Change.gov still not optimised

On 6 November, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, wrote about Obama’s new transition website, www.change.gov, demonstrating that it was poorly optimised for search. For example the Home page title:

<title>Change.gov</title>

Not only is it not at all descriptive, but it doesn’t use any of the terms that people were searching for in the heat of the moment. Sullivan goes on to show other pages that could be optimised better. I particularly liked hos point about the Michelle Obama page. People were searching for ‘michelle obama bio”, but the page is called a more “cutesy” ‘Meet Michelle Obama”.

Of course, as Sullivan says, this important site will soon be indexed well, but he reminds readers:

“I think it’s a good reminder that the bedrock of success with SEO starts with words. Think of your audience. Use the words they are using to find you. Write copy correctly from the start, add a search engine friendly architecture and good things flow from there.”

You might argue that when the site was launched the keyword information wasn’t available; although I’d counter there must have been evidence from previous information. But there’s been time since and of course, getting it right when it’s a ‘hot topic’ is key to meeting users’ expectations.

And regarding search engine friendly structure; look what Yahoo! makes of some pages: