Politicians & Elections: SEO Role

by AmitG 30. July 2008 23:34
The article has been written to show how technological inputs specially Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization are helping politicians to gain edge in winning over youths and internet savvy voters. Gujarat & Himachal Pradesh Elections have woken up one and all ranks in Indian Politics. Indian Politics is getting murkier and Narendra Modi, CM of Gujarat has proved once again that combining development with knowhow of people’s pulse, keeping updated with technology and doing homework pays in terms of seat and power. It's the 1st week of January and those of us in the India are already pretty tired of hearing about upcoming state assembly and Loksabha Election. We're tired of it already and it won't be truly over for another year and half. Do you know how hard it is to find an impartial result for searches like "India Development Plans?" Hopefully, a year is enough time for politicians across India to get their web campaigns together. Last week, I took a look at the online campaigns of BJP (NDA) and congress (UPA). Party / Candidates spent a lot of time, money and effort on their campaigns, only BJP appears to have started an online campaign. The Gujarat BJP candidates have a surprisingly good social media presence, a networking account and a YouTube channel for campaigns. While Gujarat congress does not have a searchable website and organization old website is the most atrocious thing I've ever laid eyes on.BJP online campaign has some social media know-how behind it. It's not all that fantastic, but competitors stand to lose a lot in the coming months if they don't step it up.

The most striking thing about this Gujarat's campaign is that more than 40 seating BJP MLAs were denied tickets that mean new faces were put to test. New faces were with clean image, IT savvy and had a standing in Youths. For anyone who's unsure what that means, candidates from the same party compete against each other in order to obtain their party's nomination. Once they have taken care of everyone from their own party, they get to compete against candidates from other parties. This said, the SEO behind BJP campaign - both in terms of on-page optimization and overall strategy - is pretty impressive. When you search BJP Gujarat, first link shows up their own website then links featuring popular terms “Gujarat BJP didn’t played any role in Vadodara Art Row” , and “Gujarat development works” etc. They have completely wiped out “Gujarat Riots”, when you will search “Gujarat Riots & BJP”, search results speaks for BJP and his development agenda.The Gujarat BJP site is badly optimized, with no H1 or H2 tags, no Meta description and images used in place of text. It has a title tag, which is a giant victory over all of his competitors.How SEO can help prospective MLAs?Imagine ranking highly for queries such as "(area) (pressing local issue)." At best, the general public still only has a fleeting understanding of how search engines work; immediately, the candidate will earn a certain amount of trust and credibility when his or her site appears for searches like these, even if that trust isn't deserved. Another thing to keep in mind is that visibility is half the battle in smaller political races: unless people have decided to vote "down party lines", they will often simply vote for the person whose name they have seen in more television commercials, billboards and newspaper articles. Something about being visible seems to translate into being reputable, hence the reason why the person who raises the most money in USA presidential elections, often wins the race.

Controlling relevant SERPs is also an exercise in reputation management if you are running for a tech savvy constituency like Bangalore, Pune with higher internet access points. Local politics can be as mean and nasty as it is on the national scene: This year, I am quite certain that people will head to search engines to research political rumors. Again, it won't take much social media or SEO work to push a controlled message to the top of the search engines, but few parties and politicians like BJP, Narendra Modi are currently taking advantage of the easy public relations opportunity.

The awful job politicians are doing online upto yet surprise me. The Internet plays a far bigger role in our day-to-day lives than it did in 2004, even though most of us were quite well-attached to our computers back then. Politicians should realize the importance of search engines, social media and Internet marketing. While I wouldn't expect people outside of the technology world to inherently know these things, I would at least expect them to do a bit of research before the War begin. With the amount of money these people spend on their campaigns, it would be a shame to lose potential easily available gains with minimal efforts based upon SEO solutions.

Signing off….till, need any clarification. Pick your blackberry and write me on amitgupta007_99@yahoo.com

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A web strategist by profession, story writing is passion, rain & nature is my home, vegeterian because I like them and Internet is my weapon....talk to me

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