Newspapers and the Internet

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Back in March I wrote about the closure of one of the oldest newspapers in the US, the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the move to create an online only version of the newspaper, so I thought it relevant to go back and see how the move to the online space has been accepted by the readers of the post and other newspapers that have moved to an Internet only version.
It appears that the move to Internet only versions of the newspapers has seen some very interesting growth in reader numbers, at Seattlepi.com, the online successor to the now defunct print version of Post-Intelligencer, unique visitors have grown steadily since the paper went online-only in March, and according to executive producer Michelle Nicolosi. “We haven’t lost readers”.
In the Detroit area, where readers were amongst the first to lose home delivered newspapers, readers have taken to the new Internet only versions of the now defunct papers, for example, in April traffic grew 74% to the Detroit Free Press website.
Another interesting side benefit of the move online for the papers is that downloads of e-editions, or electronic newsprint equivalents of both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News increased seven fold when home delivery of the papers ended.
It would appear that readers retain loyalty to their local brands and are prepared to make the move with them when they move to online versions.
This trend I’m sure will be welcome news for the other newspapers that are facing closure in the US.
Internal Links – Create A Better SEO Result For Your Blog
Your blog will have a better SEO result when you utilise good SEO techniques such as link building, and one of the ways to do that is by creating internal links within your posts or content.
A good internal link structure can have a size-able impact on your rankings on the major search engines. Most blog writers either don’t use this strategy or don’t know how to create internal links and it is really quite simple. You want your readers, particularly new readers to discover all your great content, and by including links to your older posts, it gives them a whole new life, as well as maintaining your readers on your blog for a longer stay. For example, in February I wrote a post about Google Analytics and in January I wrote about how important an SEO strategy is to your business, as you see I’ve included internal links to both of these posts I’ve mentioned, knowing that when new readers visit my blog, they will be able to visit those posts and read the stories, effectively giving those older posts a new lease on life.
So here are a few tips for you on creating an internal link strategy and a few things you should avoid:
1. Avoiding Bad Anchor Text: Whilst adding “Click Here Text” may drive a better click through rate, it is not good for anchor text. You need to decide if click here or keywords are more important. In the examples above, I’ve decided that keywords are more important, you can of course mix them up, by including good keywords and then a separate link containing the words “Click Here”. So if you want to rank for “Red Widgets” don’t use the phrase click here. I’ll cover this in my next post.
2. Uneven Distribution of links: Make sure you spread your links around, promote all your old posts in your new content. But one word of advice, don’t over do it. One or two links per post is sufficient.
3. Broken Links – Make sure all your links work,there’s nothing worse for a reader than to click on a link in your post and it not work. If you change or upgrade your blog software it can cause broken links,so make sure they all work and test them regularly. If you are using Google webmaster tools on your blog, it will tell you if a link is broken. But beware, the search engines don’t like broken links.
4. Missed Opportunities: If you are blogging about a subject you’ve written about before, don’t miss the opportunity to link to your older content.
5.Edit Instead of Linking: Sometimes there is the temptation to go back and edit an old post, or you might even want to add some up dated information to it, Well resist the temptation, you are far better to write a new post and then include a link to your old one.
I hope this post on how to create internal links is helpful to you in getting a better result for your blog. You can breath new life into your old articles and posts by creating internal links, and it will help you in the search results.
Good Luck and if you need help please let me know by leaving me a comment on the blog. I’ll always respond to your questions.
You can now download and listen to this post as a podcast, click here to get the latest episode.
Link Farms & Your Blog – What to Avoid & Why

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During the course of my blog workshops I present a lot of options on how you can promote and syndicate your blog when you are just starting out, and one of the ways you can generate new readers is by putting your blog with, what the experts call, Link Farms.
The question you may have on the tip of your tongue is “What is a link farm? well link farms are web sites that have lots of inbound links that help increase their ranking and page rank on search engines such as Google. Some of these sites actually build or contain links to unrelated web sites, and sometimes these sites also link to themselves. Search engines are very strict on link farms and in some cases ban them all together from being indexed and displayed in search results.
If they are banned by Google for instance, they will lose their page rank, but that’s not the worst part, because if your blog is linked to one of these sites then you too can be banned and lose your page rank. That is why it is extremely important that you know what a link farm is, and you know how to properly identify one so that you avoid linking to that site.
If in the past you haven’t analysed the sites and directories you link to then you really need to start doing so, as they can have a massive impact on your site or blogs ranking. It is most important that you review the site closely before adding a link to it. Hopefully the following advice will help you know what to look for and help identify a link farm.
The Site has lots of links-If you go to a site and it has lots and lots of links then you should immediately realise it is possibly a link farm.
Low Page Rank -Usually link farms get penalised by Google and lose their page rank, therefore you need to be careful if you see a site with a page rank of 0, not all sites with this rank are link farms of course, but at least this will help you start to look more closely at the site.
Little or no content – Those that control link farms don’t care about content, all they want is the inbound links to help drive page rank. Therefore as a rule, don’t Link to a site that has little or no content on it.
Badly maintained sites- Most link farm webmasters don’t maintain their sites very well, links are all that are important to them. I’ve just removed my blog from one site that had heaps of broken links and links to pages that went nowhere. So check them carefully!!
Be careful as well, as to where you link your site, I added a link to a site about 6 months ago that was heavily used by spammers, unknown to me, and this caused my blog to be flagged by WordPress and removed from public view, the first I new about it was when my traffic decreased considerably, so be careful as WordPress will not notify you that you have been flagged.
My advice is to check out the directories and sites really well before you link to them. If you are still not sure, check out some really well known blogs, that have been around for awhile, to get a feel of what sites they link to.
I hope this helps and as always, if you need help, please leave me a comment and I’ll respond accordingly.
Home Buyers Twice As Likely to Use Online Than Print
New research from the US today has revealed that Home buyers are twice as likely to use on line sources than print sources to find information about open houses they are interested in, this is according to research conducted by Harris Interactive.
The survey commissioned for Trulia.com found that 62% of US home buyers use or plan to use on line sites to find open houses, compared with 53% who use/plan to use information from real estate agents, 36% who use/plan to use neighborhood signs and less than one-third (31%), who use/plan to use print sources, including newspapers and local flyer’s.
The study also found that though many home buyers rely upon a range of different sources to gather information about open houses, 41% say online sources are their primary resource, while 14% cite print sources.
More than 9 in 10 home buyers in the US (91%) attended or plan to attend open houses during their home-purchase process.
“The real estate section of the weekend newspaper is no longer the go-to resource for open houses,” said Sami Inkinen, co-founder and COO of Trulia. “Home buyers are increasingly going on line to not only search for the most up to date listings but also to obtain rich information about the neighborhood, schools, and local shops.”
Inkinen added that on line sites – such as Trulia – and related iPhone applications have experienced dramatic growth in recent years because they enable home buyers to search for open houses in neighborhoods that interest them, sign up for email alerts and learn more about the local areas in which they’re looking.
“We used to see home buyers walk into open houses with a newspaper in their hands,” said Aman Daro, VP of Integrated Marketing at McGuire Real Estate in San Francisco. “But now they walk in with print outs of their search on the web. What’s more, consumers are walking in very educated from their on line research – they know details about the property and the neighborhood, and are more highly engaged in the process than the casual lookers of years past.”
Here are the results of the survey as published by Harris:
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