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Tag Archives: General Election

Labour is Missing Out in The Search Engines

09 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics, General Election, Labour Party, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Blogging, British Politics, General Election, Labour Party, Politics, Search engines, SEO, Social Media, Social Networking, The Labour Party

UK Labour Needs To Use More Search Engine Optimisation Skills

labour-summer-of-smears-aav

Labour Summer of Smears – Another Angry Voice. See link at end of article

Newspapers are losing sales and TV channels are losing credibility (not fast enough though, it has to be said).
So where do most voters turn to now when they want to find out about a political party?

They go online.

They may go to Facebook and Twitter, maybe Instagram too. But many do not.
They simply put a search term into Google (or occasionally Bing) and look at the results that turn up.

But the Labour Party is missing out in the search engines.

When I search Google for ‘Labour Policies‘, I get the Labour Party ‘Where we stand’, followed by ‘Manifesto’.
That’s good.
But, underneath those and still, on the Google front page, I then find:

  • “Investors fear Labour policies ahead of the election” – Financial times
  • “What Labour and Conservative policies really mean for immigration” – The Times
  • “What Jeremy Corbyn’s tax plan means for you and what you’ll pay” – The Telegraph

And you can imagine the anti-Labour spin in those above three articles alone…

Next I get the Google ‘question box’ with:
“What does the Labour party believe in?”
And a link going to a Wikipedia article by the Australian Labor Party!
Give me strength! 🙄

Google Page 2:

  • “Labour Party latest news, pictures, policies and campaigns …” – The Daily Express…
  • “What is Labour’s Brexit plan?” – BBC News asks its usual question even though it knows the answer full well.

Okay, then there’s an article from the Guardian (?) and one from Labour List.
We also get: “Labour for a Green New Deal—Policy” – but the page hasn’t been updated since conference…

And that’s it for anything really positive about Labour Policy and those links are between other non-positive links. And we are at the end of the 2nd page.

Most people don’t search any further than that…

Now at this point, some may say “well what can you expect – search engines are biased”.

And I would say, Wake up!

Search engines are biased towards making money. That means selling advertising spots.
They are not going to be able to do that if their searches are seen to be skewed. Because if that is the case, people won’t use them and advertisers will go elsewhere.

(I’m not saying that there are no problems with the large search engines – there obviously are. But that would take a whole other article and we need to put that aside and get some positive posts on Labour UK up the top of the search engines now!).

Now, I’m old school SEO (search engine optimisation). I learned SEO in the late 90s and carried on learning and using it in the noughties.

I know how to get a post to the top of the search engines using keywords, links and trusted sites.

But I haven’t the up-to-date knowledge, the time (and certainly not the money) to learn how to counter bot impressions on such a large scale as employed by some political parties.

I also do not have access to making headway on ‘trusted sites’ in the political category – Large print newspapers, well-known magazines, etc.

But I’m sure that there must be a whole load of talented people in the Labour Party who could work on this.

So this is a plea:

PLEASE, to help UK Labour:

If you haven’t got one already, set up a blog (wordpress.com would be a good start, or blogger, or open a free Medium account)

  • Start writing positive articles on UK Labour using great keywords and keep on doing so.
  • Share all your positive posts all over social media.
  • Share links with other UK Labour writers and share their posts too.
  • Comment on any Labour positive post.
  • Share articles from Labour-positive Newspapers and write about them too.

This is not about brilliant writing – SEO isn’t about that (sadly).
It’s just about getting good, hopeful, positive, voteable articles about UK Labour all over the front pages of the search engines.

And here’s another plea:

If you are up-to-date on SEO and have the resources to help.
Please get in touch with Labour or Momentum and offer your services.

This is from me. I’m in no way speaking for UK Labour or Momentum, but I’m pretty sure they’d appreciate the offer.

Labour is Missing Out in the Search Engines. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
So please do what you can to change this quickly!

PS:
The Image used at the beginning of this post is from:
How many of these Labour Party policies did you actually hear about this summer?

Things are even worse now in the run up to the 12th December 2019 General Election.

The article, by Another Angry Voice, is correct and excellent, but I’m sure that the writer would prefer not to have to write a similar one after December this year.

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Why I Will Be Voting Labour

08 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

British Politics, General Election, Socialism

People who read the first posts on this blog will be wondering where all of my thoughts on writing have gone. Well, they will be coming back soon. But for now there is something that I am finding to be much more pressing to write about and that is Politics, and British Politics in particular at this point in time.

And the reason why I feel this way is because I am thinking about the future for my children. However successful I am (or perhaps am not) at writing, it will make no difference if my children grow up into an uncaring World.

I don’t want them to live in fear of losing a job or being sick and having nowhere to go for help. I don’t want them to grow up thinking that the only thing that matters is money: not hard work; not being a caring person; not even being a creative and thoughtful person; but being someone who is valued by society by the amount of money they can amass.

I want my children to grow up feeling that they matter, whether they are rich or poor; healthy or disabled. And I don’t want them thinking that there is no point in caring: that only the wealthy 1% matter and that there is nothing they can do about it.

And that is why I am doing everything I can to ensure that the next UK Government will be a Labour one.

I have been a Socialist since even before I was old enough to vote. Over the years I have felt marginalised by all the leading political parties. I was just old enough to vote when Blair came to power, but I hadn’t voted for him. To me, he was not a Socialist; he was a Centrist with Tory leanings. And for a long time I felt disenfranchised because no one I could vote for in my political ward spoke for the values I held dear.

So what has changed? Why will I be voting Labour in the upcoming General Election?

