The 2008 election promises to be an exciting and hotly contested one. Jake Matthews takes a look at how some of the leading candidates are doing in their search marketing efforts on Google in Part 1 of a four part series – and gives each one of them a grade in the 2008 Presidential Candidate Search Marketing Face-off .

There has been a fair amount of community coverage of how the leading candidates of the 2008 Presidential elections are leveraging or missing the boat on SEO and in the Social Media networks. There are interesting posts that follow the quality and strength of the campaigns. Mima looking at backlinks to Presidential hopeful sites. Further on March 13, 2007 Michael (Solo) Jensen did a great candidate SEO review on WebPro News. Rand-Moz chimed in May with insight regarding keyword rankings, missed opportunities and John McCain’s nasty SEO blunders, while Jonah from Alchemist discussed the grassroots value of the web for campaigns.

With regard to eyeballs on campaigns through social media, perhaps the most celebrated and widespread demonstration is the YouTube YouChoose08 section devoted to the election. Google has this section in the paid results on candidate name searches in Google Web search, so they are promoting it fair amount, and just from speaking with other heavy internet users, it’s definitely a place where people will form opinions. YouChoose08 allows candidates to create a video dossier and for visitors to interact with the campaigns and voice opinions. It’s a totally new town-hall, and you don’t even have to go all the way to small town “New Hampsha”, to listen to the candidates speak. You Tube is a powerful venue for campaigns.

But what of SEO/M? I’d like to compare and discuss the recent candidate name search results on Google.com for the candidates Rudy Giuliani (R) | Mitt Romney (R) | Hillary Clinton (D) and Barack Obama (D). At this point, it seems that these candidates are the real players with big money and an honest chance to pull it off (even though Fred Thompson has made a splash without even officially entering). And, let’s admit it, as much as we’d like grassroots to make things happen, it’s going to probably come down to money.

So which candidates are using Google to their greatest advantage? Which political campaigns are running the best name-based search marketing campaigns?

For this discussion, we’ll begin with Google and we’ll continue on with Yahoo, MSN Ask.com at a point in the near future.

Candidate #1: Rudy Giuliani

#1 Organic Result – Official website www.joinrudy2008.com

JoinRudy2008 – Home

The Official Website of the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee. … Paid for by the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee, Inc. … www.joinrudy2008.com/

#2 Organic Result – Wikipedia Page

SERP Results – 1.7 mm

Stats on Canidate’s Offical Website:

PageRank – 6

Age of Website – 1998

Official Site Using Google AdWords? – Yes

Official Site AdWords Top Result Copy – Rudy Giuliani for President 12 Commitments to America

Search Marketing Grade: B-

I rate this a B- for one major flaw. If Rudy does not make it in ‘08, and there is a distinct chance he will not, he’s going to have to have a NEW DOMAIN for 2012, if he wants to run. Then, all the authority that he gains from this site in 07 and 08, will have to be redirected to the new site. Would Rudy’s 2012 site be www.joinrudy2012.com and they’d have to start all over again, building authority for that site? So, I believe that they made a mistake right off the bat by not using www.rudygiuliani.com or www.joinrudy.com

As well – Look at this! http://www.rudygiuliani.com

That’s pitiful Rudy. You’re scaring me. I might reconsider and give a B-minus or even a C for that one. This is a site running Yahoo Publisher ads and buying and selling domains. This is kind of sloppy, ugly stuff.

Also, for the title - ending with “HOME”? C’mon Rudy, you’re from New York, you can get a better title than this. If you want to keep it simple, how about: Rudy Giuliani for President. Much better than JoinRudy2008 – Home. Grrrr..!

Candidate #2: Hillary Clinton

#1 Organic Result – Official website www.hillaryclinton.com

HillaryClinton.com – Welcome

Official Site of Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee. www.hillaryclinton.com/ – 6k – Cached – Similar pages About Hillary – www.hillaryclinton.com/about/ Blog – www.hillaryclinton.com/blog/ Contact Us – www.hillaryclinton.com/help/contact/ Newsroom – www.hillaryclinton.com/news/ More results from www.hillaryclinton.com »

#2 Organic Result- official campaign site

SERP Results – 14.3 mm

Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:

PR – 6

Age of Website – 2001

Using Google AdWords? – Yes, but not when I searched during this post! That’s a problem.

