11 April 2006
Steve Lohr of the New York Times has recently written an article on the increasing need for good copy for mainstream press articles destined for the internet. It is interesting that he notes the reasoning for this need - the increasing percentage of website traffic that is driven to the news sites as a result of high rankings on the popular search engines - to which many search engine optimisation experts might say: well, obviously.
It's a problem that has special resonance for news sources - in the information-saturated internet, where forums and RSS feeds can often deliver news and ongoing development information faster and in more detail than traditional news outlets, what place is there for time restricted (daily) reports on news that has been covered already?
As sites such as the BBC and The Guardian newspaper in the UK and, indeed, The New York Times in America have shown, the answer seems to be: the place is there for high-quality and authoritative news reports. And this is where good optimisation comes in. Check out the PageRank of the first two examples just given and the result is 9/10 across the board. Why is this? These sites are chock full of original content that is well interlinked, well linked to and is constantly being updated and archived intelligently. A quick check on the PageRank of the New York Times shows why the article on the importance of search engine optimisation was deemed newsworthy: a clear 10/10 PageRank for them means that they needn't worry too much about the competition catching up anytime soon.
The best journalism has always striven to be as objective as possible in reporting the news, but it seems that there is a trend which has emerged that has bent that rule a little - but not for any human, rather the famed objectivity of the press has bent for the search engines and their 'spiders' (those programs deployed by the search engines to index the entire contents of the internet). It is an unsurprising move for the press from the point of view of observing search engine optimisation specialists, as the need for good, ethically optimised, copy has always been apparent and emphasised for ethical improvement of a websites search engine result page (SERP) ranking.
For the mainstream press the concept of writing for the engines as well as for their human readers might have been taken on board by the big-name press outlets, but for many of the smaller publications finding their way in the world of online copy optimisation, the concept might take some getting used to, as producing good, ethical, copy for the purposes of search engine optimisation is an acquired skill, and we can expect to see some interesting results from the myriad publications with an online presence as they attempt to catch up with the early adopters.
The application of good copy production and the interlinking if that copy with your existing site also has import for the development and provision for article submission and link-building for non-news sites. Indeed any business, whether it be eCommerce or intrinsically traditional in its services or products would benefit from a well organised, carefully executed link building scheme to push up those page ranks into the realms of the news big-boys.
Go here for the original article:
Original NY Times Article
A NY Times Exclusive reveals search engine secrets
It looks like the mainstream press is picking up on the importance of organic search engine optimisation copy and articles for link building and site development - or at least their online offshoots are.Steve Lohr of the New York Times has recently written an article on the increasing need for good copy for mainstream press articles destined for the internet. It is interesting that he notes the reasoning for this need - the increasing percentage of website traffic that is driven to the news sites as a result of high rankings on the popular search engines - to which many search engine optimisation experts might say: well, obviously.
It's a problem that has special resonance for news sources - in the information-saturated internet, where forums and RSS feeds can often deliver news and ongoing development information faster and in more detail than traditional news outlets, what place is there for time restricted (daily) reports on news that has been covered already?
As sites such as the BBC and The Guardian newspaper in the UK and, indeed, The New York Times in America have shown, the answer seems to be: the place is there for high-quality and authoritative news reports. And this is where good optimisation comes in. Check out the PageRank of the first two examples just given and the result is 9/10 across the board. Why is this? These sites are chock full of original content that is well interlinked, well linked to and is constantly being updated and archived intelligently. A quick check on the PageRank of the New York Times shows why the article on the importance of search engine optimisation was deemed newsworthy: a clear 10/10 PageRank for them means that they needn't worry too much about the competition catching up anytime soon.
The best journalism has always striven to be as objective as possible in reporting the news, but it seems that there is a trend which has emerged that has bent that rule a little - but not for any human, rather the famed objectivity of the press has bent for the search engines and their 'spiders' (those programs deployed by the search engines to index the entire contents of the internet). It is an unsurprising move for the press from the point of view of observing search engine optimisation specialists, as the need for good, ethically optimised, copy has always been apparent and emphasised for ethical improvement of a websites search engine result page (SERP) ranking.
For the mainstream press the concept of writing for the engines as well as for their human readers might have been taken on board by the big-name press outlets, but for many of the smaller publications finding their way in the world of online copy optimisation, the concept might take some getting used to, as producing good, ethical, copy for the purposes of search engine optimisation is an acquired skill, and we can expect to see some interesting results from the myriad publications with an online presence as they attempt to catch up with the early adopters.
The application of good copy production and the interlinking if that copy with your existing site also has import for the development and provision for article submission and link-building for non-news sites. Indeed any business, whether it be eCommerce or intrinsically traditional in its services or products would benefit from a well organised, carefully executed link building scheme to push up those page ranks into the realms of the news big-boys.
Go here for the original article:
Original NY Times Article
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