President Barack Obama made his case for healthcare reform to the nation and a joint session of Congress this week, but for many Americans questions remain and they’re turning to the internet to find answers. But if the Obama administration wants to win this debate, some say the White House must use search engine optimization (SEO) to make sure searches of top keywords lead people to their site.
Writing for Nextgov, Beth Sussman says searches for keywords surrounding the healthcare debate have risen 5,000 percent in the last three months with results popping up from all over the web. And while the White House has set up a "Reality Check" site, Sussman says it’s unlikely someone would find it in a search.
Search engine optimization (SEO) expert Aaron Wall told Sussman that one of the main problems with the White House page that is aimed at debunking what it says are myths about health care reform is that it never actually repeats the so-called myths in the first place.
For example, the Reality Check site won’t appear on any search engine results page for the term "death panel." That’s because the term doesn’t appear anywhere on the page, according to Wall.
It seems that all .gov websites might be able to benefit from an increase in search engine optimization (SEO). Earlier this year in a post for OhMyGov.com, Alex Pinto wrote that government websites should consider using SEO to increase traffic to their sites.
