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.

Key performance indicators

This is one in a series of posts exploring key takeaways and tools from the Knight Digital Media Center’s recent conference, “Preparing News Organizations for the Digital Now,” and a follow up on yesterday’s post about the Web metrics presentation by Dana Chinn, a faculty member at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism,

An important takeaway from Chinn was the idea of the Key Performance Indicator for Web traffic.

Often, that KPI is not a simple number such as time on site or unique monthly visitors. Instead, the most meaningful information may be from a ratio or comparison of two different numbers. Chinn’s detailed report gives 12 examples of possible indicators:

Site health
1. Visits per unique visitor
2. Page views per visit

Driving traffic
3. Top entry and landing pages
4. Bounce rate
5. Conversion rate

Growth
6. Visitor frequency
7. Visitor recency
8. New vs. returning visitors
9. Most popular stories
10. Visits using internal search
11. Site exits after using internal search
12. Time spent during visits

Chinn has prepared a report, ”Measuring Web Success in the Newsroom,” that gives details about each indicator on the list, including how to calculate it and how to make use of the results.

Here is one example: Visits per unique visitor

To calculate, divide the number of visits for a specified time period (say, one week) by the number of unique visitors for that time period.
An increase usually means users are coming more frequently. Frequency and recency indicators may give more detail.
A decrease usually means users are visiting the site less and becoming less engaged. There may be problems with content, design and navigation, refers from print or marketing efforts. Or new competition.

Related:
See previous posts about Chinn’s presentation here and here.

Web math for editors

This is another in a series of posts exploring key takeaways and tools from the Knight Digital Media Center’s Leadership Conference—”Preparing News Organizations for the Digital Now.”

Dana Chinn, a faculty member at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism set out to help newsroom leaders make sense of hits, visits, bounces, time on site, etc. Editors I have spoken with say they are looking at the numbers more and more, but often aren’t quite sure what they mean or what action they may suggest. Chinn gave editors a process for better understanding and using Web numbers.

For starters, Chinn encouraged editors to develop a Web analytics plan and gave them a road map for doing that:

1. Establish goals. These should be for specific audiences or sections, not Web site elements such as video or user-generated content. Define actions that will lead to each goal. Consider online and print together.

2. Define Key Performance Indicators (the metrics) for each goal and decide what you will do if an indicator goes up or down.

3. Benchmark. Set a starting point and set a goal for each indicator (moving it up or down) and establish a time period in which you want to reach each goal.

4. Implement.

5. Monitor.

According to Chinn, the most significant performance indicator may not be a simple number. Instead, Chinn says, a ratio between two numbers often produces the most insight. I’ll look at Chinn’s use of ratios next. You’ll find Chinn’s detailed report here.

How does your organization use Web analytics? What numbers tell you what you need to know? How have you used analytics to help you improve your site and your traffic? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Related: My earlier post about Chinn’s presentation.

Cost - benefit analysis

Knight Digital Media Center‘s annual Leadership Conference wrapped up Friday but I’m still playing catch up on a few presentations and a lot of notes and ideas.

Ashley Wells of MSNBC.com offered a highly instructive look at the cost to produce different types of multimedia—slide shows, interactives, video and map mashups. Then he projected the size of the audience it would take to make the effort worth the time. Wells was quick to note that such comparisons don’t drive journalistic decision-making. But I think they can help people think twice about how they’re using their time. The short message: Simple may be better. Click through the whole presentation here. It’s instructive.

Wells finished up by noting that online news sites operate under heavy pressure to build both audience and revenue. What does he need to accomplish that?

“Gimme a:
Flexible publishing platform with great editorial tools
Cross-functional team with cross-functional people
License to experiment withthe intent to scale”

What’s your multimedia strategy and who is implementing it in your newsroom? Please share your ideas in the comments.

The numbers game

Dana Chinn of the USC Annenberg School for Communication is just starting a presentation on Web metrics.
Here’s her list of key performance indicators:
- Overall health: Visits per unique visitor, page views per visit
- Driving traffic to multiple audiences: Top entry and landing pages, rejectrate/bounce rate, conversion rate for e-mail newsletters- Growth: Visitor frequency, recency, new vs. returning visitors, most popular stories
- Internal search: Visits using search, site exits after using search
- Time spent during visits

Update:

Steve Yelvington about metrics and chasing traffic:

“Any time you create a score board. You’re creating an incentive system. People are very competitive.” This can help with culture change around Web metrics and growing traffic.

