Online Publisher Blog:

Search Engine Optimisation

Driving traffic to a website is something of an art, wrapped up as quasi-science, known as Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO.

SEO is all about:
- researching search results for your site and your competitors' sites
- developing a list of 'keywords' to use in your content to drive traffic
- testing the effectiveness of keywords
- ensuring that your news content is picked up by news aggregators
- developing a programme of gaining 'referrals' to increase the number of in-bound links
- monitoring the effect of your ongoing SEO programme and continually researching search sites

Google is the primary tool for research:
Allintitle: 'keyword' - looks for the keyword in titles
Allintext: 'keyword' - looks for keyword in body text
site: 'anydomain' - looks for the domain in any web pages
link: 'anydomain' - looks for referrals (backlinks) to the domain

Using these search options you can gather a lot of information about your own and competitor sites.

Keywords are those words that will be used most often by readers trying to find your site, or trying to find content relevant to your site. Most are logical and predictable, others can be more obtuse. You can test them using Google (as above) or by downloading keyword checking applications. More complex analysis of SEO activity can be done using tools from vendors like WebTrends or the free tool Google Analytics.

Meta Tags and Image Alt Tags are invisible to the reader but appear in the source code of a page. These too should reflect the keywords.

You can view the source code of any page by clicking 'view' and then clicking 'page source' on your browser.

News Aggregation sites (e.g. Google News, NewsNow, Moreover) aggregate headlines from news stories and can be responsible for bringing up to 20 per cent of your web site traffic. It is essential that they are tracking your news. Refer to each site to find the conditions of listing. A more complete listing of aggregators is given by NewsOnFeeds.

You may ask why there are so many SEO consultancies. In essence they offer a simple way to outsource the activities listed above, but there is also a darker side to the industry based around manufacturing referrals and tweaking metatags - happily Google has cottoned on to these techniques and discourages such activities by barring listings of firm's using them.

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Online Publishing Trends

Simply put, most publishers appear to have gone through a five stage process involving gradual improvements when putting their publications online:

Stage One - Simple repurposing of selected copy
Stage Two - Adding some original copy and basic search
Stage Three - Adding daily news and improved search
Stage Four - Adding 'services' or 'marketplaces' and comment/forums
Stage Five - Adding blogs, podcasts, video (e.g. NME.com or The New York Times)

Leading online publishers are highly focussed on anything that:
- Helps drive subscription (online or offline)
- increases traffic
- provides new 'platforms' for advertising

The main traffic drivers used by publishers are:
- frequent updates (usually news) sometimes augmented by news aggregation services
- email alerts or newsletters (increasingly offering a range of options)
- breaking news
- a roster of bloggers (internal and external)
- Editor's picks or 'most popular stories' lists

The main services (free or paid-for) offered by publishers are:
- deeper site access
- deep search access
- marketplace
- site specific services (e.g. ticketing)
- database access

Increasingly there is a trend towards 'flexible' content:
- RSS
- Digital Editions
- PDFs
- Mobile formats
- Desktop alerts

Perhaps the best exponent of this is Guardian Unlimited.

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What makes good website design?

There is no one formula for a really attractive website, but it is true to say standards of sorts are emerging. Web usability consultants like Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug are leading exponents of good design.
www.sensible.com - Steve Krug's site
www.useit.com - Jakob Nielsen's site

Here are some of the principles they extol:
Good Navigation - Use of tabs and 'street signs'. Amazon.com and US publisher CNET are the best examples. Most publishers opt for vertical and horizontal menus, some of which are pull-down. Some also provide what Krug calls 'breadcrumbs' - indicators of your journey through a site. Krug argues against drop-down menus because he believes many users miss them entirely.

In terms of usability, both authors stress the fact that users scan web sites quickly and do not want to make wasted click-throughs. Thus design and content should be as simple and predictable as possible with what Krug calls 'a clear visual hierarchy'. He favours a hierarchical 'signpost' system based on text of reducing size where it is very obvious what is clickable.

Steve Krug is also a big fan of the tagline - what he calls 'a pithy phase that characterises the whole enterprise'. However, most publishers only use taglines on their print publications.

Jakob Nielsen is best known for his pioneering work in trying to persuade web site owners to provide simpler, clearer content. He produces email alerts which are republished on his site, which underline many aspects of his teachings. Primarily he focusses on the need for highly sub-edited copy using keywords that can easily be found by search engines - particularly in headlines and intros.

One of the most controversial aspects of online publishing is that of hyperlinking, with many publishers believing that you reduce your own traffic if you send readers out of your site. Most try to achieve a happy balance, such as BBC News, which has a seperate 'related internet links' area on most news stories, which also includes a disclaimer.

Good web designers are well aware that their site will be viewed on a range of browsers, some using slow dial up connections. Increasingly this is being taken into account by publishers by means of offering text-only versions, and careful use of graphics. Accessibility is also of growing importance, and the BBC is a leading example of this, with a full explanation on its site.

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Blogging

Blogs - also known as weblogs, are characterised by a top-down diary format. 'Posts' are time-stamped, with the most recent appearing at the top of the home page.

There are an estimated 60 million blogs with around 65,000 new blogs per day, but only a small percentage are updated regularly. Part of the appeal of a blog is its simplicity - you only have to view the home page to get the latest update. Or, even simpler, updates can be sent to you automatically using RSS reader software.

Most leading blogs are managed and authored by one person or a small group and have regular monthly readerships of between 100,000 and up to a million. It is not unusual for the most successul blog Instapundit , to attract 100,000 visits a day. Blogs can also be authored anonymously and used to spread rumour and gossips - though in practice this happens rarely as most people instinctively ignore an anonymous source of information.

Why are publishers bothered with blogging?

Two words: Influence and eyeballs.

Recent research tends to highlight the growing influence of blogs. Hotwire PR commissioned Ipsos to look into the impact of blogs across Europe. It found that:

- 24 per cent of Europeans consider blogs a trusted source, just behind newspapers (30 per cent), but ahead of TV advertising (17 per cent)

- High spenders are most trusting of blogs

- 52 per cent said they were more likely to buy a product if they had read positive comments written by a private individual

While such research needs further corroboration. It goes a long way to explain why most leading publishers are rushing headline into the 'blogosphere'.

Technorati is the leading blog search service. Google also provides a dedicated blog search tool.

Technoranki is useful for seeing a ranking of blogs. The ranking algorithm is secrete but it is likely to be largely based on comparing the numbers of blogs that link to each blog as well as traffic levels. Here is the ranking of UK bloggers.

KMAX provides a 'top 25' list of US bloggers as well as a links to other lists.

Alexa provides a ranking of all sites. Blog rankings can be viewed within the ranking as a whole, though you have to look hard for them or search for them by name. Alexa also lists the 'movers and shakers' giving a good indication of which sites are growing or declining dramatically - a good way of spotting up-and-coming bloggers.

The majority of bloggers create their blogs using free or cheap hosting services found on the internet.
www.Blogger.com - Pyra Labs, now owned by Google
www.Xanga.com - Xanga.com
www.LiveJournal.com - Six Apart
www.Wordpress.com - Wordpress
www.spaces.live.com - Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces
www.Typepad.com - Six Apart
www.360.yahoo.com - Yahoo 360