Campaign 2020 is here and it’s so early. But we love it right?

The second round of the Democratic Party presidential debates are coming up tonight. For my first post back at 720 Strategies, I’m going to do an objective analysis of all 20 candidate websites. And, not surprisingly, the sites are overwhelmingly powered by WordPress, the leading open source content management system.

For sake of fairness, it’s driven by search engine optimization (SEO) metrics using SEMrush for overall site assessment and PageSpeed Insights to measure download speeds.

The metrics I’m looking at through these tools are:

Avg. visit length: Length of time people are on the website.

Length of time people are on the website. Unique visitors: Total unique visitors to the website in the last month.

Total unique visitors to the website in the last month. Pages/visit: Number of pages visitors view per visit.

Number of pages visitors view per visit. Bounce rate: Percentage of people who view only one page.

Percentage of people who view only one page. Organic keywords: Number of keywords for which the website ranks.

Number of keywords for which the website ranks. Organic traffic: Number of visits to site from search in the last month.

Number of visits to site from search in the last month. Branded traffic: Number of visits to site searching specifically for the candidate.

Number of visits to site searching specifically for the candidate. Non-branded traffic: Number of visits to site searching for anything other than the candidate’s name.

Number of visits to site searching for anything other than the candidate’s name. Backlinks: Number of links on the Internet back to the website.

Number of links on the Internet back to the website. Referring domains: Number of unique websites linking back to the website.

Number of unique websites linking back to the website. Indexed pages: Total number of website pages in Google’s index.

Total number of website pages in Google’s index. Authority score: Strength and popularity of the domain according to SEMrush.

Strength and popularity of the domain according to SEMrush. PageSpeed mobile: Mobile download speed score according to Google.

Mobile download speed score according to Google. PageSpeed desktop: Desktop download speed score according to Google.

Before you dig into the details of this piece, the Council on Foreign Relations posted something great about the candidates that you should check out … And away we go with the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary candidate websites.