McCain’s default error page may result in many visitors simply leaving his site altogether, while those taken to Obama’s custom error page may stay on the site and continue to explore the information presented. Another point to Obama. (Obama 6, McCain 3)
Election and SEO Overview
As the Presidential election draws near, the competition between Barack Obama and John McCain is becoming increasingly intense. The two candidates are tirelessly working to spread their message to as many voters as possible, in the hope of winning the election in November.
It wasn’t very long ago that that Eisenhower claimed victory with help from television “spot” ads. TV ads for candidates are now the norm, but these twenty second spots were revolutionary in 1952. These spots brought Ike into citizen’s living rooms, making him seem more accessible and relatable. People who had previously had no interest in acquiring information regarding whom to vote for were suddenly made aware of Eisenhower’s platform.
Today, we live in a world where all the candidate information we could possibly need is at our fingertips. With a simple Google search, you can access information about a candidate’s position on an issue, their biography, their voting record, and much more. The internet has replaced television as the easiest method to research candidate information. The power of search has no doubt played a major role in this election, and will continue to do so as the date draws closer. Each candidate has put considerable effort into optimizing their website for search, but which candidate will win the SEO race?
Platform and Coding
First, let’s set the stage - a Web server requires an operating system on which to run. The two most popular operating systems for Web servers are Unix/Linux (60% market share) and Windows (30% market share). Our candidates differ on their choice of operating system. McCain is using Windows, while Obama has opted for Linux.
Clean coding is important for SEO. Lots of jumbled code makes it hard for search engines to crawl a site and lowers the keyword density (keyword density = # keywords / # total words). In the past, websites have been designed with tables to align content. It is argued that this technique creates too much code and separates text content in an SEO unfriendly way. The current school of thought is to use DIV tags and to align content with off the page CSS styling. This way there is less code, which raises the keyword density of the site and allows search engines to crawl a page more easily. The candidates take different approaches to this subject. Obama uses DIV’s while McCain uses tables. General opinion says that using DIV’s is cleaner and more SEO friendly, so we’ll give this one to Obama. (Obama 1, McCain 0)
Header Tags & Content:
Header tags (coded as <h1>,
<h2>, or<h3>) help tell the search engines what the page is about. Google and other search engines weigh the keywords within the header tags more significantly than any text with a paragraph element, for example:
<h1>Google views this as important</h1>,
but
<p>This text is not as important</p> . SEO’s should use this to their advantage by placing valuable keywords in their H1, H2, and H3 tags. Let’s examine the candidate’s header tags.
On some of Obama’s deeper pages, such as http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/, header tags are properly used to tell both the user and the search engines what the page is about. Obama places the words “Plan to Strengthen the Economy” as the header text on the economy page inside of an H2 tag. But, one could argue that on the same page he uses an H1 tag to display an image and inappropriately includes hidden text inside a CSS class called distext. The intent is most likely for mobile phones or browsers that do not display images, but it borders on the hidden text which Google frowns upon. McCain, on the other hand, does not use header tags at all on some his content pages (take a look at his education page: http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/19ce50b5-daa8-4795-b92d-92bd0d985bca.htm.) Instead he uses span elements () styled as a header (the exact CSS class name is issues_mainheader). This is the perfect place for an H1 tag, but McCain neglects proper SEO techniques. Due to Obama’s hidden text and McCain’s lack of headers, this one is a tie. (Obama 2, McCain 1)
Domain Age
Website domain age is a major factor in the eyes of the search engines. The older the domain is, the more trust and relevance is given to it. Obama’s site was first recognized in December 2004, while McCain outdates him by 2 years with a domain age of August 2002. (Obama 2, McCain 2)
PageRank
PageRank is the technology that Google uses to rank a website’s importance on the Web on a scale from 0 to 10. Google uses PageRank as part of its algorithm to determine which pages rank higher for keywords in the natural search results. (You can find any site’s PageRank here) Both McCain and Obama are tied with a PageRank 7, so they both get a point here. (Obama 3, McCain 3)
Backlinks
PageRank is impacted by the links a site gets from other sites, especially if those sites have a high Google PageRank themselves and if they contain the same keywords as your site.
