Government Sites Cluttering Results?

[perfectweb]

Hi Guys,

Have you ever come across government sites that are cluttering up SERP's that you're trying to rank for?

For a new site that I'm working on one of the keyword terms is "driving test cancellations" and is in the UK. 3 of the top 4 results are government related sites which have verry little (if not nothing) to do with the keywords.

Whilst these government sites are (very) loosley related to the keyword terms, and understandably have high pa/da, what would be the best way to try and rrank higher than these sites.

I'm in the process of building links and social profiles - I'm really just wondering if there's something I'm missing that is an "easy fix" for jumping ahead of these sites - or getting them removed due to their lack of relevence.

Gary...

[perfectweb]

Thanks for the suggestion. It will not be possible for me or any of my competitors to get links from government sites directly. They like to pretend our websites don't exist because they think it is better for them that way

Even if they did like our sites, the government sites in the UK seem to only ever want to link to other government sites. They can't be seen to be endorsing 3rd party products or services.

It is safe to assume that I am working on a quality link building strategy and the on page optimisation etc. is being carried out correctly.

the 3 sites i am referring to are:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_186303.html

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/LearnerAndNewDrivers/index.htm

http://www.dft.gov.uk/dsa/

As you can see none of these pages have the term "driving test cancellation" on them and looking at the backlink profile, they don't have any links with the term"driving test cancellation" in the anchor text (see opensiteexplorer).

Do you think there is a chance that Google is "placing" these results there for some other reason. If so, what could it be?

[AU-SEO]

I guess it depends on the nature or intent of your website.

My top suggestion would be to try to get links from those government websites for your primary keywords. I guess I need to do the ABC 123 assumptions that you have relevant keyword  permutations in your content title tags etc..

Include your priority terms with your information architecture and get a few highly relevant websites to link to you with those targeted terms.

-Phil