photo seo Right wing primary france

In these political times of the right, left and center, a constant source of interesting information is Google Trends. There, any aspiring journalist or curious party can be led to neatly condensed information thanks to Google newslab which provides insight about candidate queries and searches. The most often asked questions include words such as: program, difference, Israel, “pain au chocolat”, age, Libya, marriage for all, and abortion. Let’s begin, shall we?

Evolution of the candidates sites keywords for the 2nd round of the primary

In looking at the sudden emergence of Fillon in the Primary, it appears he began to peak interest on November 12.

Fillon Juppe Sarkozy coppe nkm google trends

Today, the site of François Fillon ranks 1st when typing the search term “Fillon”, followed by the news. Meanwhile, the site of ‘Alain Juppé ranks 2nd when typing “Juppé”. He falls behind Wikipedia.

Let’s look further into how the sites of these 2 candidates, to see if they answer the most frequently asked questions:

Google trends questions fillon juppe

 

  • “Fillon program” (programme Fillon) –  reverts back to the Fillon site.  However, the request “Fillon and Israel” does not revert back to the site at all. Letting a news site (lemondejuif ) rank on that expression
  • “Juppé program” (programme Juppé) – reverts back to the Juppé site.  Interestingly though,  the snippet “Juppé” ranks 0 for “Juppé age” (âge Juppé), followed by Wikipédia, then Gala.
  • “Difference Fillon Juppé” – in this combination, the big winner here is the media. Marianne comes in 1st, followed by Figaro (X2) and RTL.  However,  if we invert the candidate name order and type “difference Juppé Fillon”, Marianne is still first but Le Figaro disappears from the top 3, and is replaced by RTL and Usine Nouvelle, respectively.

A deeper look: keyword analysis of the 2nd round candidates via SEMrush

It is Interesting to note “Fillon” only gets 22,200 monthly searches, while “Juppé” gets 40,500.  These numbers are a probable reflection of their long term notoriety but these results may be skewed by  the first round whereas it wasn’t until afterwards François Fillon was more heavily searched.

François Fillon Keywords and organic traffic

When reviewing Fillon’s site, we do feel  there is a real effort here for content.  Unfortunately though, this content has not been optimized.  For instance, It could have been optimized for “education”. The URL uses “Back to school, to drive schools”, the first title (coded in  H3!) also employs the phrase: “making school again the first step of Republican unity”.  Without SEO optimization, there is no hope to go back and use these common expressions to help recruit new voters.

As a result, Fillon’s site ranks mainly on expressions related to its name. Worth noticing it’s10th place on terms like “team” and “safety”, and 11th on the word “ women” (Fillon’s women?).

keywords fillon right wing primary france

Totaling organic traffic of 43K in November 2016.

organic trafic fillon primary

Alain Juppé’s Keywords and organic traffic

Alain Juppé seems to have a stronger awareness than Fillon, but the organic traffic received in November is slightly behind Fillon’s (40 K vs 43 K). The Juppé site though has the same issues as its competitor: adequate content, but, again, it is not optimized, which in turn does not help recruit new voters through organic searches.

It is noted that the site of Alain Juppé ranks well on its name, in addition to his book titled “of you to me”  or even his other penned work “open letter”.

keywords alain juppe primary france

Juppé organic trafic

In a nutshell, these websites are poorly optimized for SEO.  Do you know any politicians who have integrated SEO to their campaign sites? Please let us know in the comment below.

Domain comparison for the main primary candidates

Sarkozy’s site is comfortably  in the lead for the number of its domains according to SEMRush: 362 domain names target him, compared to 62 for Juppé, 45 and 26 each for Fillon and NKM, respectively.

Sarkozy.fr may have also benefited from its generic domain name, while all other candidates opted for a domain name that includes the date 2017.  It may also be possible that these links were generated  by campaigns critics and foes who wanted to prevent Sarkozy’s return to the Elysée.  A more in depth analysis of those sites could help us determine that.  As of now, Juppé seems to have benefited from a campaign that lasted longer than Fillon’s. The longest a site is up, the most chances it has to get articles and links.

domains right wing primaire

Link comparison by candidate and domain

number of links primary

Logically, since the site Sarkozy.fr has more domains it comes before everyone else in amount of links. The sites that have produced the most links to each candidate appear to be either fan sites (see Jean Claude Lenoir for Fillon for example), or links from older sites such as nk-m.fr, nkmparis.fr (Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet), in order  to manage the problem of online lifespan …

Media links to candidate sites

By selecting high authority websites, one can see the media’s active links to the candidate sites, which also means understanding how medias help the candidates, either consciously or unconsciously, by sending them quality  SEO “juice”.

right wing primary links

In this regard, Le Figaro is generous to Fillon, Juppé, Sarkozy and Macron, while the JDD seems to prefer NKM and Juppé. Le Monde does not offer any links to these sites. Libération solely links with Fillon. It might be interesting to employ this same analysis with the left-wing candidates: this is why we have started to follow Macron !

Conclusion

In terms of links, Sarkozy’s advantage did not really materialized as the site had not been fully SEO optimized.  Much like the other primary candidates, they all ranked solely on their names, and missed the benefit of employing generic expressions that would have helped them to recruit additional party members or voters.

A Solution?

A long term SEO strategy would have helped secure key phrases and links. For example, for NKM, ranking on a keyword such as “freelance work” , by producing content, (articles and studies) and communicating about it, would have allowed her to convince potential voters for coming elections.

Have you spotted any sites that contain an interesting link profile? Let us know !

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