Thus, backlinks play a major role in Google’s algorithm and are essential for good SEO results. A backlink is a common term in SEO that is defined as a link on another site that points back to your website. Google looks at both the number and quality of the websites that are linking to your website to determine where your site should rank. When looking at our candidate’s backlink number, it’s interesting to note that Obama has almost four times the amount of backlinks that McCain has. Furthermore, McCain’s website has a two year advantage on Obama in which it was naturally building links. While we’ve given a point to McCain for being older (his site, that is), we have to give the point here to Obama for building an impressive backlink quantity in shorter period of time. (Obama 4, McCain 3)
Meta Tags & Title Tags
Meta tags and title tags are yet another tool used to tell the search engines about a website. The two most popular meta tags are the Meta Description Tag and the Keyword Meta Tag. When search was first getting its start, the Keyword Meta Tag was used to tell the search engines that these were the keywords the web page should rank for when a user searches using a search engine.
Soon enough, competing sites began stuffing tons of similar keywords inside the Keyword Meta Tag and sure enough, it did not seem to help the search engine decide which page was best for which keywords. Since then, the Keyword Meta Tag has been fairly useless.
The Meta Description Tag is important for your websites Click-Through-Rate (CTR = # Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Clicks / SERP Impressions). This is because the Meta Description Tag appears right below your title tag in the SERPs.
The title tag is by far the most important tag on the page. It should sum up the webpage’s content and contain targeted keywords.
Most importantly, title and meta tags should be unique across the entire site. Sites are not fully optimized, nor employ SEO best practices, if they simply use site-wide meta tags and title tags.
Let’s examine the candidate’s tags. The Obama site does a good job of making unique title tags for each page, but uses a site-wide Meta Description tag of “Official Website of Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign”. This could cause an average site’s deeper-level pages to not appear in the SERPs. This is not an issue for a site with a PageRank as high as McCain’s or Obama’s (PR 7) because the search engines will want to index every page due to the website’s perceived importance.
McCain’s site, on the other hand, uses a semi site-wide title tag (“JohnMcCain.com - McCain-Palin 2008”) and meta tag (“John McCain 2008 - The Official Website of John McCain's 2008 Campaign for President”). McCain also takes the old school (ineffective) keyword stuffing approach to his Keyword Meta Tags (37 keywords total. A typical page should have between 4 and 8 keywords, max). It appears that Obama breaks fewer rules in this case. Score another one for Obama. (Obama 5, McCain 3)
404 Error Page:
A 404 error page is a page delivered to the browser when a user lands on a URL that does not exist. A default 404 error page simply sends a 404 response (code to the browser and search engines robots) and tells the user that the page no longer exist. 404 error pages can be customized to the look and feel of the website and can suggest other pages that the user may be looking for. Furthermore, SEO’s like to mimic the sitemap on a 404 error page, telling the search engines about as many other pages on the site as possible. McCain misses out on this opportunity by going with a default Windows 404 error page while Obama takes advantage of a custom 404 error page.
URLS Matter
URL site architecture is important for a number of reasons. Long URLs are hard to remember and often nearly impossible to write down correctly. Furthermore, if you put keywords in your URL you will benefit from those linking to you with the URL as the anchor text in the link. When links contain your keywords, you will benefit immensely in the SERPs. Obama does a nice job with his URLs under his Issues Menu category. For example, the URL for his education page is www.barackobama.com/issues/education/. This puts keywords directly in any anchor text linking to that page and makes the page’s content clear to users and search engines. McCain, on the other hand, names his pages after cryptographic hash functions designed by the NSA (http://www.johnmccain.com/informing/Issues/17671aa4-2fe8-4008-859f-0ef1468e96f4.htm). Which of these URLs would be easier to describe to your friend on the phone? This point goes to Obama, and with that, the final score comes to Obama 7, McCain 3.
What does it all mean?
If Obama and McCain were typical brands, it would be easy to say that Obama’s crushing win here would likely reflect a greater number of “sales” for Obama. When your site is easier to find on the web, and ranks higher than your competition’s, it stands to reason that your online sales will be higher than those of your competition. However, McCain and Obama are currently two of the most recognizable and sought-after “brands” in America, so the usual rules don’t necessarily apply. Obama is clearly winning the SEO race, but we’ll have to wait until November to see who will win the Presidency.
