The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: November 2009, Volume 7, Issue 11
Optimizing for News Verticals: A 3 Step Action Plan
by Tiffany Ross , Search Marketing Specialist, iProspect
Today online news verticals continue to attract a larger audience than print as more people look to the internet for their daily news. In fact, according to the National Newspaper Association, the online news audience reached 69 million unique visitors last fall. To capitalize on this trend, marketers need to optimize their websites for these important verticals.
Understanding the benefits
Optimizing for online news verticals benefits your website in two key ways. First, because all of the major search engines deliver blended results that incorporate news items, articles can rank in both the news and web results. In doing so, they have the potential to double your brand's visibility. Second, the additional visibility from news verticals represents opportunities to drive incremental traffic to your articles and attract a new audience to your website.
Seeing it in action
For example, I was recently looking for natural cosmetics but needed some additional information. The top results returned by the search engine included an integrated news result entitled, "Top 10 Harmful Ingredients in Your Make-Up." The article helped me identify a line of cosmetics while introducing me to an organic living website which I visit every week.
3 Steps to make it happen
To reap the benefits of news vertical optimization, follow the below action plan:
Get your content in the engines fast
Make sure that your articles are submitted to the news verticals as quickly as possible. The fastest way is to submit a RSS feed. This enables the search engines to get new articles as they are published, and allows the pages to be indexed while the news is still relevant (rather than waiting for search engine spiders to crawl it, which can take up to two weeks).
Keep quirky headlines to a minimum
Create headlines using keyword phrases people will use while looking for your articles. Stay away from using slang or abstract language that might attract attention in print but get lost in online news results. However, pay attention to how news topics are being phrased on TV, radio, and in social media. Article headlines should be used in the article's title, Meta description, and < h1 > header to increase the keyword's relevancy to the article. Additionally, try to add the headline to the URL by using dashes to separate each keyword to increase your SEO effectiveness.
Leverage your articles for external links
Inform the subject of your article (businesses, schools, and organizations) about the article on your website and ask them to link to it. Doing so benefits both parties since it increases exposure for the company or person you are writing about while providing additional visibility for your website. External links also pass along link value, which is something search engines use to determine a website's credibility and ultimately, higher search engine visibility.
As news verticals continue to attract more and more people, marketers will ensure that their websites are optimized for these important entities. Incorporating news vertical optimization into your 2010 SEO plan will not only improve search engine visibility, but also increase website traffic.
