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If you’re a candidate for any public office, one of your first steps should be registering a domain name that consists of your first name and last name – nothing more, and nothing less.

The reasoning is simple: when voters first get their ballots and they see an unfamiliar name, they’ll turn to Google before they try to remember what they saw on the mail piece they threw out three weeks ago. If you’re a candidate or any sort of public figure, then, it’s important that the information you’ve crafted be the first info they see on the web and equally important that those supporting your opponent can’t use your own name against you.

HD-1 Rep. Jeanne Labuda has a fairly unique name and as a result her campaign website, jeannelabuda.com, has dominated the Google search for her name. That’s a pretty good URL for Labuda to have: it’s literally as easy to remember as her name, and it’s not so long or obscure – think of something to the tune of Labuda4HD1Rep.com –  that it would look out of place on mail or yard signs.

The problem with jeannelabuda.com, however, is that Jeanne Labuda no longer owns it. She used to own it, as evidenced by her campaign filings with the Secretary of State’s Office. Sometime between now and last October, however, Labuda (or whoever was managing Labuda’s website) forgot to renew their domain registration. Now, jeannelabuda.com is a headache-inducing blend of green, red, and white hocking LASIK eye surgery in Japanese. The first thing voters will click on when the Google search Jeanne Labuda, then, is a spammy-landing page that has nothing to do with their representative.

All things considered, this isn’t the end of the world for Labuda. She’s re-located her campaign website to jeannelabudaco.com – it’s not nearly as good as her original URL, but at least her name is still in there somewhere.

Still, this is one of those things that Labuda should never have let happen. Any yard signs or campaign literature that had her old domain on it are now useless, not to mention that Labuda’s website is nowhere near the first (or tenth) page of a Google search for her name. Juxtapose that with primary opponent Corrie Houck, who controls the first page of a search for her name, and it’s clear that Labuda should’ve just paid the 10 or 15 bucks to keep her url. Having a workable, searchable domain name is one of those things that doesn’t give your campaign any perceivable edge but really hurts when you neglect it.

Of course, it’s a simple, easily avoidable mistake like this that really showcases why Houck is challenging Labuda in the first place. If Labuda can’t even organize her campaign such that her domain name doesn’t lapse, the argument goes, she may be equally likely to make similar mistakes throughout 2012. The difference is that those mistakes matter; if Labuda hasn’t crafted a campaign organization now, who’s to say she’ll have one by the time she actually needs to defend her seat?