For such organizations, does it make a difference how a company presents their self-description on the Web? It does to Google. I took a random state, Kansas, and did a search for
Kansas Lobbying Firm
and
Kansas Government Relations Firm
check the order of the results for firm sites.
| Rank | Lobbying Firm | Government Relations Firm |
| 1 | Hein Law Firm | Foulston Siefkin LLP |
| 2 | Federico Consulting | Little Government Relations |
| 3 | Whitney B. Damron, P.A. | Kearney and Associates |
| 4 | Little Government Relations | Whitney B. Damron, P.A. |
| 5 | Polsinelli, P.C. | Lathrop & Gage LLP |
| 6 | Kensinger and Associates | Cozad Company Government Relations |
| 7 | Bright and Carpenter Consulting | Hickam Public Affairs |
| 8 | Devine and Donley, Inc. | HCA Government Relations |
| 9 | Parallel Strategies | Jason Grill |
Two firms showed up in the top nine of both searches. Your search results may vary a bit, but it goes to show that synonyms and related terms need to be covered in your content for purposes of your results.
I originally was looking into this because I find most lobbying/government relations firm web sites to be very static – little news, little calendar, few updates. I was wondering if that impacted the ranking of the sites. I will say that under “lobbying firm”, only one site had news and other regularly updated content, the rest were very static. On the “government relations firm” side it was more half-and-half.
When you realize what Google Adwords says about the value of the above two keyword sets, it makes you realize that more content, regularly updated, is important to the expanded visibility of the firm web site. Because according to Google Adwords,
Lobbying Firm as a term averages 210 searches per month.
Government Relations Firm as a term averages 40 searches per month.
That’s not for the state of Kansas. That’s the web. So firms need to use greater description of their business – and more current items that are more likely to be searched – in order to improve visibility of their site.
So one of the ways to research these terms is the above-mentioned Google Adwords and the Keyword Planner (found under Tools). It’s free, and for anyone with a website, it’s worth looking at. Including lobbying/government relations firms!