Must Have PR
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We were fascinated to read The Drum’s insider story on the secrets behind MailOnline’s huge 100 million readership in January. The relevance to US audiences and that sidebar; that much we knew. It was the approach to SEO techniques that is really interesting.
Having worked with Yahoo! to launch omg! in the UK, we know all about using search trends in conjunction with online celeb news, and the latest Comscore figures showed omg! to be the second biggest celebrity news site in the UK, only behind the Mail. But the extent to which MailOnline keep on top of trends is intriguing, looking at traffic on an almost hourly basis and actually making publishing decisions based on what they see in the up to the minute search trends.
I’ve made my opinions on SEO and journalism fairly clear, but this takes it to another level. Of course you could argue that it makes complete sense, Paul Dacre’s mantra is always ‘we give the readers what they want’ and what better way of serving what your audience exactly what they want than publishing what you can see they’re searching for?
It also begs the question, should we be pitching stories on subjects we can see for ourselves are on the rise in order to increase the likelihood of publication? Next time we’ve got a celebrity interview to offer the MailOnline, we may just wait until we can see their search stats climbing.
