Blog content and SEO fuel traffic boom to latimes.com

How has the latimes.com attracted record traffic at a time when its best-established competitors are suffering slumps? The answer, according to the ship’s captain, Managing Editor/ Online Jimmy Orr, is a two-pronged blog content and SEO strategy that is attracting users hungry for quality journalism.

While the L.A. Times isn’t necessarily about to outpace the New York Times or Huffington Post in terms of readers, it has enjoyed a 5.4% year-on-year increase in uniques over June. Meanwhile, the Washington Post saw a decrease of 9%, the New York Times slumped by 18.8% and the Wall Street Journal by a hefty 20.5%. So, it’s time to take notice of a social media strategy that’s clearly working for the L.A. Times.

The cornerstone is a ramped up blogging strategy that has, according to niemanlab.org, “opened new doors for reader engagement”. Weaving news into blog content and even breaking stories within blogs, has fuelled engagement. Add to the mix a new SEO chief, optimising search-friendly headlines for the web, and traffic from search has leapt by 65% from this time last year. Combine the next ingredient, enhanced Facebook marketing to drive reader comments, and the result is a happy vicious circle. A larger community creates more traffic which creates more conversation and sharing around the Times’ content…and so on.

Orr puts the blogs’ recent traffic-driving success down to excellent content writers and high frequency posting. A recent move to integrate Facebook commenting has also driven quality comments as well as driving traffic from Facebook. In fact, since adding Facebook comments to about 50% of the site, including most blogs, latimes.com is now getting 450% more traffic referred from Facebook than this time last year.

All in all, the latimes.com is a welcome success story within a climate in which many organisations, news and other, are struggling to attract all-important traffic. While the paper is still on a learning curve as it adapts to online, Orr sounds positive about the migration: “There is a misperception that when you put something up on the web, it’s a crapshoot whether people are going to see this or not going to see this,” he said. “In reality, you are much more in control of whether your story is read than many people think.”