SEO optimization is the process or actions that help us to improve the visibility of our website in search engines such as Google, increasing its position in the results page. Thus, if we design effective SEO strategies, when a user searches for a term related to the products or services offered by our website, we will be the first to appear in the search engine results.
In this case, for example, for the term, “elecciones europeas” (European elections), the first to appear in the results is the European Parliament’s own website. So it will get the most clicks from users who have searched for this concept in Google (known as, keyword).
In this case, it’s easy. The European Parliament is the one who will get the most clicks from users searching for this term, as they are the official website linked to the European elections.
But what happens when we look at more concrete and precise terms that may be of more political interest to us, such as “which party proposes to reduce environmental impact” or the names of election candidates? Is it easy to be the first to appear on Google? Can we control what users see of our candidates or in relation to our policies?
Let’s take a general picture of the different aspects related to SEO and politics that we can find today.
Table of contents
- What is SEO? Strategies to appear in Google’s first results
- SEO and politics. A current introduction
- SEO in politics: SEO analysis of the U.S. election campaign
- Keywords win the election debate
- Keyword research: understanding search trends
- Political candidates on Google
- Being a politician and a woman on Google
- What to do once the potential keywords have been defined
- The blog, the perfect tool for a content SEO strategy
- Technical SEO, a must in any industry
- Linkbuilding strategies: How to work on online reputation?
- SEO, policy and analytics: How to measure web conversions?
What is SEO? Strategies to appear in Google’s first results
The first thing we have to be clear about is what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, since these strategies cover a very wide range of actions that can be developed. So, what we must know is that SEO are all those actions that aim to help us to increase the visibility of a website in search engines like Google, that is, to appear in the top results of search engines organically (without paying for advertising in the search engine).
SEO actions can be divided into two main groups. On page SEO, which are all those that we will implement and develop within our own website, including technical SEO (indexing, usability, web accessibility…) and content SEO (web architecture, keyword research, blogs…).
And on the other hand, the Off page SEO, which are all those actions that will help to increase the visibility of a website, but that will not be implemented within the website, but will be external. In this case, the best known techniques are linkbulding, strategies aimed at increasing the number and quality of inbound links to the website, through other websites or platforms, as they will help to increase the online reputation of the site.
All these SEO actions are the ones that are worked in most of the online projects nowadays. But what about political party websites, are they also implementing SEO strategies?
In this case, it’s easy. The European Parliament is the one who will get the most clicks from users searching for this term, as they are the official website linked to the European elections.
But what happens when we look at more concrete and precise terms that may be of more political interest to us, such as “which party proposes to reduce environmental impact” or the names of election candidates? Is it easy to be the first to appear on Google? Can we control what users see of our candidates or in relation to our policies?
SEO and politics. A current introduction
If we Google the concept of SEO + politics, as well as related terms, we can see that, at least in Spanish, there are few articles that talk about the subject:
Likewise, in other countries, as for example in English, we can find articles related to SEO and politics, as well as the recommendation of SEO actions in electoral campaigns. Although we do not find examples or analysis of campaigns.
We are going to discover, in a concrete way, several SEO actions that we can develop in politics or electoral campaigns.
SEO in politics: SEO analysis of the U.S. election campaign
This 2020, there have been elections in the United States, a country where many users are informed through television channels. Even so, we can also verify that there is a large number of people who, to solve their doubts, do it through Google. And this, we do not need any study to tell us, since we can check it ourselves, through a quick study of keywords.
The winner of the election debate
For example, surely thousands of people* in the United States searched on Google “who won us debate” during October to find out who did better in the election debate that took place between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. *We say probably, because when you enter this term in Google’s keyword planner, it does not give you the data, but on the other hand, we see that more than 3.5 million users searched for news related to the debate, so we can get an idea that the figure is very high.
Probably more than 30% of these users click on the first Google result to find out, according to public opinion, who won the debate. So Deutsche Welle (DW), along with the others in the first results, in this case, will be responsible for informing the majority of users who have this concern, which may be reflected in their final vote. And, in this example, the answer is clear, as we can conclude from Google: Donald Trump won.
Thus, all users who click on these news items and read them will be left with the perception that this candidate is the winner of the debate, according to media reports.
Who is the winner if we search Google with another keyword?
