Online Government Seminar
Ensuring Government Services are
Reaching Communities
May 2009
Sandra Hanchard, Hitwise Senior Analyst

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

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

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

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%

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
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%

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.

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

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
Australian Visits, April 08 – April 09
2
6
8
12
44

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
Hitwise.com.au
www.ilovedata.com
Twitter.com/Hitwise_AP