Your best school places page sits fourth. Parents pick from the top three

Most residents start on Google, not on your homepage. They type something like "apply for a school place" or "blue badge renewal", look at the first few results and click one. If your best page for that task sits fourth or lower, many residents never reach it. They land on an older page, a general hub or a page for a different task. Then they get stuck, give up or phone you.

The good news is that for most council tasks, the best page is already in Google's top three. Paying council tax and reporting a road problem almost always get this right. But about one council in four has at least one task where the best page has slipped below the top three, so it is worth a quick look at yours.

Some tasks slip more often than others:

• Ask for adult social care: one of the most common tasks to fall outside the top three.
• Apply for a Blue Badge or disability support, find leisure centres, parks and events, register a birth, death or marriage and use a household recycling centre also slip more often than most.
• Check bin collections and apply for a school place are less often affected, but they are among the busiest tasks, so a slip here reaches a lot of residents.

Northern Ireland district councils and county councils see this more than other types of council. Welsh councils rarely do, and district councils and London boroughs tend to do well too.

The page that best meets the need is usually there and usually good. Google just prefers another page. These are the patterns that tend to cause it.

The best page lives on a separate site

Online forms and self-service portals often sit on their own web address, such as a selfserve or bluebadge subdomain. Google treats these as a separate site with few links pointing to them, so they rank below pages on your main site.

Several pages compete for the same task

It is common to have one page to apply, another to renew and a hub page above them, all with similar titles. Google splits its attention between them, and none makes the top three. Blue Badge pages often show this pattern.

A new page for every year

School admissions pages are often created fresh for each intake, with the year in the web address. The new page starts with no history, while last year's page and the general admissions page keep ranking above it.

The page is buried deep in the site

Long web addresses with four or five folders usually mean the page is several clicks from the homepage. Fewer links point to it, so Google sees it as less important.

The title does not use residents' words

Titles such as "Reception entry applications" or "Step-by-step guide" make sense to the team that wrote them. Residents search for "apply for a school place". If the title and main heading do not match the words people type, other pages win.