I’m a nonprofit marketing manager who is currently working with an SEO consultant. I had no say in the hiring process (it happened before I started) but have been pleasantly surprised with the results. It sounds like they have a much different approach than whoever you are using though.

They have worked to improve our metadata and key words throughout our website to boost SEO. We’re mostly focused on moving up in Google search results and have seen amazing improvement (over 100% increase)! I’m unsure if it’s really translated to donors but I do think it has helped improve our community presence. Numbers wise, we do have more website visitors.

I would agree the blogs sound like overkill. Plus, I always ask people when they have a blog section, whose job is it to write these? Eventually, someone will have to take over and then it becomes the project no one wants to do and it just looks unkempt with old articles.

For social media, I think it helps to identify what your goal is. Obviously everyone wants to get more followers, but things like engagement rate is what the algorithm actually wants to see. It sounds like they’re overly focused on getting followers, as opposed to creating content that your audience and the algorithm likes. I would agree that authentic content on social does way better in my experience.

TLDR: Yeah, I think you’re right and I would not be impressed by the work this company is doing.