A ministerial statement is a statement that is published on nsw.gov.au on behalf of a NSW Government minister.
NSW Government staff are required to submit a ticket to our Content support team before they create any type of ministerial content type.
Ministerial statements must not be altered, apart from adding supplied hyperlinks and improving readability of hyperlinks. Media contact details should be deleted and not published on nsw.gov.au. Links to video, images or audio files accompanying the statements should also be deleted and not published.
Adding and publishing ministerial statements is generally a straight copy/paste of the speeches, with minor edits to obvious errors (typos, spelling, formatting).
Ministerial statements will appear on the ministerial media releases page.
Creating a ministerial statement
Follow the steps below to create a new ministerial statement article.
- Login to the CMS, then navigate to Manage > Content > Add content > Article > Article: Ministerial statement
- You will need to work through the following tabs: Content, Page, Media, Tags, Connections – to finish creating your page. Some fields are mandatory.
Title (mandatory)
- Use sentence case unless brand names or proper names are in use. No special characters. Try to aim for a maximum of 50 characters.
- The page title forms the end of the URL and appears in the breadcrumb and side navigation.
- The title displays as the H1 heading for the page and is the default meta title for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Importance of page title (meta title) for SEO
The page title (also known as the meta title) is an important page elements for SEO.
- The page title is the text that appears in the browser tab and is also used as the main link text in search engine results pages (SERPs).
- It is the first thing the audience see when they come across your web page in search results.
- It is important to make sure that the page title accurately describes the content of the page and includes relevant keywords to help search engines understand what the page is about.
Summary (mandatory)
- The page summary will appear under the page title on the webpage.
- Try to keep it less than 170 characters in length.
- The summary is also the default meta description for SEO.
Importance of the page summary (meta description) for SEO
- The meta description is a brief summary of the content on the web page that appears below the page title in search results.
- It can influence click-through rates (CTR) from search results to your web page.
- A well-crafted meta description can entice users to click through to your page by providing a concise summary of the content, include relevant keywords, and highlighting the benefits of visiting your page.
Short title (optional)
Use the short title field if you want to shorten your page title for Side Navigation and Breadcrumbs to prevent text wrapping for long page titles. Use sentence case. If no URL Slug is used, the short title will also modify the URL.
URL Slug (optional)
You can use the URL slug field to modify the end part of your URL. Use the URL slug to create a shorter, SEO-friendly URL and prevent duplication of words.
The URL slug will override the URL that is automatically generated from the page title.
The URL slug:
- must be lowercase
- must separate words with a - (hyphen)
- should include the page's primary keyword
- should not exceed 32 characters.
Published date (mandatory)
The published date will appear on the article.
Agency (mandatory)
- Start to type the name of the relevant Cluster or Agency in the Agency field and select from the drop down list.
- You can choose more than one agency however, the first Agency listed will be the main agency for the content and will receive the Google Analytics data for the page.
Audience (mandatory)
- You must select 1 or more audience types, that is relevant to your content.
Topic (mandatory)
- You must select at least 1 of the 20 main Topic tags, that is relevant to your content.
- The list of main topics can be found on the homepage.
Ministers (mandatory)
- You must select 1 or more ministers, that is relevant to your content.
- The ministers will appear on the article as: Statement by: [ministers]
Notes:
- Discuss with your team what tagging may be required if you are planning on creating lists with your pages.
- Tags are only used to group related content together and do not play a part in SEO.
You can include related information. Links can be internal, external or media files.
- Go to the right-hand side page menu > Governance > Editorial group.
- Select the Editorial group/s that will be responsible for keeping this new web page updated. You can choose more than one group.
Related ministerial articles
If there is at least 1 article with the same tags and categories. They will display under Related ministerial articles.
See this live on nsw.gov.au
Check out Ministerial media releases page to see how this works on a live page.