Most Internet users would be hard-pressed to explain how search works. How does your website appear – or not appear – in a search query? It’s not magic. Each search engine has a specific way it finds and orders searches. However, search is not perfectly equitable. You can’t just stick your website up and assume that Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask Jeeves, and all the other search engines will maximize your chances to be found as easily as a big corporation. They won’t.
Because search is so important to businesses in the private sector, a whole industry has emerged to help companies optimize their search and boost their chances that customers will find them first before their competitors. These consultants promote search optimization techniques that can greatly enhance an organization’s prospects for being found in people’s search queries. This report, among other things, lays out 15 ways political organizations and campaigns can take advantage of these techniques too.
Paid search advertising has attracted even more attention in the private sector. This form of interactive advertising – often just text phrases that appear around the search queries – is a booming business with high growth rates. To put this in context, the search company Google sold more than $6 billion in ads in 2005, nearly double what it sold the previous year. This is more advertising than was sold by any newspaper chain, magazine publisher or television network. This year Google is expected to have advertising revenue of $9.5 billion. This would place it fourth among American media conglomerates in total ad sales after Viacom, the News Corporation and Disney, but ahead of NBC and Time Warner. And Google is not even generally considered a media company.
A large and ever-growing portion of the private sector’s advertising dollars is being shifted from traditional media outlets to Internet paid search for the simple reason that this form of advertising is an extremely efficient, cost-effective way to reach individuals. It is advertising that reaches people at the exact time that they are looking for related information – not while on a couch trying to enjoy a movie. When a person is actively searching for information on new cars, then ads appear for car dealers and manufacturers. The kicker is that those who advertise only pay for the ads that individuals click through, meaning you only pay for people who appear genuinely interested in what you offer.
Political organizations and political campaigns have only just begun to exploit the paid search techniques that companies and small businesses already use. There is vast potential here to pioneer political ads that connect with voters searching on issues, or that counter the statements of your opponents, or that quickly get your side of the story out during crises or viral smear campaigns.
This report is a starting point for politicos and campaign organizations who want to get up to speed on search and paid search. We start with the basics to get everyone on the same page. For those who know the basics, you can skip to the core section on 15 steps even savvy web users would be well advised to follow. We end with some thoughts on how to better use paid search. The author is Arve Overland, an experienced practitioner from the private sector who runs his own interactive advertising agency on the west coast. He’s generously passing on his knowledge for all those in progressive politics to use.
