Content Idea: The Power of Breaking News
by Matt on Jan 5, 2009 in Content, MY BEST POSTS
The Tri-Cities is relatively small, so “breaking news” is a term that we sometimes use pretty loosely. Still, two recent episodes involving our local blogs showed me the power of breaking news content when it comes to driving traffic.
Episode #1: Pasco Winter Storms
In mid-December, we had a series of winter storms one after the other. One of those storms was particularly bad; our local airport suffered through cancelled flights, regional bus service was cancelled, mountain passes were closed, etc. This was right before Christmas, so you can imagine what a headache this was for locals and out-of-towners trying to travel in or out of the area.
The problems began on Sunday, December 20. When I realized things would continue to be bad the next day, I wrote a blog post:
Pasco Airport Weather Delays to Continue on Monday
I published that late Sunday night. Notice that I used a primary keyword (Pasco Airport Weather Delays) in the headline. If you read the post, you’ll see that I mention Pasco Airport a couple more times, and even use the 3-letter airport code (PSC), in case people searched with that instead of the full name.
How’d it work? Have a look:
Sure enough, lots of people were searching for information about the airport delays, and our Pasco blog saw that big spike in traffic. The traffic even stayed higher than normal for several days after the worst day of weather problems.
Episode #2: Local Fire
Early one morning last week, a fire destroyed the clubhouse at the West Richland Golf Course. Fortunately, no one was hurt; but the facility was a total loss. Cari heard about the news and blogged about it when she got to the office that morning.
Here’s what blog traffic looked like that day:
The traffic jump isn’t as dramatic as in the Pasco example, but it’s obvious. The search engines found the post quickly, and it showed up when locals were looking for news about the fire.
Conclusion
In that second example, I don’t mean to come across as though I’m happy that we benefited from someone else’s tragedy, but the point is clear: People get a lot of their news online these days, and when local news breaks, they’re likely to turn to Google, Yahoo, etc., to find out anything they can.
Hyperlocal bloggers should be prepared to take advantage of that, and give local neighbors the news they want whenever possible.
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The Tri-Cities is relatively small, so “breaking news” is a term that we sometimes use pretty loosely. Still, two recent episodes involving our local blogs showed me the power of breaking news content when it comes to driving traffic….
VERY interesting. Great point to make, blog about everyone will be looking for and reading about. Not just about past news events. Cool.
Very interesting stuff. I wonder what kind of conversion rate (subscribers or bookmarks) you might see from these visitors. It’s got to be much higher than, say, stumbleupon traffic. I especially liked the Pasco Airport post. It answers pretty much every question one might have which I’m sure the readers appreciated.
I missed a good opportunity with the 5.0 Earthquake last night in here Southern California. Darn. Maybe I’ll go Bruce Almighty style and just create some news? jk
Good questions, Justin. We’re getting a TON of traffic on our West Richland blog right now because the Yakima River is expected to flood this weekend. I hope we’ll be introducing the blog to local folks who will bookmark us and/or subscribe to the feed, but too soon to know. Will definitely be watching.
I strongly recommend using more local keywords on blogs and websites. You don’t think about it, but there are lots of Tri-Cities. And besides Pasco, WA, there is also a Pasco, FL. I wonder if your search engine rankings would improve if you used more related terms, such as your state, more often. That’s what I wrote about, tongue-in-check, in “Keeping Visitors Away from Your Website“. At least you wouldn’t have to compete for rankings with Florida realtors so much.
Thx for the comment, Michael. I’ll probably talk about this in a post one of these days. I’ve seen real estate blogs that are all about SEO and keywords and, frankly, not a human on earth would ever want to read them. There are other signals that help a search engine determine the location you’re talking about without having to constantly reference the state abbreviation, state name, etc. Plus, search results are geo-targeted now by default, so people searching in my area will naturally see SERPs related to Richland WA moreso than the many other Richlands across the country.
But anyway, good topic and probably worth writing about in the future. Thx again.