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Search, search, search - it's been a popular topic for years but most people I talk to still only pay lip service to ensuring that their website is appropriately findable on the web, or that their own website and intranet's search tools work effectively.
With the large number of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) companies around, it can be difficult to distinguish the good from the bad and personally I've avoided using any of them at all.
However I do spend a lot of time thinking about search. It is important for my agency that our customers can find us online. It's even more important that they can find relevant content when they reach our site.
So how important is it to rate well in search engines?
The graphic below (courtesy of RSS Ray), is derived from accidentally leaked AOL search statistics from Google searches in 2006 and provides an insight into the relevant importance of the top ten search terms in a results page.
The first search result in Google accounted for over 42 percent of clicks through to the AOL site, with the 2nd and 3rd results counting for another 20 percent.
After this the share drops rapidly. In total, 89.82 percent of clicks were from the first page of search results.
Source: What a top google search ranking means to your bottom line - the value of search engine optimisation
So clearly being at the top of search results is extremely important if you want to attract attention, and you do not want to be out of the top ten results.
For intranets it's also a productivity tool. If staff can find information faster it means they can complete their task faster. If your agency sees 60,000 searches per month and can save 5 seconds of scanning results for each search, that equates to a saving of 83 hours per month - or 1,000 hours per year. That adds up.
For which terms do you want to be findable?
It's fine to search for your organisation's name (and acronym) and find it is at the top of a search engine's results. That's quite common for government agencies because of how results are weighted. In fact if you are not the top result for your own name you do have a major issue to address.
Common search behaviour is task-based, not category or organisation based.
Most people don't think 'I need to get rental support' and then search for 'Centrelink'.
They look for 'rental support'.
Therefore your organisation needs to place well for all tasks and services for which your customers might search you.
Think of all the services your organisation provides and test them in Google, how well does your organisation rate?
Ways to boost rankings
Once you've established how well you rank the next step is how to improve rankings.
There are a number of simple ways to do this without involving specialist consultants or questionable tactics.
The first step is to ensure that the text on your pages contains the appropriate keywords high in the page, and in titles and subheadings as appropriate. If the page is about rental assistance, then make sure it is titled 'Rental assistance' and mentions this again in the first paragraph.
The second step is to ensure the page HTML code uses appropriate tags for headings and subheadings. Most search engines treat a <> as more important than text that is simply 18pt and bold, and so on down the chain.
Also ensure that appropriate ALT tags exist for images (except for decorations). These also assist search engines understand the subject of the page and its contents.
Next, make sure that links throughout your site are well-formed. Any linking to the rental assistance page should include 'rental assistance' in the link, not simply 'click here' or another meaningless phrase. This also ensures the links are WCAG compliant.
You should also check that appropriate meta data is in place - this is not that important for search engines these days, but is still within your control to influence.
Finally, make sure that you have put a Google sitemap in place. This helps Google know which pages are most and least important in your site and how often they should be 'spidered' or reviewed by the search engine.
It also helps to have other people link to your organisation's site - with appropriately named links - however this is less under your control and link swaps are generally only beneficial when swapping with an organisation with a high level of trust - such as another government department.
What about website and intranet searches?
Much the same philosophy applies to website and intranet search - people are likely to click on the top results, so it is in an organisation's interest to ensure that the link they want people to click to is at the top - it saves time and frustration and can have a direct (positive) impact on productivity.
You also have ways to influence the search order by tweaking the search engine - possibly by setting up 'best bets', 'feature pages', 'like terms' or by adjusting how the tool weights different aspects of the page (meta data, headings, content, links, etc).
These vary so widely between search tools that it's hard to provide a basic approach.
We use feature pages in our website search, for instance for calculator searches, where a featured result appears at the top.
In our intranet we also use spelling correction and synonyms to help people find the right pages, and recently introduced category-based searching. I'll blog more on that after our next intranet satisfaction survey.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The relevance of search (and how to improve your rankings) | Tweet |
Victorian government web usage survey | Tweet |
The Victorian government released the results of it's year-long internet usage survey last week, providing a Demographic Profiling of Victorian Government Website Visitors.
Taking into account nearly 250,000 respondents, this is the largest sample I've seen for an egovernment usage survey within Australia.
