Local Online News Website

voLdie

voLdie

Cody
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Sep 3, 2015
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Hey there,

So I am not new to SEO or IM but I have taken a several year break and am starting a new project.

A local news website that only has one company owned by a large media conglomerate. They also charge 15$ a month just to read the articles. I am coming at this from the angle as being an independent and small news org not backed by corporate money. Ill worry about monetization later probably via ads but the big angle is getting acquired and stomped by the big guy down the road.

I'm hiring writers from the local University as its massive and makes up a large percentage of the local population.

Now to the questions:

  • Are there any good resources for "trending" news SEO (in other words not long term content).
  • Any ideas for growing social?
  • Any obvious things i'm missing with my strategy?
  • Any tips on workflow to continue pumping out articles. Right now I am hoping to have someone monitor the competitor and rewrite the article based off theres -> post article -> share to social accounts. Also creating some large form content for optimized terms like best bar/food/climbing etc.
This was more so a brain dump and seeing if anyone has any helpful ideas or resources. I mostly in the past created niche affiliate sites and ranked for Best Product terms. This is obviously a bit different.

Thanks for any input and sorry for rambling.

Edit: Any tips for managing writers in this type of situation where I need a constant flow of shorter "news" articles?

Also whats the most easy and best system for commenting on WP these days. Used to use Disqus but anything better on the scene?
 
If they have their content behind a paywall and you're rewriting everything they publish, that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Shows clear pre-meditated intent and deliberate action.

"Trending SEO" isn't a thing as far as I know. The only thing that separates it from normal SEO is freshness. You might look up the term "newsjacking" to find more info about some tactics, though.

For social, for local news, I'd post it in local groups and run ads on platforms that let you target local people.

For organization, Trello works pretty good with the boards & cards and being able to assign people to each card, leave notes, etc. It gets everyone in the same spot. But in this case that might be too much when a simple google docs spreadsheet would work, since it's a ton of short articles. Less complexity is better for faster moving, simpler stuff.
 
Thanks dude. Trying to just use the paywalled site as more of an alerting/reference platform and writing the article from scratch. Nothing is copied verbatim besides relevant names of people or locations so hopefully I will be alright. Also going to get someone monitoring additional sources to push ideas to the writers to get away from any legal issues and make the site more unique.

I like the google sheets idea. I like the group idea and I'm already killing it on Twitter with a ton of verified journalists and people from the university following me. Will look more into "news jacking"

Thanks for the advice!
 
Research *location* "press" or "PR". Likewise with any big organisations, companies, groups who have a presence in your area.

Local news (from a user pov) = people, people, people, places they know and people. So BMDs, local events and local sports (the more local the better). Name the team lineups (people). Name the winners of the darts competitions (people). Name the people who grew the biggest marrows (people). Concentrate on local angles to national stories. Get a comment from someone local and you are off to the races.
"A local council official denied that there were any plans to allow fracking..."
"A local councillor called for water inspections on local supplies following worries about NJ and Flint..."

Every local journalist used to get beaten to a story by their rivals now and again. What did you do? Go out and get a fresh comment and retell the story from your angle.

Social - obvious stuff - set up FB page and Pinterest account and start growing them if you haven't already.

Do local video. Doesn't have to be great and even better if the large conglomerate hasn't got around to doing it.

Are you in an English-language country writing in English?
 
Hey @ToffeeLa Yes this is in the US. One of the Whitest yuppie places around.

Like your idea about reaching out for comments. I have noticed to if I mention someone in a story then tweet out the story mentioning them in the tweet they often retweet or like which is skyrocketing growth at the moment.

It's for sure about the people and getting them to share it. People are egotistical so its pretty damn easy. Easier then getting someone to tweet about your Best 10 Vacuum Cleaners of 2019 article lol.

Thanks!

Edit: I am also going to try to leverage the Reddit for the city for hiring and trying to rally people against the "big guy" paper.
 
Local government / Police / HOAs / School, etc.. sites, twitter feeds, facebook accounts.
Facebook groups, local reddits, etc etc

Can all be sources of news
 
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