Month: June 2007

What should web management in whitehall look like?

At the government heads of ecommunications meeting on Tuesday – a regular get together of leaders of web teams across the government departments and some of the major agencies. Always a good chance to catch up, hear from guest speakers, and share experiences.

The main business yesterday was a lively workshop session about how we manage all our digital publication work (one department is assessing its resources and skills sets and wanted to pick the brains about everyone else’s set up).

Website rationalisation is preying heavily on everybody’s minds at the moment (this is the programme of work to close down the majority of ‘.gov.uk’ websites and migrate the existing content and online services into Direct Gov, Businesslink or sponsoring department’s corporate websites depending on the intended audience) and its making us all reassess how we conduct our business, what skills we are going to need in our teams, and how we will manage digital publishing in future. Continue reading “What should web management in whitehall look like?”

Search engine optimisation and search marketing

Been sweating over writing a few articles in the last few days but can’t seem to summon up the inspiration to complete them – website rationalisation and more thoughts on consultation will have to wait for another day – when along comes Paul Canning with an excellent article about the importance of search marketing for government and where DirectGov is getting it wrong. An essential read.

I’m no expert on search marketing. I understand the basics but we don’t spend money on paid for search in my department. What we do, and are very good at, is natural search – also known as search engine optimisation. This the art of ensuring your keywords, descriptions, metatags and content are optimised so that people can find your content easily – and so your content is ranked higher by Google et al (note: lack of technical skill ensures this is a Mickey Mouse description, please don’t heckle..). Continue reading “Search engine optimisation and search marketing”