Search engine optimization on Digital.gov

Search.gov year in review: 2023 report

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:23:00 -0500

Learn what types of information people searched for on federal websites in 2023, see emerging trends the team is exploring to improve customers’ search experience in 2024, and check out three new updates. The data tab provides insightful summaries for 13 popular topic areas—and lists the public’s top 25 search terms, in their own words, for each.

An introduction to search

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 12:01:00 -0500

Learn why search functionality is an important component of federal websites, and discover how to add a search function to your website.

Why the American People Deserve a Digital Government

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 13:26:00 -0500

OMB recently released new policy guidance for government that includes a variety of actions and standards to help federal agencies design, develop, and deliver modern websites and digital services. Memo M-23-22, Delivering a Digital-First Public Experience, will make it seamless for the public to obtain government information and services online, and help agencies fully implement the 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act (21st Century IDEA).

A conversation about content audits

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 10:12:00 -0500

Content audits can be tedious. Two content designers discuss why we do them anyway, and how to get started.

Making the big move: Search in support of federal web modernization

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 16:51:00 -0500

In this special report, we discuss a website redesign’s nine phases and their impact on search.

Planning and implementing a search engine for a redesigned federal government website

Fri, 26 May 2023 12:14:00 -0500

In this blog, we walk you through our planning and implementation process for Search.gov. We share lessons learned, as well as resources we found useful.

Judiciary Launches New Federal Ticket Processing Website

Tue, 02 May 2023 10:36:00 -0500

Individuals can now pay tickets for minor federal violations more easily, using a redesigned website for the Judiciary’s Central Violations Bureau. The website, officially launched in early May, leverages new technologies and best design practices to improve usability and accessibility across devices, including smart phones.

Join the Web Analytics

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 09:13:00 -0500

Make better decisions using web analytics and other optimization strategies.

Experimenting with SpecialAnnouncement Markup (Updated June 09, 2020)

Mon, 11 May 2020 12:00:00 -0500

What USA.gov learned during its pilot with SpecialAnnouncement markup to make COVID-19 information easier to find in search results, now updated to reflect changes by major search engines.

Join the Web Managers

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 02:31:00 -0500

Create a better online experience for the public alongside government web content managers.

Search.gov

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A free hosted search platform for federal websites.

Spring 2024 Community Summit

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:00:00 -0500

Digital service experts across the federal government will share case studies and best practices on delivering a digital-first public experience.

Optimization Case Study: Performance, SEO, and Accessibility with CFPB

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 14:00:00 -0500

Join three technologists from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as they discuss methods used to ensure that the CFPB website is discoverable and fully accessible to all.

Customer Experience & Continuous Improvement: The USPS Digital Approach

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 14:00:00 -0500

This presentation lays out USPS.com’s continuous improvement approach and how it combines analytics and customer feedback with iterative heuristic reviews, design, and usability testing to monitor, improve, and evolve the USPS.com CX.

Tapping Into SEO: How Government Websites Can Improve Content Reach

Wed, 20 May 2020 15:00:00 -0500

Implementing a few easy steps for research and search engine optimization can help boost your content and get it in front of the right audience.

Connecting Americans to Coronavirus Information Online

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 10:00:00 -0500

The American people need access to the most up-to-date public health guidance and information on coronavirus testing facilities. To help Americans find coronavirus information online, incorporate Schema.org’s new standard tags into all web pages related to COVID-19.

Spring Cleaning Tips for Web Content

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 09:00:00 -0500

This week, we’re providing a few tips for tidying up redundant, outdated, and trivial content.

An Introduction to the A/B Testing Community of Practice

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 11:00:00 -0500

We know there are many ways to use A/B testing to inform decision making at your agency – this is a quick introduction on the many ways CFPB has used it to improve UX across their website.

How Search Engines Index Your Websites

Tue, 29 May 2018 14:00:00 -0500

Join Search.gov as they walk you through the fundamentals of how search engines monitor your content and pull relevant data from your pages.

A Conversation With ITIF About the State of Federal Government Websites

Wed, 20 Sep 2017 11:00:00 -0400

Since it’s been nearly six months since their report was released, we wanted to check in with ITIF and see what they’ve learned, what they’ve heard from agencies and what their future plans are to build on this research.

Steps Towards SEO: Meta Descriptions on MedlinePlus

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 11:00:08 -0400

MedlinePlus is a consumer health website produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), available in both English and Spanish. As part of our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy, we recently added meta descriptions to our health topic pages.

New ITIF Report Inspires a Closer Look at Website Performance and Security—Here Is Where to Begin

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 11:02:04 -0400

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) recently published a report, Benchmarking U.S. Government Websites, that looks at the performance, security, and accessibility of the top 297 government websites.

Automatic HTTPS Enforcement for New Executive Branch .gov Domains

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 12:00:30 -0400

HTTPS is a necessary baseline for security on the modern web. Non-secure HTTP connections lack integrity protection, and can be used to attack citizens, foreign nationals, and government staff. HTTPS provides increased confidentiality, authenticity, and integrity that mitigate these attacks.

Crowdsourcing at the Law Library of Congress

Fri, 07 Oct 2016 10:00:42 -0400

The Law Library acquired a large collection from William S. Hein & Co., Inc. to make all volumes of several collections (like the Federal Register) available in open access to researchers. Preparing these files by adding metadata for easy searching takes a lot of work, so this summer we asked law students and library students from

Help Search Engines Help You: How SEO-Friendly URL Structure Can Boost Your Rankings

Fri, 03 Jun 2016 11:00:41 -0400

Have you ever wished you could get inside the mind of Google? To figure out what makes its search engine tick? How great it would be if that were easy to do. Well, actually it is.

The Content Corner: How Google Judges Your Content

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 11:09:58 -0400

Every week my main goal is to usually provide new ways to help you feed the content beast. However, today I am going to remind you of why feeding the beast is important, especially when it comes to your search engine rankings and helping users find your content. I’ve discussed key search engine optimization (SEO)

The Content Corner: Can You Leverage Cornerstone Content?

Mon, 21 Dec 2015 10:00:02 -0400

If you have a website, then you most likely have cornerstone content—though you may not think of it in that way or even considered it. Just as in architecture, a cornerstone is a basic and essential part of any online presence. Cornerstone content is also important to any new visitors to your agency site, even if you

The Content Corner: The Balance Between SEO and the User

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 10:00:16 -0400

I always think of SEO like the dentist—no one really likes it, but you need to do it. Yet, despite my lack of excitement for the topic, this will be at a minimum my second post (here’s the first) about the relationship between creating good content and SEO practices. Today I want to dive a little

HTTPS and Other Ranking Factors: What Impacts the SEO of Government Websites?

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 10:00:43 -0400

Following the recent OMB memo that all publicly available federal websites and Web services must implement HTTPS by December 31, 2016, Web content managers across government are considering the SEO (search engine optimization) implications of the transition, among other details.

The Content Corner: Optimize Your Content

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 10:00:08 -0400

For the past several weeks, I have been writing about fairly cerebral and more technical aspects of content generation and language in general. This week, I felt it was time to get back to a more basic content concept: content optimization. Frequently when content optimization is discussed it is heavily focused on search engine optimization

Trends on Tuesday: The Impact of ‘Mobilegeddon’ on Non Mobile-Friendly Sites

Tue, 11 Aug 2015 10:00:11 -0400

Adobe released its quarterly Adobe Digital Index report this month, which showed websites that aren’t mobile optimized are seeing more than double-digit drops in traffic from Google’s organic search referrals. This is after the leading search engine announced it would start penalizing websites, after April 21st, that weren’t optimized for mobile—also called “Mobilegeddon.” Microsoft’s Bing search engine also

Our Customer is Your Customer: Working Together to Improve Search on .Gov Websites

Thu, 14 May 2015 11:10:59 -0400

We know search engines aren’t Magic 8 Balls, but that’s still how we expect them to behave. We want them to answer our complex and burning questions based on just a few words. And we’ve felt that frustration when the top search results don’t serve our needs, and the results page itself makes us work.

