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SEO Blueprint, Mourning Old Media’s Decline and Search SEO Pro

Online Marketing Connect has a good overview of what you should include in an SEO blueprint.

The New York Times reflects on the developments I’ve mentioned over the past few days. The whole article is worth a read, but this part is particularly interesting:

For readers, the drastic diminishment of print raises an obvious question: if more people are reading newspapers and magazines, why should we care whether they are printed on paper?

The answer is that paper is not just how news is delivered; it is how it is paid for.

More than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenue still derives from the print product, a legacy technology that attracts fewer consumers and advertisers every single day. A single newspaper ad might cost many thousands of dollars while an online ad might only bring in $20 for each 1,000 customers who see it.

The difference between print dollars and digital dimes — or sometimes pennies — is being taken out of the newsrooms that supply both. And while it is indeed tough all over in this economy, consider the consequences.

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Christian Science Monitor Online Only Now

NYT has the scoop:

After a century of continuous publication, The Christian Science Monitor will abandon its weekday print edition and appear online only, its publisher announced Tuesday. The cost-cutting measure makes The Monitor the first national newspaper to largely give up on print.

The article continues:

Before The Monitor, a handful of small papers had shifted away from print. Earlier this year, The Capital Times in Madison, Wis. went online only, and The Daily Telegram in Superior, Wis., announced it would publish online except for two days a week.

Dropping the print edition seems to tempt newspaper executives. At a recent conference hosted by the City University of New York’s journalism school, a group of publishing executives discussed what a cost-efficient newsroom should look like. They eventually settled on casting aside paper and starting fresh on the Web.

Interesting, especially in light of yesterday’s circulation numbers.

Lowering Your Bounce Rate and Sharing Links on Twitter

Bounce rate is defined as: “the percentage of web site visitors who arrive at a web site entry page, then leave without going any deeper into the site.” SEO 2.0 looks at seven simple ways you can lower your bounce rate. Here is my favorite advice from the piece:

7. Place search on top
Many people who don’t find what they seek in an instant resort to search. So those visitors, especially SV who do not find exactly what they want and who do not spot the search form will leave. If you’re after the conversion this also applies to the call to action.

Wordyard has some great advice for Twitter:

So here’s an opportunity for Twitter, or for someone else, if the Twitter team is too busy: Offer a service very similar to Twitter but optimized for link-sharing. (FriendFeed is cool but it’s trying to do so many other things at the same time that I don’t think it suits what I’m talking about.) Make it easier to share links real-time; expose the actual URL; give us some rudimentary tools for organizing the links; and watch something cool grow.

Of course, Twitter has the critical mass of usage right now, and that’s not going away. But surely there’s room for improvement.

What are you reading today?

Goals of a Search Optimized Page, Secrets of Social Media, RSS for Google and Generating Search Engine Traffic

SEO Scoop has The Five Goals of a Search Optimized Page.

Digital Labz has 10 Secrets of the Best Social Media Users.

Great news. Google will soon begin offering RSS feeds for web searches.

Why is this big news? Because there’s no better way to keep track of new mentions of a company, person or concept online than through RSS.

Problogger discusses How to Get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog. This post offers plenty of useful advice that is applicable for all websites, not just blogs.

Search Engine Optimization, participating in social media, building community and producing content are four important elements of building a site that gets (and keeps) high levels of traffic. When a blogger becomes obsessed by any one of them (to the detriment of others) the site can suffer (or at least not realize its potential). When the four elements come together a blog can grow quite rapidly.

Are you reading anything good today?