Looking ahead at fiscal year 2012, being budget-friendly has become a deciding factor in government spending. Increased spending during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has ceased and the government has mandated $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over the next decade. The government , struggling to get legacy programs funded and justify new programs , is turning towards small business contracting and increased use of less expensive commercially available goods and services. 1 And agencies will be held accountable. A government agency that misses a goal to contract with small businesses could lose 10 percent of its budget as a penalty. 2
Federal agencies need small businesses to contract out for goods and services, and mid and large-tier organizations are looking to small business partners for strategic contract wins. The playing field has widened yet so has competition. How can small businesses become known entities in the new Federal contracting environment?
Government contractors can leverage their online communications – from website design, to online branding, to content marketing, to social media to search engine optimization to mobile-friendly technology – to promote their goods and services to government agency and prime contractor partners.
In this series, we will explore the increasingly important role web presence plays in winning government business.
First, Get Found – Search Engine Optimization
inQbation has advanced mastery skills of search engine optimization (SEO). Google, “DC SEO experts,” and you will see inQbation.com on top. The most important element of SEO is selecting and using the right keywords. Often, we will observe that the language and terminology that organizations use may or may not be the same as those that its target audience uses.
If an organization wants their site to rank high on search engines and be found by its intended target audience, it is imperative that representatives of the target audience be interviewed in a non-leading way to identify their natural online search behavior. We need to use the key words that our target audience might use, not the internal technical or clinical language that we might use, to find the type of content that we have on our site.
We have observed and identified the 5 most important elements of search engine optimization. Most websites that apply these elements tend to rank very well across all search engines. Those that do not apply these elements often struggle with their SEO. These are the most import elements of SEO:
1. Choose the right keywords – those that your target audience my use
2. Inject unique keyword phrases (3-5 words) into page title tags
3. Inject important keyword phrases into page headings
4. Use important key words in link text and navigation links
5. Weave important keywords into the URLs and directory path
Our SEO strategy includes a well-rounded, holistic approach that encompasses:
- Crawlability – because search engines need to crawl your site to index it
- Credibility – because search engines prefer to deliver credible results
- Content – because your site’s content must be relevant to a search query
- Code – because search engines read your source code and meta tags
- Conversation – because search engines monitor social media
- Competition – because it’s easier to rank for less competitive keyword phrases
- Conversion – because it’s about getting qualified clients, not just gross traffic
- Compliance – because valid HTML, CSS, and 508 code helps search engine.
Find out how your website scores, for free!
Email [email protected] for a free assessment of your website presence. At no cost to you, we will use professional tools to grade your findability, and give you your score and supporting metrics.
1″Savvy contractors to capitalize on 2012 spending trends.” http://www.legalnews.com/
2 Matthew Weigelt. “Agencies that miss small-biz goals could face penalties.” http://fcw.com/articles/2012/
