SEO and keywords

Powerful as “search” has become on the Internet (think Google), “search engine optimization” still remains mysterious territory to managers of some news sites. The Bivings Report has a fairly simple explanation of SEO and the importance of keywords in ”SEO Basics.”

Here’s a summary:

Search optimization techniques to improve content visibility center on use of keywords that users are likely to employ in their searches. The key to key words is figuring out and using (in headlines, tags, text, etc.) words or phrases that someone searching for content that you have on your site will use in her search. Simple example: “Restaurant” is probably more widely used than “café” or “eatery”. But there are a lot of restaurants, so “French restaurant” or “Thai restaurant” or “‘Name of neighborhood’ restaurant” might fare better in a search. Or “pizzeria” might do better than “pizza restaurant.” Or… that’s the mystery.

This chart shows how the spelling of “barbeque” might affect search:

Your Web site’s traffic analytics program is one place to look for keywords people are using to find your site.

“SEO Basics” offers a handy list of free services to help you figure out the best keywords:

Google: Suggest and Adwords’ Keyword Traffic Estimator Tool and Trends

Microsoft: AdCenter Keyword Forecast Tool

WordTracker: Basic Keyword Suggestion Tool

KeywordDiscovery: Basic Search Term Suggestion Tool

For more, check out the full report.

What’s your formula for keyword success? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Link: Using Twitter

Ryan Sholin makes it easy for newsrooms to get started with Twitter with ”Five Ways to Gather and Report News with Twitter.”

Mindy McAdams offers some perspective with ”Twitter is Growing on Me.”

Think you don’t have time? Try this: Open a Twitter account and sign up to follow Sholin and McAdams (five minutes). Check the account a couple of times a day (five minutes). See where it leads (one potential window into the future of news gathering and delivery)

Are you using Twitter? Please share experiences in the comments..

Link: Tweeting the quake

If your news organization has not been using, or at least following, micro-blogging tools such as Twitter, Jack Lail’s ”Twitter as personal news wire” gives ample reason why news organizations need to pay attention. These are powerful tools, not only for pushing out breaking news feeds but for monitoring eyewitness accounts when news breaks.

Lail noted that the Associated Press moved a story nine minutes after the quake hit Southern California on Tuesday. “By the time AP moved a story, Twitter already had thousands of first-hand reports. Twitter has often been described as micro-blogging, but the Twitter blog says that for many people, the concept of Twitter is evolving to personal news-wire. We’ve seen this all along, but it’s growing.”

Update: Chris O’Brien, who is heading up the Next Newsroom project, posts his thoughts on Twitter, the earthquake and implications for newsrooms. It’s worth reading in full.

Editors blogging: ‘Doing is learning’

Today I’m happy to feature a guest post from John Hassell, Deputy Managing Editor of The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. John, who attended KDMC’s Leadership Conference last year, blogs at the exploding newsroom, often posting interesting updates on his newsroom’s journey to digital. I asked John to write about why he blogs, and why other editors might want to try it. Here’s John:

“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”
--G.K. Chesterton

First, a confession: I’m a lousy blogger. I don’t write often enough, and what I do write is rarely developed as fully as I would like. Caught up in the pull and tug of the newsroom, I too often neglect my blog.

I have great admiration for people like Howard Owens and John Robinson, who make time in their busy schedules to cast a wider net, to think aloud, to leave comments and trackbacks on other blogs. They’re the real deal, and they’re constantly teaching me things.

For me, though, this is one of those times when G.K. Chesterton had it right. Because blogging is worth doing—even if you do it badly, even if it means having to find the odd pre-dawn hour to post something once or twice a week.

Why?

Before I started blogging…

...I thought I understood the nature of the link. But until people linked to something I wrote, until I saw the way these links raised my blog’s profile in Google and Technorati searches (okay, not very much in my case, but...), I didn’t really get it. I quickly began to appreciate and return links, and to make unexpected friends. A link can be a nod, a handshake, a pat on the back, an insult. Whatever it is, it’s personal. It’s the glue that builds community online.

...I agreed with the goal of transparency in the news business. But until I began to see first-hand how closely openness and trust are associated on the web, I didn’t grasp how crucial this is. You build credibility online by reporting the news as it happens, sharing your work and engaging readers along the way. You build it one link at a time. The web is not just a place to publish “finished” stories, if there even is such a thing.

...I talked about news as a conversation. But until I started reading more blogs and getting involved in social media, I didn’t understand how quickly news gets shared, expanded, commented on, filtered and repurposed across the web. This is not a trivial thing. People once relied on the news to inform conversation. Now they are relying on the conversation to inform them about the news. If something’s important, they figure they’ll hear about it.

...I considered myself an early adopter. But until I saw how the best bloggers used social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Seesmic and FriendFeed as reporting resources and channels for distributing content (the beauty of community, after all, is that it allows you to gather and share information more efficiently), I didn’t realize how far behind we really were in harnessing the power of these new tools.

To expand on that last point a bit, when I started work on this piece I posted a short question on Twitter:

“Hey, journobloggers: I’m writing a post for the Knight Center about why newspaper editors should blog. I’ve got my reasons; what are yours?”

Like a tiny stone tossed into a pond, it started producing ripples.

First came the responses from people I’ve befriended on Twitter, each of which helped me think about this piece. Here are three of them:

Damon Kiesow of the Nashua (NH) Telegraph: “My #1 reason - they need to understand their audience. Doing is learning.”

Laura Oliver of Journalism.co.uk: “For transparency of editorial operations like @marcreeves’ blog lets users see behind-the-scenes and air their views on editorial operations.”

Zach Echola of Forum Communications Company: “Regular interaction with real people forces you to think less about media + audience and more about conversation + community.”

Next, because replies on Twitter are public, a few friends of Damon, Laura and Zach discovered and began following me—which means my network of sources will be even greater next time I’m looking for help.

This goes both ways. With any luck, some of you reading this will click through the links to Damon, Laura and Zach and begin following their work.

Each of those links, in turn, increases the chances that Laura, Damon, Zach or others might read this and share it with others. They might share it through their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, social bookmarking sites or ... well, you get the idea.

This is the social, distributed web.

It’s powerful stuff, and it rewards those who get engaged.

Even if you do it badly.