When writing content for Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) websites, follow these search engine optimization (SEO) best practices and requirements.

Best Practices

  • Work with the EERE Search Specialist early in the writing process to determine strategies and a process for optimization.
  • Develop a list of key terms (singular and plural) that describe what your content is about. Include terms users will use to search for that content and appropriate synonyms, acronyms, and abbreviations.
  • Position key terms in your header text (which is also used in the title tag), introductory text, headers, and in the body of content.
  • Spell out office names and technology-related terms. If you want to use acronyms or abbreviations, be sure to define them, and avoid using them in headlines.
    • For more information on acronyms and abbreviations, refer to the EERE Style Guide.

Energy.gov Summary Text Requirements

Websites in the Energy.gov Drupal CMS are required to create summary text for the Energy.gov search engine.

For each page, create a unique, meaningful description of page content in the CMS summary text field that is no longer than 150 characters. If the first sentence on the page describes the page content and contains no more than 150 characters, use that in the CMS summary text field.

Please also be aware that when writing your summary text, any characters beyond 150 characters will be cutoff, which may result in sentences or words abruptly ending.

The Energy.gov search engine displays 150 characters from the CMS summary text field in search results. Commercial search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo may also display the meta description from the CMS summary text field in search results.

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