The official website of Barack Obama, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, should be optimized, it has been claimed.

Writing on the ClickZ network, Kate Kaye observes that a number of key optimization techniques are being overlooked by Mr Obama’s development team.

One such method is the inclusion of unique title text on a given page, which Ms Kaye asserts is not done on some pages of BarackObama.com even when the content on the page is highly relevant to the search term entered.

She also notes the importance of providing search engines with enough text content to allow a page to be efficiently indexed.

But again BarackObama.com is failing to meet this requirement, Ms Kaye adds, which could harm the ranking of its main page.

"The homepage features a giant image and lacks sufficient text, so as far as search crawlers are concerned, the page may as well be blank," she states.

Writing on his blog The Buzz Saw, Bill Balderaz of search engine optimisation firm Webbed Marketing recently pointed out that much of the online content relating to the presidential nominees is not produced by their campaign teams.

Instead, a significant proportion is currently being produced through social media sites, he suggested.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.