Likewise, if on the other hand, the term that users have searched for differs a little, and they simply search for “who won debate“, we see a very contrasted view: in this case, at first glance, we will get the feeling that Joe Biden won it:
Keywords win the election debate
So, the first thing we can draw is a clear conclusion: in October (2020), there was still no clear winner. But, on the other hand, and the one that interests us most, is how it can affect the perception of a person depending on the term he or she has searched for in Google. And it is that, depending on the keyword chosen, you will have a clear winner with some qualities, opinions and proposals or, on the contrary, the other.
With this example from the United States, we have verified the importance of search results: if we appear, we exist, and not only that, but it can have an impact.
So, let’s study and evaluate various SEO actions we can take in politics.
Keyword research: understanding search trends
Doing keyword studies to know the most searched terms in search engines such as Google, as well as digital trends, can be one of the most important strategies within a political strategy.
And why is it so important to do this keyword study? Because it will allow us to know what are the interests of users, their doubts… A study that will help us to define the path of the digital strategy in search engines.
Search terms: real-time digital trends
For example, let’s analyze terms related to freelancers (autonomos). In the following image, we can analyze how many people have searched for registering or deregistering as a freelancer from October 2019 to October 2020.
Or related to job search:
But we can also go further, and study what are the doubts that users have directly related to politics. And Google itself can already suggest ideas:
Positioning websites with these related terms is not easy. Especially when they are very generic concepts, since possibly the digital media will have already taken care of covering these topics. But not all of them will always be covered. And with a deeper and more specialized keyword study we can find new words or topics where we can position ourselves in position 1.
Why is keyword research on political terms so important?
Knowing which are the trends and the periods where some terms or others are searched more, can be useful to know users’ questions.
But there is another aspect that we must also take into account: when users make these searches, the web pages that will appear in the first positions are the ones that will be read by more people.
The most corrupt party in Spain… According to Google!
For example, imagine you are discussing with a friend about which is the “most corrupt party in Spain”, partido más corrupto de España, average of 500-600 searches per month. After recalling the numerous cases of corruption in some parties and others, you decide to go to Google to find the final answer. And, for example, as of today (October 2020), we would find the following results:
With this image, without further investigation, we have a clear conclusion at a glance: everything seems to point to the PSOE as the most corrupt party in Spain. But is it really so? According to casos aislados, PP would be the party with the most cases of corruption. But, according to finanzas.com, and the majority of the first results, it is PSOE.
*In this case, it should be noted that the first website (casos aislados) has several data supporting its results, while the other website is subjective. In order to conclude and evaluate which of the two sources is more reliable, we would have to enter a whole new topic: “how to differentiate between reliable sources and not Google”, but we will talk about this later, on another occasion.
En este caso, nos vamos a centrar en cómo pueden afectar estos resultados a los usuarios que han buscado en Google “cuál es el partido más corrupto de España”(y no en decidir quien tienen razón): la mayoría se van a llevar la impresión que el PSOE partido es el más corrupto, aunque, tal vez, no sea verdad.
Esto nos demuestra la importancia del SEO y las palabras clave en Google. Y es que cada mes, más de 500 personas, que seguramente conocen a más de una persona y su opinión puede influir, se pueden llevar la impresión, en este caso, por ejemplo, que un partido es el más corrupto de España, aunque pueda que no lo sea.
Political candidates on Google
Nowadays, the leader is no longer just another piece in the trilogy of the electoral system, which also includes the program and the party, but has become the central image. The candidate influences users’ voting decisions, and one of the sources of information that voters use to learn more about a candidate is undoubtedly Google.
We are going to analyze some of the main politicians in Spain during 2019-2020 (Pedro Sánchez, Pablo Casado, Santiago Abascal, Pablo Iglesas and Albert Rivera).
According to the SEMrush keyword research tool, this is the number of searches for each candidate on average per month:
Analyzing the data, we can quickly reach two conclusions. On the one hand, it is not because they search for you more, the more votes you are going to get, nor vice versa. And, on the other hand, and more importantly, every month, many people search for information about the different political leaders. And as we have said before, the web that appears in better positions with these terms and related will be the ones that will give the answers to all the doubts of the users.
Types of searches related to political leaders
Users do not always search in Google for information about the candidate in a generic way, but surely, they always want to know something more specific, either because it is current in the media or any other topic that identifies it.
