Public sector SEO in Sweden: government agencies, municipalities and regions

  • We bring order to sites with thousands of pages and many editors.
  • We set measurable goals, such as more cases being resolved without anyone having to call.
  • We tailor the work to your organisation and your decision-making processes.
  • Senior management and your head of communications see exactly what the work delivers.
  • A fixed price and a clearly defined scope suit public procurement.
  • Control over ensuring that it’s your information, not someone else’s, that appears in AI answers.

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Need help with public sector SEO in the Nordics?

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What is public sector SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) in the public sector has a different goal from SEO in business. You aren’t selling anything. Your job is to help people find the right page, understand the rules and complete their task on their own. The result is fewer calls to customer service, more cases resolved through self-service and fewer citizens giving up halfway.

Keyword research isn’t a marketing tool here. It shows the words citizens actually use, and those are rarely the words in your operational plan. That gap is often the single biggest reason information never gets found.

What sets SEO for government agencies, municipalities and regions apart?

  • Citizens search in their own words, not yours. People search for “vabba” (everyday Swedish for staying home with a sick child), not “temporary parental benefit”. Keyword research is a foundation for writing in plain language just as much as it is for search engines.
  • Accessibility is a legal requirement, and it overlaps with SEO. Sweden’s Act on Accessibility of Digital Public Services (the DOS Act) and WCAG 2.1 AA set requirements for heading structure, alt text, semantic code, link text and readability. Much of that is technical SEO by another name. We can run the work so that a single project delivers against both sets of requirements.
  • Public sector sites are large and full of old content. They often run to thousands of pages, and a significant share are outdated, duplicated or never visited. Cleaning up and restructuring usually has more impact than producing new content.
  • Editorial responsibility is decentralised. Many departments publish on the same site, each working in their own way. The work has to give content editors a structure to follow, not just deliver a report to the communications department.
  • Private players rank for your services. On searches about your own remit, commercial sites often sit above you. That hurts both citizens’ ability to land on the right page and your credibility.
  • Procurement shapes how you buy. The work has to fit a clearly scoped assignment with defined deliverables and a fixed price, and it has to be possible to call it off under a framework agreement.
  • Plain language is a legal requirement too. The Swedish Language Act calls for clear, understandable writing, and that goes hand in hand with what makes a page work in search.

Who is this for?

  • Government agencies
  • Municipalities and municipal departments
  • Regions and regional healthcare
  • Municipal and state-owned companies
  • Universities and higher education institutions
  • Associations, foundations and publicly funded organisations

How does Topdog approach public sector SEO?

1. Keyword research that shows how citizens speak

We map how people actually search for your services and compare that with the words you use yourselves. The result is a solid foundation for both page structure and writing in plain language.

2. Content inventory and clean-up

We go through the site to find what is outdated, duplicated or never visited. On a large public sector site, this is almost always the step that delivers the most impact per hour spent.

3. Technical SEO and accessibility in a single workstream

Indexing, performance, heading structure, semantics and internal linking are all part of the work. We plan it to meet the requirements of the DOS Act and WCAG at the same time.

4. Structure and templates for your editors

We develop templates and guidelines so that many editors can publish consistently, without every page needing central review.

5. Reporting that shows real-world results

We build reporting that measures whether citizens solved their task, and not just how many people visited the page.

How do you measure SEO in the public sector?

We measure the share of cases completed through self-service, and the drop in calls to customer service and the switchboard. We also track how visible you are for the questions citizens actually ask, and whether the right page is the one that answers. Traffic volume on its own is rarely a relevant goal for a government agency.

AI search in the public sector

More and more citizens in Sweden put their questions to an AI assistant instead of Google. Whether they ask how to apply for a grant, which rules apply or when an application is due, the answer comes from whatever sources the model can find. If your information is hard for machines to read, or an outdated version of a rule is still online, that’s the version the AI repeats. AI visibility is therefore a matter of accurate public information, not marketing.

What does public sector SEO cost?

Topdog works on fixed-price projects with a clearly defined scope. That makes them easy to describe in a procurement or a call-off.

All prices are exclusive of VAT.

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Why choose Topdog for public sector SEO?

  • Fixed-price projects with clear deliverables suit a purchasing process that demands predictability.
  • You work directly with the senior consultant doing the work, with no sales layer in between.
  • We’re used to working in complex organisations with many stakeholders and long decision-making processes.
  • Our documentation holds up when you need internal buy-in from management and the relevant committee.
  • Knowledge transfer is included, so your editorial team can keep the work going on its own.
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Frequently asked questions about SEO for the public sector

  • How does a government agency buy SEO?

    Usually as a clearly defined assignment at a fixed price, either through a direct award below the procurement threshold or through a call-off under an existing framework agreement. We design our projects so you can describe them with clear deliverables, a timeframe and a price.

  • How are accessibility and SEO connected?

    The requirements overlap to a large extent. Heading structure, alt text, semantic code, clear link text and readable language are requirements in WCAG, and they are also what makes a page work in search. One project can therefore deliver against both.

  • We don't sell anything. How do you measure impact?

    By whether citizens managed to complete their task. In practice, we look at the share of self-service cases completed, the drop in call volumes on the topics you've worked on, and how often the right page answers the right question.

  • How do you handle thousands of pages and many editors?

    We start with an inventory and clean-up. Then we introduce templates and guidelines, so that decentralised publishing holds together without central review of every page.

  • Private players rank above us for our own services. Can that change?

    Often, yes. Typically, your own page is written in officialese, while the commercial page is written the way citizens search. Weak internal linking often makes things worse.

  • How do we get the right information to appear in AI answers?

    By structuring your information so machines can read it, keeping it up to date, and removing or flagging outdated versions. In practice, this is the same work that makes your content easier for people to understand.

  • Can you work under framework agreements?

    Yes. Get in touch and we'll go through which format suits your procurement process.