Because to ignore what is happening to our society would be a crime. All over the World, it is the small percentage of wealthy people who hold the power. These people are rapidly skimming off our money to fill their own pockets. In Britain, our Welfare State is being decimated by so-called ‘austerity reforms; our NHS is being sold off into private hands under the guise of ‘reorganisation’; and our Education system is being taken over by money-making ‘enterprises’.

To be unemployed or sick is something to be dreaded unless you are very rich, because, even if you think you are just getting by now, there will come a time when you discover that all help has run out.

Ed Miliband’s Labour Party is not perfect. But it is the best option we have right now and, I truly believe that a strongly-supported Labour Government will be able to bring in changes that will set us on the way to being a more caring society.

Even though I consider myself to the left of the current Labour Party, I still feel that my vote for them counts. And it is the only vote that will get us anywhere near to kicking this current uncaring government to the sidelines.

So, there will most likely be a few more political writings on this blog leading up to the General Election, and probably afterwards too. But if you feel as I do about the current state of British Society and you want a better future for your children like I do, I’m sure you’ll understand.

Labour’s Dilemma: How To Appeal To Enough Voters To Gain Political Victory

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Silvi Veale in British Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

British Politics, General Election, Labour Party, Politics

The Labour Party appears to have a dilemma with who they appeal to, and on what platforms it is best to appeal in order to win the upcoming General Election.

The Tories assume they have the majority of ‘the grey vote’ and Labour appear to be taking them at their word.

So Labour are going after the younger person’s vote.

Will this work?

On the one hand, appealing to Tory-voting pensioners would probably be a waste of time as it would fall on deaf ears.

But on the other hand, many younger people are refusing to vote, as they feel that not only have they been marginalised by all parties, but that all MPs are sleazebags and don’t deserve their vote.

Appealing to either of these groups is going to take a real onslaught just to get the attention of closed minds, and then the likelihood of persuasion is low.

And time is running out.

Labour needs to convince hearts and minds NOW and continue to add more hearts and minds to the list right up to and beyond the impending General Election.

So, as well as going all out to convince new voters and fight off the conditioning of Tory voters, they need to be concentrating on the middle ground. And by that I don’t mean middle classes alone, or middle-aged voters alone (although these groups certainly come into it), but those voters who feel ‘in the middle’ of the political debates: those who can see good bits from both sides of the political argument.

It is voters like these that Blair persuaded back in the 90s, and kept on persuading for a relatively long time.

These are people who value The NHS and Education; who want the best for their children and grandchildren; who care about the unemployed and homeless, but are not among their number. People who, at the moment, feel reasonably secure, but are getting a sinking feeling that they could be next to feel the burden of austerity measures.

In the 90s, after years of a left-of-centre Labour finding themselves in the political wilderness under Neil Kinnock, new leader Tony Blair took a more centrist approach to help New Labour win the General Election. There were, quite rightly, strong misgivings from the left, but in 1997, most left-of-centre (and even centrist) voters, many having lived through Thatcher’s years of ideological ‘reasoning’, knew that there must be change. So, despite misgivings from both sides of the political field, Blair’s centrist approach guaranteed him a landslide victory. He even had a significant proportion of the media on his side – previously unheard of for the Labour Party – and this helped him gain victory.

But Blair’s approach was flawed. Not only did it rely upon courting big business to an unreasonable scale, but when the ‘WMD report’ emerged and Blair supported the findings, it also exposed Blair’s political inadequacies. The latter left New Labour badly tainted and Labour as a whole, deeply mistrusted.

Now Labour is in the same boat as they were before Blair, and they have Blair’s legacy as a further pit to climb out of.

Labour is proposing policies that would work and their campaign for saving the NHS has a majority of the electorate on their side. But they have a leader who is vilified and scorned in the media. It is like history from the Kinnock Labour years is repeating itself all over again.

So what can Labour do in the short time they have left to win hearts and minds?

Miliband will never be a Blair, and more power to him. But by the same token, he is not liked in the media. Like Brown before him, he is ridiculed in ways which make him appear an embarrassment as a leader.

Is that a problem? Surely people will see through the ridicule and vote for policies they feel are better for them, and by extension for their communities?

Well that depends on the thought processes of the electorate and how much they are affected by the issues, or by the facade.  And sadly I think that we still have a long way to go before the facade does not hold sway.

One good thing about all this is that Tory leader, Cameron, is not being projected at his best either.  And the scandal about rich Tory backers and Tory MPs’ links with wealthy businesses interests is definitely doing him no favours right now.

So the balance between ridicule on one side and corruption on the other appears to be holding out…at the moment.

It is now that Labour needs to go on the onslaught. While appealing to new voters, they also need to be emphasising the corruption infiltrating this Tory Government and how it is affecting ALL OF US.  Not just the poor or the unemployed, because many voters will still have the attitude that ‘we would never get like that’. Labour needs to be spelling out to all of us that any of us could be the next unemployed; that any of us could be the next long-term sick, or need the services of the NHS; that any of us could have children or grandchildren joining the unemployed, through no fault of their own; and that any of us could be put into the position where we lose our homes.

Blair used the politics of ‘charisma’. He courted business and he wooed the electorate. With a hostile media, Miliband can’t do this. But that doesn’t have to be an insurmountable problem.

People are fearful. They feel that the Government is out of their control and there is little they can do about it.

Labour needs to find a way to (dare I say it?) use that fear and feelings of lack of control. And at the same time, it needs to show that people matter: that their lives are important; that their health and their well being comes above the needs of Capital; and to show them they can make a positive difference to their and their families’ futures by voting Labour.

It will be a hard struggle, but Miliband can lead Labour to victory at the polls.
If he and Labour as a whole, get their priorities right.

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