The caution: People can get carried away. Yelvington told the story of an online editor who posted photos of young women in bikinis. Traffic skyrocketed. But that performance indicator wasn’t consistent with the goal of the site - to build a consistent local audience using the Web site for utility” What we were building was an audience of 14 year old boys from out of market.”
“These are all people who are using the Web site, not people who are not using the web site, which is most of the world.” Tailoring to the audience may limit its utility for others.

More from Chinn:

“Insight is not action. There is no point in knowing stuff if you don’t do anything about it.”

Two major kinds of research: Behavioral and Attitudinal

Behavioral research - tracking online behavior as it happens, not an artificial test
Measuring uUique vistors - visit Web sites, generate pages views

“You need to pay more attention to large increases and decreases rather than spikes or small movements.”

Behavioral raises the question: Why? That’s where attitudinal comes in.

Attitudinal research - what people are thinking, what they’re interested in, whether they found it on your site or with you or your competitors, how satisfied, loyal they are and how apt to recommend your site to others.
“If people like you they’ll think of you when they need news and information”

Chinn sees a large gap between number of peole who say they access Internet daily for news and information vs the smaller number who access the named newspaper web site daily for news and information. The Readership Institute similar finding: 62% had never visited their local newspaper Web site. 14 percent had visited in the last 7-30 days. The statistics have changed little in the last five years.

Attitudinal research, ask four questions:
1. what was the purpose of your visit today?
2. Were you able to complete your task today?
3. 3. If you were not able to complete your task, why not?
4. If you did complete your task, what did you enjoy most about the site?

Together, behavioral and attitudinal a sense of engagement and satisfaction.

Measuring alone doesn’t mean you improve.

You need
1. A plan or objective or goals with specific tactics that are measurable.
2. Whch measurements are really going to indicate whether you’ve progress and what drives each measure?
3. Who is responsible for each measure?

Chinn stresses accountability on the staff and among editors for improving key performance indicators.
“Shouldn’t you be accountable? If you aren’t, who is?” Chinn asked the editors.

Update:
Chinn cautions about use of “time spent during visits.”

“Time spent during visits doesn’t really give you engagement. Frequency and recency metrics are better .. for inferring engagement and predicting future behavior.” Look at it primarily as a supplment to other metrics.

Vivian Vahlberg, Media Management Center, asks how many editors have a traffic expert on staff. About half raise their hands:
“One of the keys may well be to get someone on staff who knows enough to know the data and help you use it,” Vahlberg says.

Chinn advises editors to “start with the basics” and have someone on staff learn to understand the fundamental metrics. “That Web analyst should be ideally in the newsroom, not on the marketing side.”

I hope to grab a copy of Chinn’s 20-page guide to Web Analytics for Editors and add a link by tonight.

Update: Here’s Chinn’s report.

Link: America goes online

Here’s what the Pew Internet Project found in a May 2008 survey: “73% of adults in the U.S. go online. 78% of adults have a cell phone. 55% of adults have broadband at home. Offline Americans are overwhelmingly over age 70, have less than a high school education, and speak a language other than English.”
Who is your audience of choice? Here’s the summary. Here’s the download. Perhaps this is a good topic for the newsroom brown bag next week.
(Thanks to Steve Yelvington for the pointer.)

Link: From hub to web

The Associated Press is facing criticism for its efforts to limit how much AP copy bloggers can quote. As The New York Times reports, the AP will “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.”
It’s a dispute that may not seem urgently relevant to local newsrooms, but Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 has a provocative post about how AP’s efforts may benefit the local news organizations who provide copy to the AP. That’s because, Karp predicts, bloggers will simply go around the AP to the organizations that produce the material and link directly to them. That, in turn, could increase their site traffic. Karp gives this example:

“Take the story of flooding in Iowa, for example. The AP is covering this story extensively, as you can see in this Google News search result. But local news media in Iowa is also covering the story extensively, as you can see in this search limited to Iowa sources—the story is happening in their own backyard, giving these local sources a unique perspective and knowledge.

“So if a blogger wanted to discuss the Iowa floods and needed a source to cite, they can easily find an original local source instead of the AP story. And they can think of the link and the traffic they send as a contribution to the local news outlet’s original reporting, particularly the local newspapers struggling with new economic realities.

Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine ups the ante: He proposes that the Associated Press “immediately begin linking to all its sources for stories, especially to members’ original journalism.”

It’s an interesting example of how the Web really is a network of connections that doesn’t need a hub. And that’s a challenge for news organizations that succeeded for so long as hubs.