Comments on: Brand: the new pretender http://chrisscott.org/industry/publishing/brand-the-new-pretender On the Semantic Web, Web development and tech in general Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:03:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: chris http://chrisscott.org/industry/publishing/brand-the-new-pretender/comment-page-1#comment-25 chris Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:41:26 +0000 http://chrisscott.org/?p=54#comment-25 The Beeb seem to have removed the "next" button from the bottom of the articles on their mobile web channel. So now I can't really be led through their content in a linear fashion. I'm slightly disappointed. :-( The Beeb seem to have removed the “next” button from the bottom of the articles on their mobile web channel. So now I can’t really be led through their content in a linear fashion. I’m slightly disappointed. :-(

]]> By: Jonathan Allen http://chrisscott.org/industry/publishing/brand-the-new-pretender/comment-page-1#comment-19 Jonathan Allen Fri, 22 May 2009 15:59:33 +0000 http://chrisscott.org/?p=54#comment-19 Chris, right to worry about the pitfalls of news publishers relying on search engines for traffic and it's potential for eroding the news agenda and making it softer. One problem with trying to SEO a news site is that so many thousands of longtail keywords hit the site that it's very difficult to locate any that holds any particular gravitas. People simply dont search the keyword 'news' or 'business news' in actual pursuit of news. If they are using those keywords, they are probably looking for something else - like, say, a list of news publishers. This illustrates something inherently deceptive about keywords which is why so many companies spend a lot of hard earned cash divining the right ones to market themselves with. Publishers, in the main, need targeted high volume terms, which is much more costly to compete for. In my opinion, targeting number 1 rankings on lots of generic terms is building a house of cards. Firstly, if you must, then better to target lower terms- say 4 or 7, or top of page 2. Likelihood the user who scans that far is more qualified anyway. But personally i think targeted traffic can be built via channels and partnerships more cost effectively. Real estate on the search results pages, in the way that affiliates do, seems a better long game. However the point is that any packaged editorial product has to be super niche now to really work on search, and national packaged print products are being fast replaced by feed readers, personalised homepages and social networks. The editorial agenda / national conversation is being crowdsourced via people, places and things - a giant digital eco-system - of which search engines is just one vital part. I posted my prez to slideshare if your are interested: http://www.slideshare.net/jc1000000/epublishing-innovation-forum-2009 Chris, right to worry about the pitfalls of news publishers relying on search engines for traffic and it’s potential for eroding the news agenda and making it softer. One problem with trying to SEO a news site is that so many thousands of longtail keywords hit the site that it’s very difficult to locate any that holds any particular gravitas. People simply dont search the keyword ‘news’ or ‘business news’ in actual pursuit of news. If they are using those keywords, they are probably looking for something else – like, say, a list of news publishers.

This illustrates something inherently deceptive about keywords which is why so many companies spend a lot of hard earned cash divining the right ones to market themselves with. Publishers, in the main, need targeted high volume terms, which is much more costly to compete for. In my opinion, targeting number 1 rankings on lots of generic terms is building a house of cards.

Firstly, if you must, then better to target lower terms- say 4 or 7, or top of page 2. Likelihood the user who scans that far is more qualified anyway. But personally i think targeted traffic can be built via channels and partnerships more cost effectively. Real estate on the search results pages, in the way that affiliates do, seems a better long game.

However the point is that any packaged editorial product has to be super niche now to really work on search, and national packaged print products are being fast replaced by feed readers, personalised homepages and social networks. The editorial agenda / national conversation is being crowdsourced via people, places and things – a giant digital eco-system – of which search engines is just one vital part.

I posted my prez to slideshare if your are interested: http://www.slideshare.net/jc1000000/epublishing-innovation-forum-2009

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