Many have said that the newspaper is a dying industry as more and more readers get their news on the web, but in an attempt to keep themselves relevant some papers are turning to search engine optimization (SEO) to draw in traffic.
ChicagoNow is an endeavor undertaken by the Chicago Tribune which it says is an attempt to "connect Chicago’s diverse online voices," and give them a larger audience.
In a post over the weekend, Bill Adee – who has the title of "blog scout" for the website – wrote about blogger and community guidelines for the project, which includes some information about search engine optimization (SEO).
Adee writes that bloggers will be compensated for the traffic they receive, and in order to help them get the most attention, ChicagoNow plans on helping bloggers learn the ins and outs of promoting their posts through social media and search engine optimization (SEO).
This is not the only news organization that is turning to search engine optimization (SEO) in order to increase traffic to its site. In a move similar to ChicagoNow, the Huffington Post said earlier this year that it reserved the right to not only make editorial changes to content that had been submitted, but to change headlines for improved SEO.
More traditional news outlets appear to be using search engine optimization as well. Last month the Atlanta Journal Constitution appeared to unveil its SEO strategy when a headline on the paper’s website listed a number of the keywords for the piece.