The full results are available from Victoria's eGovernment Resource Centre, however I've commented on some highlights below.
Demographic comments
- Victorian users over-represented
The survey was heavily weighed towards Victorian users, with roughly 80% of respondents living in the state - this may bias the survey, as Victorians may not have the same views towards egovernment as elsewhere in Australia. I'd love to see a breakout of the remaining 20% (around 50,000 respondents) to determine if there were differences by state. - Females slightly over-represented
Women made up 60% of respondents - comparing this to other data I've seen from Hitwise, this makes them slightly over-represented. Hitwise generally reports that usage is, from memory, 53% women and 47% male. - The internet is mainstream
The demographics largely represent the age spread of Australia's population - if you exclude those under 18, who are generally less likely to visit government sites as they do not transact with government in the same way.
I have been noticing for years (in studies conducted by various organisations) that, except for a slight under-representation of older people, internet demographics and Australian population statistics align quite closely.
Usage comments
- Citizens want to have input into state government policies and initiatives
64% of respondents were interested in having input in the decision-making processes of state government. The report did not specify if this indicated online participation, however I would consider that respondents to online surveys would have at top-of-mind using the same medium for their input. - Citizens want governments to respond by email
60% of respondents indicated that they wanted government to respond to their enquiries via email.
This is particularly interesting to me as my agency prefers to channel responses to the phone channel, which is both higher-cost and requires that the caller catch the customer at an appropriate time. We also do not guarantee a fast response time for emails - maintaining the same response time (28 days) as with letters, and much slower than phone. - A large minority were interested in engaging online via live chat
29% of respondents wished to be able to live chat with the government online. This percentage is higher than I have seen previously and is continuing to grow as this approach rolls out in the private sector.
Telstra, eBay and similar sites offer this as one of their primary customer engagement tools and the awareness for this is building. My understanding, from past dealings with Telstra's customer service area, is that on average a customer service representative can deal with four times as many online chats as telephone conversations at the same time - making this an efficient means of engagement.
Over 90% of enquiries can be handled within the chat, with any overly complex engagements transferred to telephone for resolution. - Large minorities of citizens are reading blogs, listening to podcasts and posting to online communities and forums
Roughly a third of citizens were involved in these online mediums, 34% reading blogs, 30% participation in one or more communities/forums, and 29% listening to podcasts.
14% indicated that they wrote blogs - this might sound small, but when you consider the percentage of Australians writing for newspapers (under 1%), the blog authoring community represents an extremely high level of active participation in the active creation and dissemination of content. Another point to consider is that (the printed version of) a newspaper is geographically restricted and articles disappear quickly. Blogs are available to all internet users, persistent (articles remain online for the life of the blog) and findable via universal search tools.
A single blog article has significantly more impact than a single newspaper article, even, potentially, in the case of major dailies.
These are mediums that government should not ignore. - More than half of respondents watch online video
56% of respondents indicated that they watched online video, making this an important vector for government communications.
Implementing a social media platform | Tweet |
It can seem very daunting to take that first step into social media.
However government agencies do not need to develop their own or purchase a plug-in to their web content management system.
There are also opportunities to procure a 'white label' social media platform - at little or no cost.
These platforms vary enormously in capacity, with the most advanced supporting Facebook like features, and more basic solutions being simply wikis or blogs.
Finding these platforms can be difficult, which is why my hat is off to Sergey Kapustin, who has compiled a list of 70 of these tools entitled White label community platforms.
This features all of the leading products and some niche products which are also very good.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Migrating government websites from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 | Tweet |
The Web Industry Professionals Association (WIPA) have published a guide to help webmasters migrating websites from the the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 1.0 to the soon-to-be-released WCAG 2.0.
The HTML version of "Migrating from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0" is at http://wipa.org.au/papers/wcag-migration.htm
As WCAG 1.0 is mandatory for Australian government agency websites, this is one to watch.
43 reasons why government should blog | Tweet |
In the US government gateway site there's a page listing the active and past official Blogs from the U.S. Government.
Looking through the list of 43 blogs, there's a wide range of topics on which this medium has been used - from AIDs education, through Art, Environmental issues and Foreign policy to Defense.
If your Department is considering whether a blog would be an appropriate tool to communicate your message and hold a broader conversation, this is a great starting reference.
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