SEO and politics may not seem like the best of friends, but Greek political party has been using the power of the Internet, and some serious SEO skills, to get their message out and start to be a legitimate force on the political landscape. Since Greece fell victim to some extreme economic problems, a number of grassroots political movements began to spring up, but the Democratic Left is the party that is making the biggest impact online. The man behind the magic is George Palamarizis.
He took the Democratic Left from a party that was barely known by even a small portion of the Greek population to one that is enjoying actual clout now. While other parties were hunkered down bemoaning the crisis or out demonstrating, the Democratic Left was amping up an SEO fueled movement online. Having very little money and almost no access to any mainstream media coverage, the party recently placed second in opinion polls and have built a follower base from the disaffected and previously uninvolved voters to become a major player.
They freely admit that without having been able to optimize their message to not just get it on the Internet but get it up the SERP rankings quickly where people would see it, the movement may have never lasted to launch the party as it has. While SEOs have certainly played a behind the scenes role in developing web campaigns for politicians before, none has likely ever been this successful in such a short period of time without massive funding and a huge staff. It goes to show what the right SEOs can do with from scratch even against the big boys on the block.
