Most companies with an online marketing strategy realize that duplicate content can destroy any good search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, which is why a number of large news organizations are trying to limit over syndication.
Zachary M. Seward of the Nieman Journalism Lab, writes that the Tribune Company – which owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, among a variety of other media outlets – has plans to make sure its content appears on only a single URL, rather than the variety of websites for its newspapers.
In its current form, newspapers from across the company can pick up a story that originated from a single news organization. With multiple forms of the content, it deteriorates the search engine optimization (SEO) of the article. Seward says the Tribune plan is to have readers of one website visit the original site to read the content.
The company will also be asking writers and editors to include keywords that they think will most likely lead to someone finding their article in a search result.
Using search engine optimization (SEO) is nothing new in the world of news as many organizations are using the tool to reach the top of search engine result pages as more people head online for their news.
