seo: beyond the obvious new tips & best practices gatehouse news & interactive division

SEO: BEYOND THE OBVIOUS NEW TIPS & BEST PRACTICES

GATEHOUSE NEWS & INTERACTIVE DIVISION

Agenda

New SEO tips and best practices• Video• Stories• Linking• Social media• BlogsSEO behind the scenesSEO best practices review• Search engines• Stories• Photos

New SEO tips and best practices

Video

• Title• Summary • Key words• Google only reads text

New SEO tips and best practices

Video

New SEO tips and best practices

Top video for March 12 in all of Gatehouse

• Keywords in headline, summary

New SEO tips and best practices

Top video for February in all of Gatehouse

• Keywords in headline, summary

New SEO tips and best practices

Stories

• Length: Google lends longer stories more “authority”• Authority is important on how Google ranks stories• Adds context• More chances for keyword frequency

New SEO tips and best practices

Stories• Topics pages: Chicago Tribune – “Rev. Jesse Jackson” link goes to

page devoted to him, with a short bio and links to other stories they have done

New SEO tips and best practices

Stories• Topics pages: New York Times

New SEO tips and best practices

Stories• Topics pages: Patriot Ledger – gathered all their coverage of a

murder suspect onto a story page with links

New SEO tips and best practices

Stories• Topics pages: Patriot Ledger – they set a search term in their site

search and link to the search results page

New SEO tips and best practices

Stories• In-story linking to

previous stories: CNN

New SEO tips and best practices

Stories• In-story linking to previous

stories: Somerville Journal

New SEO tips and best practices

Stories• In-story linking: Patch

New SEO tips and best practices

Social mediaFacebook & Twitter help boost search

• Google and Bing confirmed that referrals from Facebook and Twitter help a website rank higher in search results.

• Facebook & Twitter now have “authority,” which is important for page rank.

New SEO tips and best practices

BlogsHelp your new bloggers with SEO

• Why pay attention to SEO? Helps draw readers to your blog.

• Isn’t it enough that they are blogging? Definitely, but it’s in their best interest to help them. Once you start learning that people are reading your blog, you’re more likely to blog frequently and stick with it.

• Community blogger tip sheet: Available on GHNS under Inner Circle Collateral includes basic SEO tips. Be sure to give your blogger a copy.

SEO Behind the scenes

Tech elements that boost SEO

• Content Management System: Zope changes now identify originating sites

SEO Best practices review

How do search engines work?

• How (and if) a story shows up in a Google search is based on an algorithm (or sequence of instructions) that analyzes certain elements on a web page against those same elements on other web pages

• The result of that complex comparison is how high a particular web page ranks in a Google search result.

SEO Best practices review

How do search engines work?

SEO Best practices review

How do search engines work?

Stories• Headlines • Ledes• Keywords throughout• Full names• Linking

SEO Best practices review

SEO Best practices review

USA Today story at the top of Google search results

Keywords in headline, lead, in-story links, keywords in photo caption

SEO Best practices review

SEO Best practices review

•Chicago Tribune: Keywords in headline.

•Links to previous stories.

•Keywords in lede, with in-story links to topics pages.

SEO Best practices review

Making your headlines stronger for SEO

Initial headline: 20 dead, 100 injured, hundreds of houses damagedSEO headline: [Town name, state] tornado: 20 dead, 100 injured

Initial headline: Propane tank stolenSEO headline: Guns, knife, propane tank stolen from [town name] home

Initial headline: [Last name only] winsSEO headline: [First name, Last name] wins I-500 Snowmobile Race in [town

name]

Initial headline: [High school name] interviewing 11 coachesSEO headline: [Town name] [High school name] high school interviewing 11

football coaches

SEO Best practices review

How do search engines work?

Photos• File name • Caption• Keywords throughout• Full names

SEO Best practices review

SEO Best practices review

Keywords, full names, location

The takeaways

• Video• Keywords in headline, summary

• Stories• Longer stories add context, more chances for keywords• In-story linking to previous stories, topics pages boost SEO

• Social media• Links from our Facebook pages and Twitter help SEO

• Blogs• Share SEO best practices with your community bloggers

Your questions, answered

Jean Hodges, jhodges@gatehousemedia.comSarah Corbitt, scorbitt@gatehousemedia.comDon Hommes, dhommes@corp.gatehousemedia.com

SEO: BEYOND THE OBVIOUS NEW TIPS & BEST PRACTICES

GATEHOUSE NEWS & INTERACTIVE DIVISION