SEO for the Left wing Primary 2017: parti awareness and queries

After analyzing the Right’s primary keywords, let’s now review the Left.   Of the major primary candidates from the left, who received the most visits to their site? Was it Hamon or Valls? Or was it the outsiders, Macron and Melenchon? Does site optimization influence presidential elections? Let’s see if we can find the answers to these questions in our analysis.

As with the Right primaries, Google Trends provides an interesting analysis of the different queries based on the trending popularity of the candidates. It is important to keep abreast of various news reports as they relate not only to the primaries and candidates themselves, but to also track regional specifics which include the popular requests of all things politically related – presidential poll, Pénélope Fillon, debate Hamon Valls, slap, universal income, etc.

Even though neither Mélenchon nor Macron were part of the weekend’s primary, we will review them nonetheless. Since in the end, the winner of the left primary, Benoit Hamon, must compete against them in the eventual presidential election.

Recognition of the left parties

It is somewhat surprising that the political party created by Macron has as much recognition, or at least arouses as much interest, as the PS which was created in the seventies!

Individual queries for each candidate (January 2017)

Google search data reveals Macron enjoys greater recognition than all his competitors, or, at the very least, he generates more interest than his competitors. With 246K queries on his last name alone and another 200K when including his first name and last name, he is clearly in the lead with almost 450K monthly queries.

It should be noted that Macron’s numbers may have also benefited from his resignation from the government at the end of August. Thus, he has been campaigning far longer than all of his competitors, with the exception being Mélenchon.

Summary for each candidate:

Macron’s wife….benefit?

It is interesting to note that the query “femme Macron” benefits from 9,900 monthly requests, compared to other candidates’ spouses who receive less than 1,000 monthly requests. Apparently, the French want to know why Mr. Macron is married to a woman much older than him.

Of course, this is not hard to link to the certain persistent rumor of his alleged homosexuality. This rumor apparently effects Macron more than the other candidates.

Candidate site performance

The most visited site belongs to Mélenchon, followed by Macron. However, between the two candidates who participated in the left’s primary of January 2017, it was Valls who had received 9,200 visits versus 6,317 for the eventual winner, Benoit Hamon.

Overall, the candidates’ sites are not optimized for SEO. Their sites only appear on the first page of google when there are specific queries of last names, and not on elements of the candidate’s platform, for example. Mélenchon receives a lot of traffic thanks to the history of his name. Whereas Valls struggles with this because of a more complicated first name (Manuel). Indeed, 8,000 French type in “Emmanuel” instead of using the Spanish equivalent of Manuel.

Site comparison based on keywords

Site comparison based onJanuary 2017 traffic

In conclusion, the left appears to be just as weak as the right when it comes to their search engine optimization!

Do you know of any examples of French or other politicians who have websites that have allowed them to attract new voters?