Definitions  

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing method that focuses on increasing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO incorporates both the technical and creative elements of your website that are required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines.

Importance

While all major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) do a remarkable job helping the public find your government website, it’s also our job to help the public make sense of what they find. Search engines cannot catch every change on the Internet until links fail and their algorithm picks up on an inconsistency. So, we help provide new information.  

Submit Updates to Major Search Engines After Go-Live

CivicPlus highly recommends that you manually submit your website after Go-Live to be re-indexed. While Google does not guarantee a ranking of your page because you have manually submitted it, they do offer a great tool to let Google know that we have new information to share.

Google Webmaster Tools is a free web service. Google's submission method requires site verification but is quick and easy. The toolkit allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize website visibility, including the ability to:

• Set a preferred domain, which determines how the site URL is displayed in search engine result pages
• Assistance identifying any 404 errors that need to be redirected
• Submit a new sitemap
• Check and Set the crawl rate, and view statistics about how Google led to the site being listed in the search engines results page and the click-through rates of such listings
• Determine what keyword searches on Google led to the site being listed in the search engines results page and the click-through rates of such listings 

Resources

• Redirects
• Search Engine Optimization Content Best Practices