As a SEO, if a candidate really wants my vote in the 2008 US Presidential Election, Google's endorsement will help win me over.  I want to see a 2008 US Presidential hopeful own a major policy related keyword -- aka "issue" -- by ranking in the top 10 results.

I reckon that "health care" (notice it is two words), "immigration," "environment," and "Iraq" are good key words, since they are issues that are well discussed topics on the web, hotly contested -- thus, likely to fuel heated debates on-line -- and affect the country.

Although some would argue that such a venture distracts candidates from traditional campaigning, I feel that this is a wonderful idea since achieving high rankings requires hard work.  Further, since Google treats links as editorial votes of the Internet, a candidate that wins Google's vote likely has won the vote -- or at least attention, since links don't have to represent support -- of many others on the web.

In fact, I think that Google and many Internet surfers are demanding enough to force campaigns to really do their homework and reach out to others.  If campaigns try to research, publish quality content, and spark substantive debate in the on-line community (via linkbait perhaps), hopefully they'll not only try to reach out to general site owners but to hard to earn links from authoritative sites like the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for health care related issues. 

The fact that it typically takes awhile to climb to the top 10 page in Google, especially for competitive terms like I've listed, is also promising, since campaigns will have to sustain a quality discussion over a long period of time.

Yes, I am painfully aware that there are many nefarious ways -- like spamming and creating trash pages that only the search engines see -- that site owners employ to achieve high rankings.  Hopefully, the presidential hopefuls and their staff members will not resort to such tactics, since the tech savvy will likely cry foul if this occurs.  Further, that'll make excellent fodder for the news media. 

However, I'm also interested to see how campaigns will try to counteract black hat tactics launched against them by their competitors.  Remember the political Google bombs for "miserable failure" against George W. Bush and "waffles" for John Kerry during the 2004 Presidential Election?  Well, Google has defused the potency of this tactic.  Further, in my view, politics on-line is similar to politics in the real world; politicians sling mud and employ less than savory campaign tactics in both venues.  Talented politicians know how to manage their reputations, and if one wants to win Google's vote, his or her staff better know how to effectively respond.

So, will presidential candidates want to win Google's vote for health care, immigration, environment, and Iraq?