Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

First, to all my regular readers, sorry for the lapse in posts. It’s been really busy at work lately, and with the holidays, December just flew by. The good news is that I’m getting some help at work so hopefully I can post more regularly. Ok, let’s get to the fun stuff.

As Super Tuesday was yesterday, I figured I’d take a more presidential look at the candidates and how they comes across to the search engines. I’ve taken some time to evaluate Obama, Clinton, McCain, Huckabee, and Romney’s websites and the results are pretty interesting.

Here’s some initial stats in terms of pages indexed:

Obama - 1,470
Clinton - 4,930
McCain - 7,270
Romney - 4,700
Huckabee - 3,410

So how did they do in terms of page titles, descriptions and URL structure, three of the most important items when optimizing a site:

Obama:

Barack’s site does a good job with search engine friendly URL’s, but the Page Titles and descriptions could be more descriptive as to the content within those pages.

Clinton:

Hilary’s site does a better job than Obama’s in terms of Page Descriptions and also uses search engine friendly URL’s, but the Page Titles could be more descriptive in terms of content.

McCain:

McCain’s site missed the swift boat on Page Titles and goes for the jugular of obviousness. The Page Descriptions are pretty much on par with the Titles in that they don’t really describe the content. The URL’s will do, but the .htm extension could be hidden to keep the URL’s future proof.

Huckabee:

Huckabee’s site gets it in terms of Page Titles and Descriptions, but the query string in the URL is a little old school.

Romney:

Romney’s site is ALL over the map in terms of Page Title consistency, but at least they are descriptive. It also has search engine friendly URL’s, which helps.

And finally, how are these sites put together:

Obama:
Primarily CSS based with a dash of Javascript.

Clinton:
Also CSS based, with some Javascript tossed in.

McCain:
Table based design with LOTS of Javascript.

Romney:
CSS based with some AJAXy goodness.

Huckabee:
CSS with all the latest Javascript scripts.

So what’s the bottom line here when looking at just SEO? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but perhaps this image will let you know which way I’m leaning.