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Five ways news sites can generate links

News organisations are trying to regulate use of their content and encourage visitors to pay for their news. But most simultaneously realise they need Google and other search engines to rank their sites in order to have a significant chance at earning revenue online.

Share buttons on The Wall Street Journal’s website illustrate the paradox. Even as News Corpplans to begin charging mobile readers re-raises paywalls, its articles are surrounded by “share” buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Digg and many more.

Why? Incoming links are crucial to search engine rankings. To search engines, inbound links are similar to votes, showing that others feel strongly enough about the page to link to it, indicating that it is worthy of high rankings. 
Newspapers and other news organisations already have an upper hand when it comes to earning incoming links. Their brand and reputation prompt linking. But with so many outlets competing for the same audience and many online publications finding credibility with their audience, simply being a reputable source is no longer enough.

How can news organisations get more incoming links in this increasingly competitive climate? Here are five suggestions from a blogger and someone who links to news sites every day.

1. Have “share” links on your site

Place links to encourage readers to share your links over various social networking and social news sites. Last year I wrote an article describing some of the different social news sites; they remain just as important today.

While only a small percentage of your readers might have a blog or a website of their own, most of them will have a Facebook, Myspace or another social networking account. Likewise, more users will participate in social news sites such as Digg and Reddit than will have their own presence on the web.

Reaching out to that crowd has the potential to generate far more inbound links than reaching out to bloggers or other sites. However, it is important to understand that many sites, such as Facebook, make many of these inbound links private and, thus, invisible to the search engines. However, they can have great returns in terms of raw traffic. 


2. Keep your links stable




The term for a URL that links to an individual story or post is a “permalink,” the prefix meaning permanent. If your site’s URLs change regularly, people will be very hesitant to link to your content because they know, most likely, the link will not be valid after a certain amount of time.

If you change your site’s structure, you need to forward all old URLs to their proper destination with good redirects. That way nothing needs to be done by webmasters to ensure that your links works correctly.
The caveat to this is that there is a time limit on how long you need to keep links valid. If a link terminates after a few years, it likely won’t even be noticed and little will be thought of it. However, links should be as permanent as possible, especially ones you encourage people to share.

3. What is public needs to stay public

Many news sites, including The New York Times, have begun cycling content into their archives after a set number of days. In many cases accessing these archives requires only registration. Other times, a public story is moved behind a paywall after it reaches a certain age.

Either way, the link to the story is useless. Anyone who clicks the link cannot read the article without an account. Only a small number will be motivated to register for even a free password, much less a paid service.
As with changing permalinks, this is a deal breaker for many sites that would link to certain sources. There may be a time when a link can be put behind a wall, but it would most likely be measured in months, not days or weeks.




4. Give back

Blogs use a system of trackbacks and pingbacks that alert the original blog when a different site has posted a link about them, causing the original site to display the link as a comment. 

A news site doesn’t have to follow this exact formula. But displaying outside sites that discuss the piece does make sense, even if it is just with a rolling list of the latest five or 10 articles linking back. The idea is to show care and appreciation for links others give to your work. It also has a less altruistic user benefit, in that it aggregates much of the conversation about the topic and lets your readers see what others are saying about your work – without leaving your site.

This reduces your audience’s reliance on Google to find other sites about a news story; it may actually help improve visitor retention. 


 

5. Write good content



Publishing well-written content is the best way to ensure people will link to it. The maxim about content being king may be a cliché, but it is true. However, the key is that it must be original content. Associated Press stories and other items that can be obtained from multiple sources are diluted in their link-obtaining potential. Posting original content should ensure that all links go to content produced within your own company.

It is also worth noting that video and audio embeds, while great tools for getting that content in front of more eyes, and thus hopefully generating more ad dollars, does not have any search engine benefit. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t allow sites to embed your multimedia, just that a traditional link is still best.

Still, no one is going to link to the best content if they are scared to do so, if they don’t feel it is appreciated or if it isn’t easy for them. The goal is to pave a path to an inbound link and then give the reader a reason to traverse it. 



Bottom line

One of the reasons blogs have become established so quickly on the web is their constant linking to one another. This pushes them to the tops of the search engines and, from there, to the top of many people’s minds.

Mainstream news organisations still have the bulk of the readership and the reputation, but they will have to work with one another and the rest of the online community if they want to capitalise on those things and stay at the top.

The simple truth is that no news organisation (or blogger for that matter) is an island. Co-operation is going to be key in any success story.

On that front, embracing the web means embracing links: something every site, large and small, should be doing.

—-
Flickr image from user Stabilo Boss

Tags: internet, linking, search engine, social networking, technology,

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