May 23, 2017 02:15 PM UTC

George Brauchler Gets Schooled on SEO

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• by: Colorado Pols

For ordinary voters looking for more information about a candidate for office they hear about through word of mouth or see on the news, more often than not the first stop is Google. That’s one of the reasons why smart campaigns pay to make sure their content comes up at the top of search engines, as well as design their sites to be search-engine optimized (SEO). There is a whole industry of companies who specialize in this fine art.

Unfortunately, if you Google GOP gubernatorial candidate George Brauchler’s name, his campaign website is nowhere to be found:

There are a couple of news stories about Brauchler running, and of course Brauchler’s infamous Twitter account–but not Brauchler’s own website. That’s a sure sign that nobody on his team has made it a priority. And trying some other search term combinations, it might not just be his campaign’s incompetence:

That’s right–just about every iteration of a search for George Brauchler brings up advertisements for Brauchler’s opponents Doug Robinson and Victor Mitchell! Unlike Brauchler, these candidates have not been idle in getting their web presences up to snuff–and what’s more, they’ve turned Google into an offensive weapon against Brauchler by diverting searches for his name to their own websites.

It just goes to show you how many small variables go into launching a campaign. And how quickly resources can be turned against you if you don’t manage them properly. A small investment by Brauchler in Google Adwords and a better-designed website could have stopped this problem before it started.

And given how many people are going to try to learn about Brauchler this way, make no mistake: it’s a real problem.