2,100 searches in December).

Centrepoint holds position 1 for ‘sponsor a room for christmas’ (150 searches) and ranks on page 1 for ‘christmas appeal’ terms. However, they don’t rank highly for other appeal and donation terms (e.g. position 22 for ‘christmas dinner for homeless’, 100 searches), despite having landing pages for ‘Christmas Appeal, ‘Christmas Gifts’ and ‘Christmas Dinner’. Single Homeless Project did have a page for their ‘Christmas Day Volunteering’ event, however this page has been removed and now returns a 404 Not Found error.

St Mungo’s has two relevant blogs on ‘Experiencing homelessness at Christmas’ and ‘Supporting people through a lonely time of year', however they don’t match the intent of people looking to give or help at Christmas time, and they don’t rank as highly as the Crisis Christmas content.

Shelter England only ranks highly for Christmas cards, for example, in position 1 for ‘homeless charity christmas cards’ (90 searches) and in position 4 for ‘charity christmas ecards’ (300 searches).

Depaul and Framework don’t appear for ‘Christmas’ terms, and there is an opportunity to create a Christmas appeal, or optimise existing Winter Appeals or campaign content to capitalise on searches around donating and volunteering at Christmas.

Conclusion

The homelessness charities we’ve reviewed all have different challenges, but one thing they have in common is significant SEO opportunities to signpost their advice and services in organic search.

These charities all provide excellent information and advice about their services online, but some charities are performing better than others in this area – Shelter is visible for the widest range of ‘housing advice’ terms, whilst Crisis is ranking highly for broader terms like ‘homelessness uk’.

All charities in this sector understand the importance of sharing real people’s stories – the opportunity here is to write them with SEO in mind. Writing to gain more featured snippets is another way to gain more visibility in search.

Local search is crucial in this sector. Organisations operating in physical locations appear in Google’s map pack listing – if your charity isn’t, listings should be set up and optimised.

The final key area of improvement around site speed, and meeting Google’s Core Web Vitals. Only 29% of people experiencing homelessness have expressed high or very high competence in using the internet, and only 9% said they found it easy or very easy to access the internet whilst living on the streets. Information and access to services should all be available online, and designed with accessibility at the forefront.

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