A Strategy for Publishing Timely and Accurate Information During a Crisis

Key outcomes

• A single, authoritative COVID-19 content hub reducing duplication and conflicting information
• Improved search performance and content discoverability, enabling users to find what they're looking for much faster
• A clear content hierarchy and navigation, reducing user confusion and running into dead ends
• Better governance and CMS flexibility, making content easier for editors to maintain and update
• A long-term content strategy foundation that continues to improve Mass.gov beyond the pandemic

This project got us on a pathway to clean up outdated content, which simplified it for our users.

Mimi Kantor, Digital Product Manager, Massachusetts Digital Service

Building a system Google and users can trust

We began with a full content audit and inventory, organizing content by agency ownership, content type, and page views. This surfaced:

• Significant duplication and outdated content
• Fragmented ownership across agencies
• A lack of clear hierarchy and relationships between pages

More than 60% of the traffic to COVID-19 pages came from search engines, meaning most users landed on Mass.gov based on what Google deemed most relevant, rather than through any intentional navigation path designed by the state.  

Inconsistent SEO metadata and the absence of a clear content hierarchy meant users frequently got redirected between agencies without finding what they were looking for. 

We developed a series of recommendations to prevent the dilution of search terms and signal clearer authority to Google, which ultimately led to the consolidation and organization of Mass.gov’s COVID-19 content into a single hub.

Improving navigation to guide constituents to what they need

The content audit also revealed a structural navigation problem that made it easy for visitors to get lost. Rather than a traditional breadcrumb menu, the CMS displayed all of a page's parent relationships, and the most relevant parent rarely appeared first. For users arriving from search engines with no established context, this made it nearly impossible to find a sensible path through the site.

We recommended consolidating COVID-19 information into a single, authoritative hub to:

• Reduce competition between pages in search results
• Strengthen SEO signals and improve ranking accuracy
• Guide users to the most relevant, up-to-date information

This significantly increased the likelihood that users would land in the right place and stay there.

Empowering editors and preparing the site for growth

We also conducted in-depth interviews with site editors to understand what the tools allowed, where they fell short, and what pain points kept staff from doing their jobs.

Taking into consideration all of their input, we provided guidance in the following areas:

• Content governance: Clear rules for how COVID-19 content is created, maintained, and retired
• Sitewide navigation: Structural recommendations to reduce confusion across the full Mass.gov ecosystem.
• CMS flexibility with guardrails: Giving editors more room to work without opening the door to the inconsistency that created the original problem.

Although initially focused on COVID-19 content, these recommendations addressed systemic issues for editors that will improve the website beyond pandemic information. Moving forward, editors can create content more proactively to meet constituent demand without feeling constrained by the tools they use.

The work got us to start thinking about the content in a different way, and we have continued in that pattern. We went from one page with a huge list of links to topic-specific landing pages that are more focused.

Fiona Molloy, Lead Content Strategist, Massachusetts Digital Service