Online Government Seminar, by Sandra Hanchard, Hitwise Senior Analyst, May 2009 - Contents: Government Share of Voice; Discoverability of Government Sites - Case Study: Bushfires Reveal Public’s Online Information Needs and SEO Principles; Social Media and Responsive Government
2. Who We Are
• Competitive Intelligence Service
• Australia’s first Search Marketing Services
• Monitor the largest worldwide sample of Internet
users
• Report on the most online businesses (1M+
Websites)
• Provide daily delivery of information to drive
better business decisions
• Founded in 1997 with profitable operations in
the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong
and Singapore
• Acquired by Experian in 2007.
• 1,500+ Clients Worldwide
3. Agenda
• Government Share of Voice
• Discoverability of Government Sites
o Case Study: Bushfires Reveal Public’s Online Information
Needs
o SEO Principles
• Social Media and Responsive Government
12. Gov services attracts different loyalty rates
Most popular websites in
Returning Visitor
Rank Government ranked by visits Visits
Rates
April, 2009
1 Bureau of Meteorology 24.18% 93%
2 Australian Taxation Office 3.44% 56%
3 Centrelink 2.73% 74%
4 Australian JobSearch 1.70% 77%
Roads and Traffic
5 Authority, NSW 1.53% 53%
Australian Taxation Office -
6 Tax Agent Portal 1.28% 97%
7 Medicare Australia 1.16% 41%
8 CityRail 0.99% 68%
9 NSW Lotteries 0.86% 80%
Department of Immigration
10 and Citizenship 0.86% 64%
24. Don’t make assumptions about content –
Wikipedia ‘Edutainment’ searches
Top Internal Search Terms on
Share
Wikipedia April 2009
wiki 0.11%
australia 0.07%
deaths_in_2009 0.05%
anzac_day 0.05%
lady_gaga 0.03%
twitter 0.03%
taylor_swift 0.03%
wikipedia 0.03%
scrubs_(tv_series) 0.03%
youtube 0.03%
easter 0.03%
eminem 0.03%
terry_clark 0.03%
gossip_girl_(tv_series) 0.03%
conficker 0.03%
zac_efron 0.03%
home_and_away 0.03%
how_i_met_your_mother 0.02%
lost_(tv_series) 0.02%
lily_allen 0.02%
25. Why Search Marketing matters for Government
• Over 90% of people use a Search Engine to find information on
Government sites (source: finance.gov.au)
• Cost reduction – SEO is a Long Term strategy that will reduce costs
over time & reduce any reliance on PPC.
• Steady Growth from Search Engines provided that best practices are
followed.
26. Why SEOs love Government Sites
Number of Links to Government Websites Huge Link Popularity
http://www.bom.gov.au – 426,000
Masses of Content
http://www.nsw.gov.au – 253,000
Authority Resources of Information
http://www.vic.gov.au – 248,000
http://www.qld.gov.au – 209,000 Usually Unoptimised
http://www.australia.gov.au – 160,000
http://www.wa.gov.au – 55,900
http://www.nt.gov.au – 55,700
http://www.act.gov.au – 46,400
27. Best Practice SEO tips
Google penalises websites for duplicated content across multiple domains
Websites can exist on non-www and www
Canocalisation
Clean URL structure - google has difficulty indexing longer URLS
Use Hitwise SI whilst writing content to identify content gaps
Write content around as many keyword topics as possible to increase traffic
Title tag with more keyword coverage
36. Use Twitter as a broadcast channel to connect
with community
37. Open Government
Considerations:
•Accuracy
•Participation rates
•Decision-making funnel
•Timeliness
•Marketing
•Incentive
38. What’s ahead for gov in 2009 and beyond?
• As times get tough – Government services becomes increasingly important.
• Delivery of services and communication digitally can be cost-effective.
• You compete with the commercial sector for people’s online time.
• Use effective content development and SEO to be a preferred sources of
reliable and authoritative information.
• Opportunities to connect with community – engage in decision-making
processes.