Let’s say you own a news web site. You produce some sort of fresh content. You have the resource (the web site). How to populate it?
Keyword research
One of the first things to do is do some keyword research. It may help you produce news on the things which people are currently (or will be in the future) interested in.
- Google AdWords: keyword tool – to find out average number of searches in your country and worldwide.
- Google Trends – to see the evolution of traffic in time (it even lists news events).
- Keyword suggestion tool — Google suggest scraper — Übersuggest – to find out what would Google suggest regarding a query very easily.
- Bing Social – to look for social signals (trends).
- Like Button – to find out what do people currently share on Facebook (trends).
- Google Trends – popular searches – Google trends regarding news.
- Most popular keywords (48 hours) | Top search keywords – a list of popular keywords for the past 48 hours.
- Real-time local Twitter trends – Trendsmap – social tags.
- Trending 100 Links – Topsy – most shared links on social networks.
- BrandMentions – social media analytics tool – monitor your brand & competitors
- Kurrently – real-time social media search engine (Twitter, Facebook, Google+) – real-time for social networks.
- 48ers – Realtime Social Search – real-time for social networks.
- YouTube – Keyword Suggestion Tool – For video posting – YouTube’s keyword tool.
- YouTube Trends Dashboard – YouTube – For video posting -YouTube trends.
How to get shares?
I find the following resource an important one in finding out what do people look for when they share content. It can be inspiring to read it and, following it, create better content.
How to tag articles?
If you have a CMS (content management system) which allows tags (WordPress, for example, does it), you might want to read the following resource on how to tag things:
The rule is simple – set a specific number of tags for your articles (30-60, let’s say), and keep them religiously. Avoid having 300 tags, which, most likely, you’ll end up not use thoroughly.
How to add photos to your web site?
You can either embed photos (from web sites such as Picasa or Flickr), or create your own custom galleries (there are lots of plugins for photos for WordPress – examples – 1, 2, 3).
About videos
Videos convert better than static images / presentations / documents / text. Thus, if you can find ways to include quality videos on your web site, this might help quite a bit.
The power of the community
If you have a web site on which you want to encourage others to have their own blogs, you can consider using:
WordPress Mu easily allows you to create lots of blogs on the same platform.
So, instead of you being the only one who posts on your web site, let others do it, also.
How to encourage comments?
Amazon awards top users with products to test, or with some vouchers. Perhaps you might be inspired by them and to the same.
How to empower the use of rel=author?
Read more about rel=author here:
In my opinion, it’s one of the best solutions to differentiate from a very-similar-one-to-the-other competition on Google.
Two SEO basics specific for news: QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) & Duplicate Content
You should at least know the basics of
- Query Deserves Freshness – Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz
- Duplicate Content – SEO Best Practices | SEOmoz
How to optimize an article?
Two resources I wrote in Romanian:
- Cum optimizezi un articol pe site? (optimizare internă pentru un articol): Olivian Breda
- Cum scrii un articol optimizat din punct de vedere al motoarelor de căutare (SEO)?: Olivian Breda
How to do the meta description and the SEO titles?
- Meta Description Tag – SEO Best Practices | SEOmoz
- Title Tag SEO Best Practices – Meta Tag Optimization | SEOmoz
or, in Romanian: