Mediarun Search Marketing News

Whitehall spends big on search engine optimisation

July 30th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

Despite the ongoing rhetoric of austerity in parliament and the press, Whitehall is not about to jeopardise is search engine rankings by dramatically reducing spending on website optimisation.

According to new figures released from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), it spent more than £300,000 on search engine optimisation last year. But this paled in comparison to the amount spent by the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) – which spent three-quarters of a million on promoting campaign websites.

Following a parliamentary question tabled by Conservative MP Damian Hinds, it was revealed that four government departments spent almost £6 million in the past two years on website optimisation and boosting their search engine results page rankings.

At the DCLG, search engine marketing strategies included campaigns for eco towns, energy performance certificates and the promotion of home information packs – which were later scrapped.

And the vast amounts of money spent by the government on search engine optimisation highlights the importance of the medium as a key marketing channel.

A spokesperson for Defra told the BBC: "As search engines have become an increasingly important method for accessing information - over 1.2 billion searches are conducted every month in the UK and 88 per cent of internet users regularly visit search engines - this spending is a cost-effective way of getting important information to a large audience."

Meanwhile, the DECC told the news provider: "[Search engine optimisation] has been used primarily as part of the 'Act on CO2' campaign, which helps people to find ways to reduce their carbon emissions and save money through reducing their energy use."

While the new coalition government has announced a review of existing marketing projects and a freeze on spending for new campaigns, it is unlikely that spending on search engine optimisation will fall – especially as the industry itself is experiencing rapid growth.

Just this week, marketing research from Thomson Local and Analytics SEO showed that almost half of private companies had little or no search engine optimised content on their websites and that this could be hampering their underlying performance.

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