Mobilegeddon: Government Edition

Wed, 15 Apr 2015 14:15:42 -0400

Much is being said and written about the coming Mobilegeddon/Mopocalypse on April 21st—the day Google’s ranking algorithm will begin boosting results for mobile-friendly sites and penalizing mobile-unfriendly sites. While some agency websites are mobile-friendly, a great many are not. We will do well to pay attention—almost 25% of traffic on government websites is coming from

Multiple Languages, Single Platforms: the World Digital Library

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 02:29:14 -0400

Multilingual does not always mean multiple accounts or websites. Increasingly, multilingual content is delivered in an integrated way, with two (or more!) languages delivered on the same website, app, or social media platform. The World Digital Library (WDL) is one example of how multiple languages can be incorporated on single platforms. The WDL is a

Web Metadata Publishing Using XML

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 11:00:18 -0400

Metadata for website content is usually managed as part of the editorial process when documents are created and published with content management systems. There may be another source for this metadata, especially in regulatory agencies: internal databases that reference Web content in support of record keeping processes. These databases may contain public and non-public information

Structured Content in Government: How HHS and NCI Are Getting Started

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:50:12 -0400

Metadata, tagging, content modeling … they’re not identical concepts, but they’re driven by the same basic principle: when you structure your digital information, it can be more easily searched, reused, connected, shared, and analyzed.

The Content Corner: A World Without Web Pages

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 11:10:48 -0400

Imagine a world without Web pages, only intelligent, self-assembling chunks of content waiting to respond to your needs. The page is irrelevant, there may be no context beyond what is included in your content. The content has to survive on its own, perform its goals on its own. Originally when creating content, you would take

US, Canada, and Mexico Collaborate to Improve Open Government and Digital Services

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 11:10:14 -0400

Many forces are converging to strengthen the political, economic and commercial ties that bind the United States, Canada and Mexico. The GSA Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT) has anticipated this drive toward collaboration for decades, building a network of links among the three nations’ Chief Information Officers and other national technology and data experts.

Data, Code, and API Event Round Up

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 10:00:04 -0400

DigitalGov University has hosted some great events over the last year in partnership with Data.gov, the MobileGov Community and 18F to bring you information on opening data and building APIs. This month we’ve rounded up the events over the past year so that you can see what’s

DigitalGov Monthly Theme: How Data and Code Improve Government Services

Tue, 10 Mar 2015 11:43:05 -0400

Data and code are the foundation, building blocks, and cornerstone of government digital services. They are the keys that open the door to a better digital government future and are fundamental in making government more open.

The Content Corner: Performing a Content Audit

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 10:00:21 -0400

Audit. It’s a word that generally has no positive connotations whatsoever. We hear the word audit and we think of tax audits or timesheet audits, etc. The word normally strikes fear or dread in the hearts of most mortals. But it is also a task that all websites will need to perform from time to

Avoid Weak ‘Links’ in Your Digital Chain

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 11:10:25 -0400

Users don’t like surprises. Unexpected or unwanted content undermines the credibility of your agency and frustrates users who come to your website looking for specific information. Using links appropriately in your website content is one way to build trust with users, according to an article by Kara Pernice of the Nielsen Norman Group. Here’s a

The Best E-gov Websites in the World

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 10:00:45 -0400

In Design Secrets of the World’s Best e-Government Web Sites, the Asia-Pacific online communications powerhouse FutureGov singles out eight national e-government portals as the best-designed in the world, and identifies the best practices these sites exemplify. “Ultimately, these websites are the best in the world because they are designed to

Introducing “Get Your Open Data on Data.gov”

Wed, 10 Dec 2014 02:57:55 -0400

Data.gov is the central clearinghouse for open data from the United States federal government. It also provides access to many local government and non-federal open data resources. But how does this data get on to Data.gov? Data.gov does not host data directly, but rather aggregates metadata about

Data.gov’s Data Pipeline Explained

Thu, 04 Dec 2014 12:40:21 -0400

In case you missed it: the Data.gov team recently hosted DigitalGov University webinars designed to help agencies and open data advocates better understand how to get data on Data.gov and how to implement the Open Data Policy’s metadata schema updates. These webinars were designed assist government data publishers in making more data discoverable to the

