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Anatomy of a Blog/Newsletter Archive
June 22, 2006
Archive, Archive, Archive.
The following transcript is loosely based on many client conversations. For our purpose, we will join this conversation in progress, and leave it in much the same fashion.
Consultant: Oh, so you have a newsletter. Do you archive it?
Client: No. Should we?
Consultant: Absolutely!
Client: Well, we’ll see
. . . And Scene.
The recommendation repeatedly . . . dare I say ritualistically . . . receives reluctance. Why, man, Why? If you go to the trouble of creating fresh, useful content for a targeted audience, why not show it to the search engines? How different is that from a blog? Not too many people argue that blogs do not have search engine value, including newsletter pushers not yet ready to be called bloggers. What they do not realize is that the blog structure is flexible enough for the newsletter pusher to plug in newsletter content postfactum, thus protecting his or her newsletter status.
Enter Jill Whalen. You would be hard pressed to find someone that balances search engine value and user focus better than Jill. When she makes a move, you can guarantee that both parties are justly considered. Jill Whalen has always archived her newsletter, but she did not always archive it like this.
In adopting the blog structure, Jill Whalen has made it easier for humans to peruse her archive, for search engines to index her archive, and for me to advocate such archives. Jill's linking structure is perfect. She drives traffic and correspondence to the archive by linking to the archived location from that article in the newsletter. The article will have a temporary home on the archive main page, as well as permanent homes on its own page, within the monthly and other relevant categories.
With the release of each new issue, the archive will show search engines new pages of fresh, relevant content. And Google loves new content, but Google also loves old content when there is proof of new content, so the older articles will continue to gain steam as new issues are added.
And look at those links, a completely different navigational structure than the main site. Just one link on the left. Jill Whalen is completely emphasizing conversion. And on the other side, she points out the previous issues, beneficial to human and search engine alike. Then she links (with keywords, of course) to her most important sections of the main site. As for the body, every article links to itself in the title, then all categories under which it could be found at the end of the article.
More pages, more fresh content, and more keyword-rich links equate to more relevance, more importance, and better indexability. If you will not do if for me, please do it for Jill Whalen.
All posts by Tom Lustina
posted by Tom Lustina at June 22, 2006 01:16 PM
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Comments
Thanks, Tom!
Jill
Posted by: Jill at June 25, 2006 12:37 AM
Thank you for advancing the archive cause, Jill!
Posted by: Tom at June 29, 2006 10:44 AM