Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » seo

#jpod: SEO success stories – the LA Times on its traffic hike

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:55:18 +0000

The Los Angeles Times is the only major US newspaper to have a website that is increasing in traffic year-on-year, according to the site’s senior editor.

In this podcast Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to Jimmy Orr, managing editor of the LATimes.com about how appointing SEO chief Amy Hubbard has led the site to record traffic. As well as discussing Hubbard’s day-to-day role, Orr offers his advice on SEO strategy and outlines his optimism for the news industry.

We also hear from SEO expert David Amerland on how the different strategies of the Guardian and the Mail Online have resulted in traffic success and how other news organisations have struggled to move from print to the online world.

This podcast is the second in a two-part series on headline writing and SEO.

You can find a guide on how to get to grips with SEO as a journalist, how to write great headlines the work for SEO and more from David Amerland on the state of the UK newspaper industry.

You can sign up to our iTunes podcast feed for future audio.Similar Posts:

#jpod: Does SEO kill the carefully crafted, clever headline?

Sarah Marshall — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:53:26 +0000

For some time within the industry there has been an often lively debate about the impact of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) on online news. Just recently the Los Angeles Times took on a new SEO chief, whose job it is to build newspaper headlines fit for the internet, by ensuring they’re web-friendly and searchable.

The new role has been credited with contributing to a 65 per cent rise in traffic from search and a 41 per cent jump in traffic from Google compared to this time last year, according to a report by the Nieman Journalism Lab.

So does SEO’s demand for keywords really take the art out of headline writing?

Journalism.co.uk’s technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to SEO consultant Malcolm Coles and Duane Forrester, senior product manager at Bing to find out more.

Similar Posts:

Point to Point: Why SEO shouldn’t get the blame for boring headlines

Sarah Marshall — Tue, 17 May 2011 09:54:39 +0000

The Point to Point blog has an excellent article about how witty headlines and SEO can go hand-in-hand. Dominic Litten explains how many news sites have the ability to put the SEO-friendly headline in a separate field to the witty headline.

For many journalists, SEO = headline + keyword stuffing. It’s all they know. However, if journalists really want to know and understand how SEO can help them and their publications they should worry a lot less about the importance of headlines and focus on their company’s sitemaps, site architecture, endless duplicate content, internal linking and the like.

Litten goes on to say:

We get the love for your headlines, we’re just over it. SEO didn’t kill the cute headline, the click did. The sheer volume of content, growing exponentially and shared on social media, rendered the witty and non-descriptive headline useless. We consume media so radically differently than we once did, so why are some journalists clinging to out-dated best practices?

The full article is at this link.Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – SEO setup advice

Rachel McAthy — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 09:50:45 +0000

For some top tips on how to establish a successful SEO setup beyond editorial efforts check out this list on the news:rewired website from Frank Gosch, global SEO lead at Microsoft for MSN, looking at the six major areas that every site should work on in order to provide the best search performance. Tipster: Rachel McAthy.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

Media Notes: Is journalism becoming a popularity contest?

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:57:54 +0000

The battle to increase audiences is hardly a new challenge facing the media environment. Whether print readers, radio listeners or television viewers, it has generally been a case of the more the merrier.

In the world of online journalism, where there is instant access to page view and retweet counters, the ‘success’ of a story has perhaps come to be defined by these metrics. Howard Kurtz, columnist for the Washington Post, has an interesting post on the site this morning discussing the potential impact of this environment on the work of online journalists and the resulting balancing act between appealing to the search engine and maintaining a quality brand.

Naturally, those who grew up as analog reporters wonder: Is journalism becoming a popularity contest? Does this mean pieces about celebrity sex tapes will take precedence over corruption in Afghanistan? Why pay for expensive foreign bureaux if they’re not generating enough clicks?

Doesn’t all this amount to pandering?

Potentially, sure. But news organizations such as the Post and the Times have brands to protect. They can’t simply abandon serious news in favor of the latest wardrobe malfunction without alienating some of their longtime readers. What they gain in short-term hits would cost them in long-term reputation.

See his full post here…Similar Posts:

OJR: How nationally-owned local publishers can get ahead

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:21:58 +0000

The challenges facing locally and nationally owned publications are the subject of a post on the Online Journalism Review website by Robert Niles, who follows up on a previous post in which he questions the future of AOL’s hyperlocal start-up Patch.com and other national chains.

Niles ha previously claimed that locally-owned publications today have cost advantages which outweigh the “economies of scale” of national chains of local publishers. But pushed by a reader to come up with advantages for national chains which could make them more profitable, he puts forward two ideas as a starting point for further debate, shown in summary below.

National training

A smart, focused national training program could help reduce the time it takes a local editor to produce an engaging website. Local website publishers who don’t have access to such training will take longer to get up to speed.

