SEO for the Modern College Newsroom Get More Out Of Your News Kyle James @KyleJames CEO @nuCloud Founder @eduGuru
May 15, 2015
SEO for the Modern College NewsroomGet More Out Of Your News
Kyle James@KyleJames
CEO @nuCloudFounder @eduGuru
Who Am I?
If people can’t find it, does it matter?
Search Engine Optimization
Over 3 billion searches per day!
We Have Lots Of Audiences Alumni Current Students Future Students
Faculty/Staff Board Members Sports Fans
Let’s Not Forget The News
Journalist Work Under Tight Deadlines
Journalist Rely On Search Engines
"Ultimately, PR-related usability comes down to a simple question: Why spend a fortune on outbound PR (trying to pitch journalists) when you neglect simple steps to increase the effectiveness of inbound PR (satisfying journalists who visit your website)?"
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/press-area-usability/
The Rankings Number Game
The Biggest Stack Wins
Content is an Annuity
How You Can Compete
Presentation Two Parts
1. 2.
What SEO is NOT
SEO is Usability and Accessibility
Search Engine Crawlers are Blind
Yahoo Microsoft
By the Numbers (on one site)• 30% of traffic is delivered by Search
Engines
• 70% of that traffic is delivered by Google
• On a large college website w/ 1,000,000 visits per month that is 300,000 visitors
Long Tail Keywords
• Computer Science• Computer Science Major• Computer Science Degree• Computer Science Program South Carolina• Computer Science Degree South Carolina
Two Parts of SEO
On-Page Off-Page
On-Page Optimization
Headers
PageTitle
MetaDescription
MetaKeywords
URL
Page Title
• Describes The Page• Include Keywords• 70 Character Limit
PageTitle
URL
• Describe The Page• Include Keywords• A Dynamic URL is hard to understand
• What are the following two pages about?• http://www.college.edu/newsroom/president-obama-visits-campus/ • http://www.college.edu/newsroom.aspx&content_id=4225972
URL
Headers• Semantic Markup• Include Keywords• Describe sections of the Page
Headers
Semantic Markup:Think Like Word
Meta Description & Keywords
• Unique for Each Page• Only Viewable in Source• Meta Description limit 150 characters• Meta Keyword limit 10 keywords max
MetaDescription
MetaKeywords
Search Call To Actions
Page Title
Meta Description
Page Title and Meta Description are all you get in search results. Make sure that they count.
Meta Keywords
No major search engine still gives authority to them but they are a great
way to categorize your content.
Off-Page Optimization
We’ve all heard Content is King, so Links must be the Queen?
Off-Page Optimization
1. Inbound Links2. Site Authority3. Anchor Text4. Social Sharing
Anchor Text Importance
Your Site Is Trusted!
Part 2
The Importance of RSS
Specific Content Consumption
Enter FeedBurner
http://www.feedburner.com/
Why Google Is Important
http://bit.ly/XnmTK9
Other Ways To Tell Google
https://www.google.com/webmasters/https://www.google.com/analytics
https://plus.google.com/
Twitter Updates
Always Share Your Content
SEO Ranking Factors
http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/searchmetrics/press/ranking-factors/
Make Your Content Easy To Share
The Psychology of Sharing
Other Content Types
SEO For Images
• Be sure to include an “alt” text• Use descriptive file names
• Use – president-bob-commencement.jpg• Not – DSC_0012.jpg
YouTube Is The 2nd Largest Search Engine
http://bit.ly/XnmTK9
Other Content Types
Internal Linking
Related Content
Related Content (After The Article)
Printer Friendly Pages & SEO
Don’t create “Duplicate Content”1. <meta name="Robots" content="NOINDEX"/> 2. < a rel="nofollow" href="site.com/printer-friendly-page.htm">3. <link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”print” href=”printer.css” />4. <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://site.com/page” />5. User-agent: *
Disallow: /print/
PDFs & SEO
Comments & SEO
Pagination of Articles
Google Author Profiles
https://plus.google.com/authorship
Special Rules for Google News Inclusions
Article URLs1. Be unique2. Be permanent3. Display a three-digit number*
http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68323
Creating a Google News Sitemap• Be sure you are using “News-specific tags”
http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74288
Press Release & SEO
100+ Years
Personalization and Going Hyperlocal
http://slidesha.re/ZH3iq2
Unique Content for Every Student
http://readabout.me/
Stats
http://slidesha.re/ZH3iq2
97% of newspapers print hometown news from
colleges
90% of editors consider these stories to be important, must-
publish content
Inspiration & Ideas
Inspiration & Ideas
http://www.edustyle.net/tags.php?tag=news
PR on Websites Free Report
• 3rd Edition• 292 pages• 100+ PR Tips• 100+ Design
Recommendations
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/pr-websites/