A regional planning agency's site, rebuilt to make nine counties' worth of programs and funding sources easy to find.
Black Hills Council of Local Governments has provided technical planning assistance across nine counties in western South Dakota since 1972. The site had to serve residents, city and county partners, and grant applicants at once — and read as the established regional authority it is, not a generic municipal template.
Snapshot
- Client: Black Hills Council of Local Governments ()
- Industry: Regional planning & economic development (council of governments)
- Services: Branding, Development, Discoverability — technical & natural SEO
- Location: Rapid City, SD — serving Bennett, Butte, Custer, Fall River, Harding, Lawrence, Meade, Pennington & Perkins counties
The challenge
A regional planning agency's website has a different job than a typical business site. It has to work for a resident looking up a local project, a city or county partner checking on planning assistance, and a grant applicant trying to figure out what funding they qualify for — often on the same page. On top of that, the organization represents nine counties and a small staff, so the site needed to read as credible and established (it's doing public-facing work backed by public dollars) without turning into either a generic government template or an unreadable list of grant programs.
The approach
We built a brand and site anchored in the Black Hills landscape the council actually serves, organized its four core service areas — Project Development, Community Development, Mapping & GIS Analysis, and Economic Development — into a clear at-a-glance structure, and turned its funding-sources information into an actual categorized reference instead of a wall of links. Technical and natural SEO were built around how city and county partners and grant-seekers across the region actually search for planning and funding assistance.
- Brand identity anchored in the Black Hills region that reads as an established regional authority, not a generic government template
- Four core service areas (Project Development, Community Development, Mapping & GIS Analysis, Economic Development) organized for a quick at-a-glance overview
- Funding-sources information organized into a categorized reference — water/sewer & solid waste, economic development, community facilities, transportation, hazard mitigation — instead of an undifferentiated list
- Content structured to serve residents, city/county partners, and grant applicants from the same site
- Technical and natural SEO built around how partners across the nine-county region actually search for planning and funding assistance
Results at a Glance
Serving more than one community, but your site doesn't show it?
If your organization represents multiple jurisdictions, manages complex funding or program information, or needs to read as credible to both the public and your partners, that's a Branding, Development, and Discoverability problem we know how to solve.
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