Political maneuvering, campaign funding strategies, and even fashion-sense maybe, but the last thing one expects when thinking of presidential candidate benchmarking would be SEO/SEM.
But 2008's candidates understand that survival on the campaign trail means tapping into technologies and marketing vehicles that until recently were the exclusive domain of nerds and tech-geeks. Costing less than a national TV advertising campaign, yet strong in the “word-of-mouth to the masses” appeal, personal in nature, but with innumerable reach, Internet communication is too powerful to ignore.
What does that mean to Joe or Jane Businessman? By looking closely at how politicians conduct their SEO/SEM within their campaigns, you can observe the best (and sometimes worst) ways to conduct an SEO/SEM strategy. In the world of election campaigns, SEO/SEM successes are instantaneous and mistakes are felt more keenly and dealt more harshly than in “real life”– so sit back and learn from the best (and worst).
Not to play sides, but according to a reputation study conducted by the Marketing Pilgrim, Barack Obama looks to be leading the pack in terms of search engine listings. Based on their research - Key findings include:
• Republican candidates managed only an average 42% positive sentiment search results, with Democratic candidates not fairing much better (45%).
• Of those candidates with the most name recognition, only Barack Obama achieved zero negative sentiment results.
• Candidates with the most negative sentiment were Republicans Tommy Thompson (22.5%) and Tom Tancredo (12.5%) and Democrats Joe Biden (15%), John Edwards and Hillary Clinton (both 10%).
• Candidates with the most positive sentiment were Democrats Dennis Kucinich (55%) and Hillary Clinton (52.5%) and Republicans Ron Paul (70%) and Jim Gilmore (52.5%).
For a detailed analysis refer to search engine journal’s Pablo Palatnik who goes through in his post “Who is winning the online popularity game?” the different Internet rankings for the candidates, with an analysis based on the results from Nielson Media Research. This post also received quite a few interesting comments from readers.
For an in-depth discussion on candidates’ search marketing efforts 10e20 goes through SEM strategies and results based on Google listings.
A couple more links for your reference:
- SEO and the presidential Candidates
- SEOmoz’s “Whether DNC or RNC, Political Candidates need SEO”
