Day to Day SEO for Content Producers - Malcolm Coles - #BrightonSEO

Not long to the pub …

About me

SEO and trending topics
Where can you find what people are searching for now?
How can you use that info if your site is in Google News?
How can you use it if you’re not in Google News?
How can you make the most of Google News?
URLs for all sites: www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/news-search-tools

What people are searching for now
Free sources of data

The best data

Good sources: Google / analytics

Interesting sources

News organisations

Ignore Google trends

How to use that info if your site’s in Google News

How are they searching?

When Leslie Nielsen died

Adding years to reality shows

I’m a Celebrity 2010

What if you’re not in Google News?

Karen Gillan’s underwear This graph: http://mcol.es/fag1QF

Karen Gillan’s underwear Weekends

Kelly Brook Playboy

Some testing I did …
What time is the Carling Cup final? – 10 mins work - Risk of jail: low
Snoods banned – 5 mins work - Risk of jail: low
Census question 17 blank – 15 mins work - Risk of jail: low
Vodafone blogs hijacked by anti-cuts protestors – 15 mins work - Risk of jail: low
Google Circles: a new social network – 10 minutes work – Risk of jail: low
Coventry sack Aidy Boothroyd – 2 mins work - Risk of jail: low

What time is the Carling Cup Final?
I only thought of this the night before …
Original headline was “What time is the Carling Cup final”. Changed headline and published second post based on most popular keyphrase – all too late.
Also some search terms triggered a Google News box.
Search traffic: 516 Total traffic: 715
Lessons
Plan ahead
Think about your headline carefully
Publish twice
10 mins

Snoods banned
First piece of content published to the internet about the banning of snoods. But fairly quickly triggered a news box.
Hardly anyone searched.
Headline was terrible. As was the content.
Search traffic: 48, Total traffic: 103
Lessons
Think about your headline carefully
You can’t compete with Google News
5 mins

Census question 17 blank
Lots of questions on Twitter.
Some forums and a couple of blogs beat me to it – but I still beat lots of news organisations.
Got lots of tweets – and ranked far higher than I expected…
Search traffic: 2,250 Total traffic: 2,809
Got 2 links!
Lessons
Answer a genuine question people have around a topical issue.
15 mins

Vodafone blogs hijacked
Second person to publish on this. But story died a death.
Got a link by telling someone about the screenshot I had!
Lessons
If you’ve got useful content, tell news blogs.
15 mins

Google Circles
Second site to publish something on this.
Was briefly 3 rd in Google.
But initial headline of “Google Circles” was crap.
A news box was triggered – and I was quickly bumped by other news sources.
Search traffic: 76 Total views: 285
Lessons
You can’t compete with Google News.
Think about the headline.
10 mins

Coventry sack Aidy Boothroyd
Published very early – but still beaten by Reuters driven sites.
Got edged out by Google News and other publishers very quickly.
Lessons
You can’t compete with Google News.
Headline was a bit crap – too optimised.
2 mins

Conclusions
Your blog can compete with news organisations – but not if a Google News box appears. So don’t try to compete with “hard news”.
Publish as soon as you can.
Spend time on the headline.
Do it for links, not traffic – which means find something useful to say (with more time a Carling Cup countdownometer might have been a good bit of linkbait)
Social media is important. Tell everyone you want them to RT is as part of an experiment for a free SEO event?

Any questions?
Blog: www.malcolmcoles.co.uk
Twitter: @malcolmcoles
URLs are at: www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/news-search-tools
Graph is at http://mcol.es/fag1QF
Check out www.holymoly.com

Day to Day SEO for Content Producers - Malcolm Coles - #BrightonSEO

by brightonseo on Apr 07, 2011

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Day to Day SEO for Content Producers - Malcolm Coles - #BrightonSEO — Presentation Transcript