Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of the content creation and maintenance process for U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) websites. More than 60% of Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) web traffic comes from search engine referrals, and SEO helps people find web content through search engines.
The 21st Century Integrated Digital Experience Act also requires that all federal websites and digital services have "information and services that are discoverable and optimized for search."
To make your content rank high in search results, work with the EERE Digital Team early in the writing process to discuss optimization strategies and keyword research.
Best Practices for Website Content
Follow these best practices to create optimized website content:
Page Titles, Summaries and Headers
Each page should have a unique title that makes it clear to users what the page is about and how the page is distinct from others throughout the site. Avoid using vague names, jargon, or marketing slogans, but include at least one main keyword related to your page's content, as this will also add the keyword to the page's URL. Titles should be complete and make sense to anyone who comes directly from a search engine (e.g., use a full title like "Bioenergy Technologies Office Contacts" instead of just "Contacts").
The Energy.gov content management system (CMS) requires all pages to have a summary. Keep summaries concise and use strong and descriptive keywords, as search engines may pull this data into search results. Summaries should give users a clear preview of what that page's content contains.
Properly structure headings. Your page title will be the Heading 1 (H1) for the page; the Energy.gov CMS will create this automatically when you build a new page. Do not add other H1s in the content.
Use Heading 2, Heading 3, etc. to organize content into sections and subsections. Add these headers according to hierarchy (i.e., H2s first, then H3s, etc.). Do not use them based solely on appearance.
Keywords
Incorporating search keywords into your content can help improve SEO. Keywords should include words or phrases that are relevant to the top searches for your content.
These are some of the places to add keywords in your content:
- Headings and subheadings
- Throughout the content, but especially in the first paragraph
- Image captions and alt text for photos (if the keywords describe the image).
Avoid keyword stuffing, the practice of filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings. Search engines will heavily penalize keyword stuffing; instead, include keywords naturally as part of your content.
Long-tail keywords are search terms, usually three to five words in length, that relate to highly specific searches. These searches are usually lower in volume but are much more likely to lead users to the content they're looking for.
These are examples of long-tail keywords:
- "future of hydropower"
- "how do solar panels work"
- "advantages of wind energy."
Naturally incorporating long-tail keywords into content can help improve ranking in search engine results. Long-tail keywords can also help you determine what topics to cover on your web pages.
Links
Links help search engines crawl your site and find and index your content. They can also indicate that content is important; pages that are linked to heavily may rank better in search.
Tips for linking to improve SEO:
- Link to related pages throughout your content.
- Use the keywords for the destination pages, if possible.
- Add links to new pages from established pages to ensure they are indexed faster
- When writing news and blog articles, add links to evergreen content. The news and blog posts may not rank, but the links will help support the SEO of your evergreen pages.
Analyze Search Data
By analyzing search data, you can find common search terms, and rewrite content (particularly headings) to include words that customers typically search for. Google Search Console is one way to help find common keywords that people are using to find your content. Contact the EERE Digital Team for more information on Search Console.
Other programs like SiteImprove and Google Analytics 4 may also provide insights into keywords and search optimization suggestions. You can also use search engine autocomplete responses to look for related search terms or questions.
Webpage Content
There are several other steps you can take during the content writing process to improve SEO:
- Place crosslinks to other relevant webpages in your content where appropriate. Follow linking best practices, including writing descriptive link text and spacing out links if you are linking to multiple pages in a single sentence.
- Ensure your content is useful. Answer common questions about the topic, include keyword variations, and include definitions where it makes sense.
- Write content that is clear, concise, unique, and authoritative, to increase page rankings on commercial search engines. Follow the requirements of the Plain Writing Act of 2010.
- Ensure all graphics and images used on a webpage have alt text, both for SEO and Section 508 compliance.
- Conduct regular web content maintenance, eliminating redundant, outdated and trivial content. Replace or remove this content, as well as any broken links.
Best Practices for Documents
Documents hosted on EERE websites have different best practices for SEO. Web pages generally rank higher than documents in search results, but there are steps you can take to improve their search results placement:
- Write content that offers unique value and differs from other existing webpages. Do not simply provide a PDF copy of an existing webpage.
- Create a unique title for each document to avoid competing against your other pages or documents.
- Keywords can be entered in the metadata for files to help with search optimization.
- If possible, include keywords in the name of the file itself (ex., eere-bioenergy-research-report.pdf or future-of-hydropower-analysis.pdf).
Learn more about the best practices for PDFs, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.