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Digiwatchdog » Entries tagged with "SEO"

That’s so meta: Why you should include data about data on your website

November 27th, 2011 | Add a Comment

As part of our SEO recommendations for the Chicago Reporter, we have suggested that they make their content easier to find via search engines by including metadata. For someone who’s not well-versed in HTML, however, this might sound a little confusing. What is metadata anyway, and why should you take the time to include it on your website? Metadata is basically data about data, according to the HTML educational database w3schools.com. In the HTML for your site, <meta> tags go in the head element of the page and provide information about its content. Readers visiting your website don’t see this data; only browsers and search engines pick up on it. So, why should the Reporter and other news sites include metadata with their content? The main reason is that it makes it … Read entire article »

Filed under: Web development

How to Avoid SEO Nightmares

November 14th, 2011 | Add a Comment

We recently took a gander underneath the hood of the Chicago Reporter’s website and were none too happy to see that each article’s headline flanked by <h2> tags. This could create an SEO nightmare. So I’ve written out a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices for the site’s administrators, and I figured others might find them useful as well. Much of this is basic knowledge, but it couldn’t hurt to refresh your memory: Use <h1> tags around headlines.This will make headlines the first thing a search engine reads, which is exactly what you want. Don’t use <h1> tags at any other point on the page. Google tends to ignore instances of <h1> if it’s used more than once. (Re)write headlines with SEO. The same headlines that work perfectly well in print (“One … Read entire article »

Filed under: Uncategorized, Web development

Content curation and The Chicago Reporter

November 11th, 2011 | Add a Comment

So, I’ve got content curation on the brain. Some “gut” feeling is telling me that The Chicago Reporter needs to be aggregating content relevant to the stories they cover. They need to be aggregating content about what they’re doing and what people are saying about them. Instead of going with a “gut” feeling, I decided to go with a “google” feeling and did a little research. Apparently, content curation can help a news organization boost their audience appeal. Through curation they can offer readers a service of sifting through the mass of content on the web and cherry picking the best content for them. If the news org delivers good curated content then people come back to them again and again. It also boosts your SEO rankings. According to Forbes, “Consistently producing the best … Read entire article »

Filed under: Audience Engagement, Public news consumption, Social media

Why SEO-friendly content is important

October 18th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Why SEO-friendly content is important

Not all that many decades ago, headlines and spoken word-of-mouth mentions were a newspaper’s best marketing tools. In the competitive online landscape, however, getting articles in front of the readers who want to read them inevitably involves optimizing content for Google. Some journalists may not like to think about themselves as marketers during the writing or editing process, but new research released by the online news content agency Brafton in the form of a handy … Read entire article »

Filed under: Public news consumption, Social media

Google incentivizes linking with a ‘standout’ tag

October 4th, 2011 | Add a Comment

Google’s search algorithm may seem like a cold, heartless mathematical machine at times, frustrating news sites with its mad science of page rankings. The current king of search relies on factors that sites can influence to a certain degree, however, such as inbound and outbound link counts. Additionally, news sites can now utilize a “standout” tag to try and grab better placement in Google News’ front page selection process. The new HTML tag, which Google announced at the Online News Association conference in Boston last month, can be used by a site for its own stories or when linking out to another site. The tag looks like this: <link rel=”standout” href=“http://www.example.com/scoop_article_2.html” /> Google discourages sites from using it more than seven times per week on its own content, and warns that anyone using … Read entire article »

Filed under: Featured, Metrics