SEO for the public sector

When talking to a fairly large public sector organisation (with my Adaptive hat on), I mentioned SEO to the customer and for the first time (in the public sector), they had the vision to understand the importance of attracting visitors to their website to fulfil their brief.

Many public sector organisations spend significant sums on marketing but rarely do you see a public sector website that has considered SEO.

For example, the Highways Agency has a mission statement that includes "Informed travellers" yet if you search for any motorway, their website appears (by accident if you will forgive the pun) near the bottom of the first page of results.

Imagine how better informed we would be if their excellent M1 mash-up page (http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/23946.aspx) appeared in the results. With the amount of links that the HA website attracts, they would just need to address a few on-site issues and the page would rank right at the top.

Would SEO be better use of budget than the plasma screens we see in motorway services (IE when we're already on the motorway!)? I think so.

If I search for "Business Advice Derby" Business Link don't appear at all in the top 10 or local results. It gets worse, if I search for "Business Link Derby" the first result is a PDF. "business support Derby" - still no sign of them.

I wonder how much the Business Link website cost and how much they spend on marketing...? To be honest, it confirms our worst fears about Business Link.

Let's take a look at the Chamber of Commerce - promoting themselves as "The Ultimate Busines Network"....

I search for "business network Derby" - Derby Chamber of Commerce in the top 10? Nope. Ah, but what's this - the Derby and Nottingham Chamber are one organisation so I search for "business network Nottingham".... still no sign of the Chamber.

You would expect the national site to rank for something surely? A key part of their brief is to develop business policy - so it would make sense for them to rank for that search term.... no sign of them. If I had more time I would put some sites in those positions and say "Government backed initiatives should be here!".

So, Mr Cameron, I can see where you can make some fairly significant savings straight away....