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Site optimisation

How search engines work

Attracting potential clients to your website and keeping them interested is an important part of any business. A SelectNews feed can aid this by helping with your site's search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy i.e. the process of highlighting your site to the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

Search engines are broadly made up of three elements - an algorithm written to work out the order of importance sites should display in "organic" or "natural" search; an index of site pages created by computer software commonly referred to as a web robot, crawler or spider; and a search facility which is what we see, as users and consumers, when we tap in a search for information everyday.

Search engines operate by crawling many millions of pages across the web on a regular basis with software which recognises information such as links coming in and out of web pages, site urls and keyword information. The "crawled" pages are then copied to be included a search engines' index of several million pages.

The algorithm part of a search engine is the crucial element that holds everything together. Algorithms look at a wealth of different factors to determine the order of importance of the many and varied sites in the index. In effect the engines are trying to answer questions such as "what is this site about?" and "can I trust this website?".

Individual search engines closely guard the exact nature of their specific algorithm but relevant, high quality content from a trusted source is important to them in analysing a page's importance. To do this, they look at the site content, the frequency of content updates, the keywords used and so on.

It is the ranking within the search engine index which determines the order of sites when a user taps in a search. Sites which rank more highly benefit from a greater frequency of clicks, traffic and sales as a result.

What SelectNews can do in terms of SEO

We can help place your website in the spotlight by producing the trusted, relevant and high quality content search engines rely on, specifically tailored to your site. A SelectNews feed will add dynamic pages to your site, which helps the search engines regard your site as current. The more up to date a site is, the more it is deemed as a trusted, authority site. We can time the delivery of the feed to suit your needs, for example when viewing figures are high or when readers log on in the morning.

Every news article should be set up to add a separate static page to your site to encourage search engines to explore and crawl your website more frequently (we don't divert readers and crawlers away from your site like RSS feeds do!). Including important keywords in your news url will also help identify the page. Articles can be archived to encourage further crawling of the site, and to provide an invaluable online knowledge resource to site users.

Accuracy is of immense importance to the Press Association, so the grammatical care and thorough fact checking which goes into SelectNews articles will also help define your website as "trusted". Each article is written uniquely by SelectNews journalists and editors. Articles are not duplicated in the same form across the World Wide Web which is important to search engines seeking high quality content. Our thorough content brief process ensures we will be writing articles which have direct relevance to your site and its specific audience.

Our metadata

Quality metadata can help optimise your position on search engines. We can include your important keywords in our xml and in the article body copy in order to help identify your news pages to the search engines. We aim to get keywords into headlines too for greater impact. The metadata can be used to create a fully searchable archive, or to filter out the news for greater personalisation of content. We can suggest ideas on how best to display your news and provide examples of how existing clients lay out their own feeds to help you come up with the best option. We recommend news is placed on the home page to help attract search engines.

Links

We can include both internal and external links in our xml. The service can be linked to your most profitable internal website pages to aid navigation for readers and to direct web crawlers. This encourages users to remain on site for longer and ultimately explore your products and services more. We can also create links to your key partners or relevant trade associations and organisations as part of an SEO link building strategy.

Other uses for the news...

Our news isn't just for websites, it can form part of your overall online marketing strategy. For example, news could be presented to your clients, subscribers and readers in the form of an e-newsletter to encourage traffic back to your site. It could be harnessed as a mechanism for your key personnel or site readers to add comment or give a view on a key industry issue.

News on an intranet site could inform your staff of the latest about your competitors in a given business area or keep them aware of market changes. We can work with you to come up with ideas that would fit your particular business and help raise awareness of your brand to your readers and clients. Some of our existing clients have chosen to promote the launch of their newsfeed with an internal press release and a reference to The Press Association as the supplier of news within the website.

If part of your overall strategy is to get articles linked to social bookmarking or social networking sites such as DIGG, Del.ico.us or Facebook it is possible to add their widgets to your news to encourage your readers to share the story with like minded people. This can be an effective way of generating traffic back to your website.

Feature content

We can also offer bespoke feature services for websites requiring fully researched articles to accompany a daily news feed or to operate independently. We have specialist feature writers available to work on your requirements. Please get in touch with us to discuss your needs.

Contact us to see how we can help you make the most of your website.