Let’s, for example, click on the case of “pablo iglesias casa” or “pablo iglesias casa precio”, searches that currently have a monthly average of 9,900 and 400 searches respectively, although there were peaks with many more.
In this way, the following media will be in charge of answering users who have these questions about the subject, whatever the user wants to know, although, as we can see, not all of them say the same thing. So, if someone wants to know information related to the following topics because they do not know the subject, want to go deeper, or any other topic, we must take into account that they will surely be informed with the first 2-4 results.
And, the same happens in the case of searching for “Pablo Casado master”, most of the +300 users who search for this word in Google every month, will surely be informed by the links in the first positions of the results:
Being a politician and a woman on Google
Until now, we have only looked at male politicians, basically, because in the previous Spanish elections only men headed electoral lists. But, what happens in the case of female politicians, what can we find about their life or career in search engines?
As we can see, if we search for some of the best-known Spanish politicians today, we can see the same pattern:
And, at first look, without making an exhaustive study, just by observing the Google results, we see one thing: characteristics related to the family, as well as couple, or even physical, are sought much more in the case of women than not in the case of men.
Undoubtedly, sexism can not only be found in the online world, but we also see it in the online world. The terms that users search for related to women follow different patterns than in the case of men, due to gender. Later on, we are going to talk about gender and SEO in our blog. An analysis that we not only see reflected in the case of SEO and politics, and women.
What to do once the potential keywords have been defined
After doing a keyword study and knowing which are the terms we are interested in appearing in the first positions of the search engines, there are several SEO actions that we can develop, such as creating content through a blog or a news section.
The blog, the perfect tool for a content SEO strategy
Publishing content frequently is key to position new pages and terms in search engines. And how better to do it than through a blog? We can use the blog or news section to work on those terms that we are interested in highlighting, with information and quality content. And, as in any other sector, generating a content SEO strategy is key to increase visibility in search engines. And the blog is one of the best tools to help you achieve these goals.
Technical SEO, a must in any industry
Having a technically optimized website in order to achieve greater online visibility and at the same time offer a good user experience is essential in any sector. Thus, the website must be accessible, indexable and usable.
Web accessibility and speed
In any digital strategy we must ensure that the website is accessible to any type of person, regardless of their age, location… To do this we must ensure that the website is accessible to both a person of 20 and 60 years, for someone who lives in a big city like Madrid, as for someone from a remote mountain village in the Vall d’Aran, even for the person who is traveling by subway in Barcelona. Thus, the website must be fast and have a correct loading time, which will help us to prevent users from leaving the website due to technical issues.
Web indexing: do we appear in Google?
On the other hand, we must make sure that the website is indexed in Google, because if not, no matter how much effort we make, we will never appear in the search engines. We must check that the web page is indexed in Google, that there is no duplicate content, that the robots.txt file is configured correctly…
Check the blog: Why doesn’t my website appear in Google? Main SEO mistakes
Web usability: user experience
Finally, it is important that a website is usable. We have worked hard to drive traffic to the website, but… What now? It is important that the website is responsive and adapts to any device, as well as being easy to navigate for users. So that they find all the information they are looking for in an easy and comfortable way.
Linkbuilding strategies: How to work on online reputation?
Within the Off page SEO strategies, linkbuilding will be another of the actions that we can work on in order to improve the visibility of the website. Although, in this case, unlike any other sector, the type of external linking strategies will be very different and more personalized. Since we will not only be interested in the quality of the websites that link to us, but also in another very important factor: what they say. The online reputation of the party or candidate must be taken into account. Later, we will talk specifically about this type of SEO strategies for election campaigns.
SEO, policy and analytics: How to measure web conversions?
Last but not least, we must monitor all these SEO strategies in order to analyze the results and improve or refocus the strategies designed.
To do this, it is important to set up Google Analytics on the website. Although, to go a step further and to be able to study web conversions in a more precise way, the best way is to tag web conversions. These steps can be done with Google Tag Manager. This way we will be able to know more precisely the web results.
Visualizing results: Google Data Studio
The best way to analyze the results will be to elaborate customized and dynamic reports. One of the most useful tools will be the Data Studio reports, a Google tool that allows us to visualize our data in real time with highly customized graphics.
More information about SEO and policy
From a subjective point of view, but with data, I have tried to make an overview of what SEO is and how you can design actions in the world of politics, but there is still much more to analyze! Don’t miss my blogs, follow me for more details and contact me for any questions.