Help the Public Find Your Information, Wherever and However You’ve Published It

Tue, 26 Aug 2014 11:00:35 -0400

As traffic to desktop .gov websites declines, how we publish our content increasingly matters. We need to meet people where they are as they seek information on the Internet. To do so, we need to adjust to the new world of mobile applications, social media, and instant answers provided by search engines. Freeing Content from

How to Find Your Open Data Hotshots

Thu, 21 Aug 2014 11:00:30 -0400

How can you find the top 5 users of your open data? We were recently asked this question on the Open Data listserv, and while this information can be a good measure of success for open data programs, we also figured some of the answers shared would be of interest to the broader community. This blog

Top 5 Reasons to Use Government-wide Open and Structured Content Models

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:00:16 -0400

Content models provide an opportunity for agencies to structure, organize, distribute, and better publish information in multiple forms and on multiple platforms. Federal agencies discussed why content models are important for future-facing content in our What Structured Content Models Can Do For You Webinars in May and June.

User Experience (UX) vs. Customer Experience (CX): What’s the Dif?

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 10:00:02 -0400

“User Experience” and “Customer Experience.” They sound pretty similar, right? Well, here at the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, we look at it like this: User Experience (UX) deals with people interacting with your product and the experience they receive from that interaction. UX is measured with metrics like: success rate, error rate,

Agency Dataset Publication in Data.gov

Fri, 20 Jun 2014 10:00:51 -0400

Not sure how to get your datasets into Data.gov? We’ve put together an overview to show you how the process works. Agencies prepare their enterprise data inventories in data.json format and post them on their websites (agency.gov/data.json), pursuant to the Open Data Policy and following the guidance and using the tools available on Project Open

Search Engine Optimization for Government Websites

Fri, 13 Jun 2014 11:00:33 -0400

On June 10, 2014, the Metrics Community of Practice of the Federal Web Managers Council and DigitalGov University hosted an event to honor the memory of Joe Pagano, a former co-chair of the Web Metrics Sub-Council. This third lecture honoring Joe focused on search engine optimization (SEO). While commercial search engines do a remarkable job

What Structured Content Can Do For You: Webinar Recap

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 10:00:42 -0400

Structured content and open content models can help you create content that is platform-agnostic, format-free, and device-independent.

Plain Language Page Titles: More Important than Ever

Fri, 28 Mar 2014 01:00:27 -0400

Government Web pages are found mainly through search engines. Google recently redesigned its search results page and there are quite a few small, but impactful, changes in this latest redesign. Specifically, it affects how page titles are displayed. Many experts now recommend even

Content Management Systems Toolkit

Wed, 30 Oct 2013 08:45:15 -0400

Improving the federal government’s ability to deliver digital information anytime, anywhere, on any device via open content is a key goal of the Digital Government Strategy. A content management system (CMS) can help your agency move to an open content model, making it easier for people to find, share, use, and re-use your information.

Why NCI Moved to a Structured Content Model

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:46:20 -0400

Wikipedia says that structured content refers to information that’s been broken down and classified using metadata. It can also refer to information that’s been classified using XML or other standard or proprietary forms of metadata. The National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI) move to structured

Four Steps to Achieve Good SEO

Fri, 31 May 2013 11:21:54 -0400

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the active practice of improving aspects of your website so that commercial search engines (such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo) can find and display your Web pages in the results when they’re relevant to a searcher’s query. Users generally

Government Websites and Keyword Search Strategy

Wed, 29 May 2013 01:22:50 -0400

Having a keyword search strategy is critical for government agencies to: Gain awareness, Secure a strong online presence and Help the public obtain the information they need. Since the public relies heavily on Government-related information for research, and a myriad of other tasks, each government

Why Government Websites Need SEO

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:00:40 -0400

As the SEO Specialist for Brighton College, I have come across many frustrating, un-optimized, information-rich government websites which are difficult to find on the Internet. Although government websites may have an advantage over commercial websites pertaining to search engine optimization (SEO), without an intentional SEO strategy