3 Ways to Maximize Traffic to Your Stories

One of the reasons Before It’s News is such a great place to publish news stories is that Google picks them up within about 15 minutes of publishing. And there’s no better source of news-hungry traffic than Google and the other search engines.

But being picked up by Google and appearing early in its search results are not the same thing. There are things you can do to help your stories appear early in Google and other search engine results (which means scads more traffic!).

3 Ways to Maximize Traffic to Your Stories

No. 1 – Use a Google-Friendly Title

The title that you select for your article becomes the page title (what you see all the way at the very top of your web browser — for this page it’s “3 Ways to Maximize Traffic to Your Stories | Before It’s News”) and also is included in the page URL. The page title and URL are two extremely important items to Google. So make sure your title is descriptive yet concise. Get the important words as early in the title as possible. And fix typos before submitting!

For example, you could title a page, “Stage Set Accident Ruled Out As Cause of Bret Michael’s Brain Troubles.” But Google would treat this title better, “Bret Michaels Brain Troublesl Not Caused by MTV Stage Accident.”  Bret Michaels is the most important term in the title, so get it as early in the title as possible. Also, work in other key terms that might help people find the story, like “MTV.”

No. 2 – Work Hot Keywords Into Your Title

This is news. It’s happening every second. People are looking for the news by typing keywords into Google and Twitter searches. It’s a great idea to identify just what keywords people are using at the moment and work them into your title.

You can get your finger on the pulse of what people are searching for today and right now by utilizing Google Hot Trends and Twitter.

Google reports what people are searching for periodically during the day at its Hot Trends page:  www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Twitter lists its most popular search terms in its interface. Just go to Twitter.com (create an account if you don’t have one – it’s free and fast). Then in your Twitter page scroll down until you see “Trending: Worldwide” in the right side column. Click on the little arrow next to that to expand the Trending topic, and you’ll see the current terms that people are searching for most and Twittering about most at that very moment.

So, if you have a story about Apple, you might see that “Steve Jobs” is trending on Twitter. So if you can work “Steve Jobs” into your title, by all means do so. If it’s an iPod, iPhone or iPad story, *always* include those terms in your title. Those terms are always hot.

No. 3 – Use Keywords Up Top

Google figures that if a story is about something, you’re going to say so early on in the story. So make sure to get your most important keywords placed as early in your story as possible.

Using our Apple example, you could start a story, “Apple announced today that…”  But let’s say it was Steve Jobs who made the announcement, and “Steve Jobs” is in Google Hot Trends list. Then you would want to start your story with, “Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, announced today…”

Additionally, you should make sure to sprinkle “Steve Jobs” throughout the story to reinforce that he’s an important part of it. This will help you rank better on Google for “Steve Jobs.”

Bonus Tip

Link to your other articles. Always include a link to at least one of your other articles on BIN in your story. If you have a related story, that’s ideal. If not, find a story that is likely to interest the reader of your current story, Someone reading about Steve Jobs announcing a new iPhone might be very interested in reading about other tech or computer stories.