Search Marketing Grade: B+

Senator Clinton is lucky enough to have sitemap links site links below her first result which is great. These direct links to important pages on her site are an indication of good, clean, clear crawling. As well, she has the 1st, 2nd and 3rd organic results. Her US Senate page is 3rd. With regard to title, Hillary’s campaign may want to tinker with it a bit. The slogan on her website logo is “Hillary for President”, so why not just do a variation of that and keep with the theme while being relevant to a searcher. Try Hillary Clinton for President – Join Hillary. “Welcome” is good, but not a great call to action. And, after all, the end goal with the political campaign is to have people join them.

Candidate #3: Mitt Romney

#1 Organic Result – Official campaign website www.mittromney.com

Mitt Romney for President 2008

Official campaign site provides his biography, news and information on how to support his candidacy. www.mittromney.com/

#2 Organic Result – Wikipedia page

SERP Results – 2.10 mm

Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:

PR – 6

Age of Website – 2002

Using Google AdWords? – Yes, but not on name-search at the time of writing this post.

Search Marketing Grade: B

Not showing any site links, not showing any official site advertising on Google AdWords

Great title, but not leveraging AdWords properly, at least in my NY geographic region – that’s a travesty at this point; at least on a name search.

Candidate #4: Barack Obama

#1 Organic Result – Official campaign website www.barackobama.com

BarackObama.com | Welcome to Obama for America

Official Website of Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign. www.barackobama.com/ – 21k – Jun 15, 2007 – Cached – Similar pages Learn – www.barackobama.com/about/ Issues – www.barackobama.com/issues/ Get Involved – my.barackobama.com/ Obama Store – store.barackobama.com/

#2 organic result – Wikipedia page

SERP Results – 2.15 mm

Stats on Candidate’s Official Website:

PR – 7

Age of Website – 3/2002

Official Site Using Google AdWords? – Yes

Official Site AdWords Copy? Volunteers welcome: Sign-up to volunteer at Obama campaign events

And another one that is displaying in NY:

Get to Know Barack Obama
BarackObama.com Learn more about Senator Obama at campaign events: Register Online

Search Marketing Grade: A-

Compelling title: Welcome to Obama for America – That’s what it’s all about. The candidate is for the people and this will ring true for many, many users on searches and at the grassroots. In the name search, site links are readily available and most importantly the www.my.barackobama.com link is there prompting users to “Get Involved” and finally, they are taking advantage of AdWords pay per click. So, this campaign, for the most part got it right.

So, for now, Obama is the winner in this Presidential Candidate name-search campaign.

One of the biggest surprises was to not see all candiates leveraging AdWords properly.

I’m going to leave it to a later post to discuss Yahoo!, MNS and Ask.com and I’ll let our site usability experts discuss the actually sites, because that’s the other part of the equation. I’ll also leave the on-site SEO analysis to someone else.

One question that I have for the SEO/M community and the candidate’s campaign managers themselves: Is it worthwhile to run campaigns or to pay any attention to search results abroad – such as on www.google.co.uk now or further, when you know the candidate has a distinct chance of winning the campaign. Hillary Clinton for example has a ton of strength to with the 08 Presidential election, so, she may be President one day. Should she begin to influence a search result on Google UK in order to be viewed favorably abroad? How is this search result (Hillary Clinton) going to change over time? A for reputation management, is it worth to watch and monitor and attempt to influence the result. If she’s President, the likely search term that people will use is “President Clinton” and that could be a real case study in reputation management.

Lastly, Amy Schatz at the Wall Street Journal did a great job of covering the spend on internet marketing as a whole among the Presidential candidates. I found it most surprising that Rudy Giuliani spent only $7,000 on AdWords during Q1 2007. Obama, by contrast spent nearly $72,000. which is a bit more in line with reality. So, another plus for Obama, but not quite A+ yet.

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