Search engine optimization

A national chain can give its local publishers an advantage by arranging for aggressive cross-linking among its sites. That creates a potentially huge number of inbound links, helping push the chain’s sites ahead of its local competitors. In addition, by building a national brand for local news, the chain might be able to elicit more in-bound links to its sites from outside the network.

See his full post here…Similar Posts:

Daily Mail hides SEO job ad in search crawler file

Joel Gunter — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:56:35 +0000

It’s possible that SEO types have a sense of humour. Evidence comes courtesy of the Daily Mail, which has hidden a job advert for an SEO manager inside a file that should only really be read by search engine crawlers.

The job ad was discovered by eagle-eyed SEO man Malcolm Coles in a robot.txt file, which blocks the crawlers from indexing certain parts of the site.

Disallow: /home/ireland/
Disallow: /home/scotland/

# August 12th, MailOnline are looking for a talented SEO Manager so if you found this then you’re the kind of techie we need!
# Send your CV to holly dot ward at mailonline dot co dot uk

# Begin standard rules
# Apply rules to all user agents updated 08/06/08
ACAP-crawler: *

Very clever. People who don’t read these kind of things need not apply, obviously.Similar Posts:

#followjourn: @christiandunn – Christian Dunn/freelance

Joel Gunter — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:37:44 +0000

#followjourn: @christiandunn

Who? Christian Dunn, former digital editor at NWN Media and now freelance journalist, SEO consultant, web site manager, mutli-media producer, and, er, geo-engineering PhD student.

Where? Christian publishes a blog on Science, web, SEO and journalism. He also has a Flickr page. Christian wrote a two part feature for Journalism.co.uk in 2008 on writing for the web: Part 1 / Part 2.

On Twitter: @christiandunn

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.Similar Posts:

Google News founder says aggregator has responsibility to protect hard news

Laura Oliver — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:39:57 +0000

Krishna Bharat, founder of Google News, told an industry conference last week that it was the search giant’s “editorial responsibility” to protect hard news’ place in a more personalised news agenda.

I think people care about what other people are interested in, most importantly in their social circle (…) but beyond that the world at large. I think there is an influential, intellectual component to our audience that cares very much about getting the hard news of the day. I don’t think there is a risk of us personalising so much that we keep the hard news out the picture. We have an editorial responsibility not to do that.

Chris Horrie from the University of Winchester’s journalism school was at the the IJ-7 ‘Innovation Journalism’ conference at Stanford University last week and grabbed Bharat for a quick interview afterwards, in which the head of Google News gave his advice to journalists on writing for the web and search engines:

Similar Posts:

NYT: Will an obsession with SEO kill off the clever headline?

Joel Gunter — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:36:25 +0000

Is search engine optimisation ringing the death knell for the poetry of headline writing? Successful web headlines are, according to New York Times blogger David Carr, a “long way from the poetics of the best of print headlines”. But, he goes on to argue, there is a middle ground between the witty headline aimed at a thinking brain and the information stuffed headline aimed at a processing algorithm. And while Carr’s own headline – “Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Headline” – does not quite stand up in the information delivery stakes, it does score pretty high on both wit and SEO.

Don’t know who Taylor Momsen is? Neither do I, beyond that she is the mean one on “Gossip Girl.” But Facebook knows her well, Twitter loves her, and she and Google have been hooking up, like, forever.

One more fact about Ms. Momsen: she has nothing to do with this column, let alone the headline. But her very name is a prized key word online — just the thing to push my column to the top of Google rankings.

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – understanding social search

Judith Townend — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:00:40 +0000

Social Media today shares five articles on social search to help you get to grips with SEO and its relationship with social media at this link. Tipster: Judith Townend.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

Econsultancy: A journalist’s guide to SEO

Judith Townend — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:15:38 +0000

SEO news tips by Econsultancy blogger and director of search at SEOptimise Kevin Gibbons: “As long as it’s done well, SEO will not make your articles unreadable,” he says.

Journalist’s guide to SEO at this link…
Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – optimising your website for Google News

Laura Oliver — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:10:52 +0000

SEO: Google News has released a series of tips and video advice on optimising your website for Google News. The video at this link helps explain how the aggregator works and how to get your content found. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – finding search terms for your site

Laura Oliver — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:12:46 +0000

Search: If you’re setting up a new site, use Google’s AdWords Keywords tool to find out more about what search terms people use. They might not be the ones you think relating to your topic area, so will help you to decide the most appropriate. Tipster: Laura Oliver.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

OJR: Search engine optimisation tips for online news start-ups

Laura Oliver — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:56:23 +0000

Round-up of Danny Sullivan’s, editor of Search Engine Land, tips for new online news organisations on SEO. Including: creating standing pages for popular ongoing stories and issues; and discovering relevant search terms and keywords linking to your site.

Full list at this link…Similar Posts: