The Blog on Branding

Brett Payne: an SEO Success Story

“Online you can take a newsstand and put it in the middle of Times Square by doing good SEO, or you can take your newsstand and stick it in the middle of Kansas by doing no SEO. It’s your choice,” says the Director of SEO for the Tribune Company, Brett Payne.

The whole point of optimizing a site is to see results based on higher site traffic, higher conversion rates, and increased sales, so it is always good to hear a success story. Payne was able to increase the site traffic on the Tribune websites by 20 million in just three years. An article by Rachelle Money featuring Payne’s success accounted his journey with the Tribune Company and laid out some important aspects that are sure to give results for other sites.

“Online you can take a newsstand and put it in the middle of Times Square by doing good SEO…”

Much of Brett Payne’s success came from convincing three groups of people of the possible success of an ongoing SEO campaign:

1. Yourself (The site SEO Manager)
2. Site Content Writers
3. “Outside” Forces

1) Convince Yourself (Be a Student of the Keyword Research Game!)

The main way to gain confidence in your site’s SEO campaign is through constant research and gathering of useful data. As a part of a company’s site or some other type of site, it becomes very easy to be subjective or use uncommon knowledge when trying to determine how a customer will think about your site or the products you offer.

Understanding how the consumer will translate what they are looking for into a search engine, can only be achieved a few ways:

1. Direct communication with your customer base through focus groups, surveys about company/product word associations, etc.

2. Keyword Research. There are many available keyword research tools that will help determine which keywords are best for your site, where your site already ranks on major search engine results, as well as provide you with other valuable information.

A Few Keyword Research Tools

1. Google Analytics
   Tells you, how people:
   • Find your site
   • Navigate through it
   • Become customers

   Compare your site usage metrics with industry averages and track Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.
   Uncover trends, patterns, and key comparisons with funnel visualization, motion charts, and mapping.

2. Wordtracker
   Allows you to search specific keywords, view the number of searches and evaluate the number of competing websites for that keyword based on a couple different search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN).
3. RankChecker
   Allows you to know where your website ranks in the search results. Firefox RankChecker extension allows you to easily check your website rankings in Google (US and international), Yahoo, and Microsoft Live search.

After researching what keywords will be profitable for your site, be sure to use a page’s targeted keyword in its title as well as in its link text. These are two of the ways search engines look for matches and will help increase your optimization.

“There are many available keyword research tools—use em!”

2) Convince the Site Content Writers

The first thing Brett Payne did when arriving at the Tribune was grasp the resources that he had, and move them all in the same direction. Since Payne was working at a news site, he knew that he would need to convince/educate the journalists and editors about optimizing online content.

At first, he gave a presentation to the journalists about SEO and how they would use it, but then did something more interesting. He tapped into their competitive spirits. Payne proclaims, “Every time stories from that 25% (pro-SEO journalists) hit the top of Google, an email went out not only to them but to their bosses as well. I sent a short email which said great job, your story got the first page of Google, you have driven this much traffic to our site – and that reaffirmed to them that this (SEO) was the right thing to do.”

Instead of becoming another content editor himself, he left if up to each writer to optimize their own content. Each writer became a part of the SEO process, feeling more connected to the results (no pun intended) they saw. This success pushed the journalists to convince the skeptical journalists to get on board with the idea, without Payne having to play the bad guy.

With everyone at the site on the same page, a very crucial aspect of SEO is still remaining; link building with other sites.

“Make sure everyone’s on the same page.”

3) Convince “Outside Forces”

Aaron Wall, CEO of the online leading SEO website SEOBook, says “Link Building… Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it’s still the trump card for higher rankings.”

With the Tribune Company, Brett Payne had direct access to a system many will not. Using the 50 Tribune websites, he is able to link traffic to any specific site with a relevant article from the rest of the sites. Without this convenience, gaining inbound links is still doable.

The main ways to convince other sites to link to your site are to:

1. Have useful, interesting articles
2. Launch a link exchange campaign
3. Promote your content

It is important that the sites that are linking to your site are in relevant fields and are trusted by search engines. The more trusted the site, the more weight the search engine will place on its outbound links. Using these principles from Brett Payne and others like him will get everyone on your site working in the same direction toward better SEO productivity.

By Chris Streeter