Everyone wants their website to appear in the top search results. For most local campaigns, a candidate’s name will almost always appear in the top results if the candidate has his or her own campaign website. This is particularly true if most of the searches are for the candidate’s name or for the race in question.
But what if you aren’t appearing for these searches? How can you get your site to show up and drive more traffic to your website? (We assume, of course, that you’ve already put your domain name on your offline brochures and campaign materials.)
Below is a very basic explanation of search engine optimization (SEO). These are the techniques you can use to help ensure your website is indexed and appears for relevant queries in Google, Bing and Yahoo.
On-site optimization
This is just a fancy way of saying, ‘make your site about your race’. In other words, include enough text throughout your website about your candidate and the campaign. This includes using:
- The candidate’s name
- The state/region/municipality involved
- Topics specific to the race
There are effective ways to write online copy, and you don’t need to be overly-repetitive or redundant. Write naturally. Include the candidate’s name and race in the site’s header tags. If your race covers certain municipalities, be sure to mention them as well.
Regular updates to your site tend to help rankings, as search engines tend to prefer sites with ‘fresh’ content.
Off-site link building
Site optimization is one side of web promotion. The flip side is effective link building and advertising. Good links back to your website help it raise in relevance for searches related to your campaign.
- Link your site to and from your social media accounts!
- Newspaper websites – through articles and online voter guides
- Other local candidates
- Political party websites
- Supporter websites
- Other groups campaigning for similar causes
- Local or regional sites
When you start your website, try to get several good links. Search engines will find your site through links. Once the site is found, it will very likely become indexed quickly.
Build links to your campaign website the right way
Varied link text is best. For example, it’s great that someone links out to you as ‘Smith for Supervisor’, but it helps even more when you are linked with different text, such as ‘Smith for TinyTown Supervisor’. If you can, have your links use different text, if possible. Links with specific keywords such as names, locations or issues is particularly useful.
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising
PPC is a way of building traffic to your campaign website, but it won’t help you at all in natural search engine rankings. The same goes for other paid advertising, such as Facebook ads, retargeting, texting and IP targeting.
And finally…
Using the techniques above, it should be relatively easy to have your campaign site appear for relevant searches. Then once the visitors reach your site, the rest is up to you!
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