Online Government Seminar

Ensuring Government Services are

Reaching Communities

May 2009

Sandra Hanchard, Hitwise Senior Analyst

• 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

Who We Are

• 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

Agenda

Government Share of Voice

Government visits up 10.4% year on year

2.4%Government share of all Internet

visits by Australians

Online becoming more mainstream

Visits to Social Networking and Forums vs Adult

National sites account for 60% of gov visits

Government websites breakdown, April 2009

• Hitwise measured visits to 6,500 websites in April 2009

Where are the opportunities for better regional engagement?

Weather is the most popular online Gov service

•ATO, Centrelink, Australain JobSearch

essential services

Transport key state online utility

ourbrisbane.com top local Gov site

Rank

Most popular websites in

Government ranked by visits

April, 2009

VisitsReturning Visitor

Rates

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%

5

Roads and Traffic

Authority, NSW 1.53% 53%

6

Australian Taxation Office -

Tax Agent Portal 1.28% 97%

7 Medicare Australia 1.16% 41%

8 CityRail 0.99% 68%

9 NSW Lotteries 0.86% 80%

10

Department of Immigration

and Citizenship 0.86% 64%

Gov services attracts different loyalty rates

Understanding cross-department referrals

Search sending more traffic to Gov sites

Key Traffic Drivers to Government websites

Discoverability of Government Sites

During a disaster, how does the community behave online?

How quickly did community interest wane?

What were the types of bushfire searches?

Which industries were our trusted sources?

Swine Flu – Wikipedia most visited source

Swine Flu Searches - What are the symptoms?

•US searches more

focused on prevention

Opportunities for content providers to capture traffic through paid search listings

New online channels make timeliness of information dispersal key

Don’t make assumptions about content –Wikipedia ‘Edutainment’ searches

Top Internal Search Terms on

Wikipedia April 2009Share

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%

• 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.

Why Search Marketing matters for Government

Number of Links to Government Websites

http://www.bom.gov.au – 426,000

http://www.nsw.gov.au – 253,000

http://www.vic.gov.au – 248,000

http://www.qld.gov.au – 209,000

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

� Huge Link Popularity

� Masses of Content

� Authority Resources of Information

� Usually Unoptimised

Why SEOs love Government Sites

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

Social Media and Responsive Government

Understanding Wider Traffic Sources

Social Media amongst top sites

2

6

8

12

44

Australian Visits, April 08 – April 09

Social Nets now driving more traffic to Gov than Portals

Gov Upstream Traffic, April 08 – April 09

Gov can tap into different audience strengths of Social platforms

Gen Ys More reliant on peer-driven search through Social Nets

Government, Community, Health Sites attracting Silver Surfers

Who’s on Twitter?

Use Twitter as a broadcast channel to connect with community

Open Government

Considerations:

•Accuracy

•Participation rates

•Decision-making funnel

•Timeliness

•Marketing

•Incentive

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.

Sandra Hanchard

Hitwise Senior Analyst

sandra.hanchard@hitwise.com

www.ilovedata.com

Twitter.com/Hitwise_AP

Hitwise.com.au