SEO: BEYOND THE OBVIOUS NEW TIPS & BEST PRACTICES GATEHOUSE NEWS & INTERACTIVE DIVISION

1. SEO: BEYOND THE OBVIOUSNEW TIPS & BEST PRACTICESGATEHOUSE NEWS & INTERACTIVE DIVISION

2. Agenda • New SEO tips and best practices • Video • Stories • Linking • Social media • Blogs • SEO behind the scenes • SEO best practices review • Search engines • Stories • Photos

3. New SEO tips and best practices Video • Title • Summary • Key words • Google only reads text

4. New SEO tips and best practices Video

5. New SEO tips and best practices Top video for March 12 in all of Gatehouse • Keywords in headline, summary

6. New SEO tips and best practices Top video for February in all of Gatehouse • Keywords in headline, summary

7. 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

8. 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

9. New SEO tips and best practices Stories • Topics pages: New York Times

10. 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

11. 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

12. New SEO tips and best practices Stories • In-story linking to previous stories: CNN

13. New SEO tips and best practices Stories • In-story linking to previous stories: Somerville Journal

14. New SEO tips and best practices Stories • In-story linking: Patch

15. New SEO tips and best practices Social media • Facebook & 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.

16. New SEO tips and best practices Blogs • Help 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.

17. SEO Behind the scenes Tech elements that boost SEO • Content Management System: Zope changes now identify originating sites

18. 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.

19. SEO Best practices review How do search engines work?

20. SEO Best practices review How do search engines work? • Stories • Headlines • Ledes • Keywords throughout • Full names • Linking

21. SEO Best practices review

22. 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

23. SEO Best practices review

24. SEO Best practices review • Chicago Tribune: Keywords in headline. • Links to previous stories. • Keywords in lede, with in-story links to topics pages.

25. SEO Best practices review Making your headlines stronger for SEO Initial headline: 20 dead, 100 injured, hundreds of houses damaged SEO headline: [Town name, state] tornado: 20 dead, 100 injured Initial headline: Propane tank stolen SEO headline: Guns, knife, propane tank stolen from [town name] home Initial headline: [Last name only] wins SEO headline: [First name, Last name] wins I-500 Snowmobile Race in [town name] Initial headline: [High school name] interviewing 11 coaches SEO headline: [Town name] [High school name] high school interviewing 11 football coaches

26. SEO Best practices review How do search engines work? • Photos • File name • Caption • Keywords throughout • Full names

27. SEO Best practices review

28. SEO Best practices review Keywords, full names, location

29. 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

30. Your questions, answered Jean Hodges, jhodges@gatehousemedia.com Sarah Corbitt, scorbitt@gatehousemedia.com Don Hommes, dhommes@corp.gatehousemedia.com

31. SEO: BEYOND THE OBVIOUSNEW TIPS & BEST PRACTICESGATEHOUSE NEWS & INTERACTIVE DIVISION