I’ve written before at SEOmoz about the advantages of running a good news source, and why it can make sense from a SEO and marketing perspective.
First of all – there’s an old mantra about good content gaining good natural links.
I used to rail against that statement, but the simple fact is that link building has needed to become very content centred over the past couple of years.
But good content isn’t enough – you need to have great content.
In overcrowded markets, it can be very hard indeed to get your content noticed, which is why investment in a news source can really work to an advantage if you can fit it into your overall promotions strategy.
Syndication channels (such as Google News), existing solely to help people find news more easily, and social media sites (such as Digg and Slashdot) have a strong news edge to what they publish.
Here’s the common problem – people invest in news sources and make no effort to make them great.
Instead, cheap writers are often hired to simply rewrite other people’s news stories.
The result is content – but it’s not great. And it’s going to offer very little in terms of SEO/marketing/branding for the news site.
Great content should be as unique as possible, to stand out from the crowd.
Here’s a couple of tips to write great news content:
1. Don’t rewrite individual stories – write multiple angles from multiple sources into the same news item. It makes the content more unique, more useful for the reader, and more likely to be a useful reference point for news listing sites.
2. Break original stories – if you see something that may be news in your vertical, write it. You don’t even have to be the first published coverage of the story online – but if you’re the first news source to cover it, you’ve got link bait.
Let’s put this all into perspective - SEOmoz has established itself as a center for industry news and information in SEO. It may not be syndicated by Google News, but plenty of people in the business turn to here for SEO news.
Let’s imagine Rand decided he wanted a news source from the beginning, and decided to hire one or more people to rewrite SEW or SERoundtable.
Do think that would have put SEOmoz on the map? Created the community it has, generated the links and traffic that it has, created the branding that it has achieved?
Instead, Rand has done both of the above tips – he’s covered news published elsewhere and put his own spin on it, and also covered unique stories.
That’s what great content is all about – if you want to unleash the potential of a news source.
By: IBrian
News Can Be Great Content
Online Advertising
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
I like the way the web is going. It's a lot easier to find good stuff these days, with the help of social bookmarking the power of the crowd is at play.
The problem is, writing good, topical, interesting copy aimed at your niche is hard work and requires a certain mindset.
These days a good SEO needs to study the National Enquirer more than ever, although for me it's the World Weekly news. For the headlines of course ( but you knew that)
Learning the art of the gut grabbing headline these days is essential.
If I may quote John Carlton. "It's about the incongruent juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas, facts.
In the sense that you take a website that makes tons of cash sending out epostcards, nothing newsworthy there, until you learn that the webmaster is a 60 year old Granny.
Or another one I like, "Dog bites man" is not newsworthy but "Man bites dog" is.
Thanks for that post.
Sensationalism may great for quick hit of traffic, but many social media users are too concerned with the "newest" possible disposable peace of content. It may be a better long term strategy to write less dated content that will still bring you visitors and traffic days, months, and years into the future.
I totally agree. I guess that's what is was trying to say earlier (see above :p)
From what I have learned, unique stories will ultimately bring high ranking by SE.
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News (or other 'asynchronous' texts) can be great content, for sure. The other kind of content represents a more thematic approach that is not bound by time but can be of great value even after a while. One could for instance aim to build THE definitive article about a subject (e.g. in wikipedia). These kinds of texts will after a while still represent value exactly because they are timeless (and they should be good ofcourse :p). That is the other way :)
Great point. The longer "editorial" news stories on our celebrity charity news site certainly seem to attract greater interest than those stories that are covered similarly by other news sources.
However, if your writing resources are limited, does it perhaps make sense to churn out less original content often, instead of original "editorial" content less frequently?
I think it depends on both your target niche and aims.
I know of a multi-million dollar SEO company that simply rewrites generic internet stories on it's site, that often have little to do with SEO. However, the company does represent some major multinationals, so my presumption is that it's aim is simply keeping up appearances and branding purposes for the benefit of clients.
However, for great news content for link building, the more unique the story, the more likely it will be covered on bigger sites. This is one of the key lessons I've learned this year.
Stories don't have to be utterly unique - blogs can be a great source of interesting stories worth reporting on, that major outlets just won't cover.
2c.
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