We live in the here and now. You have heard the old saying, “They can not see the forest through trees.”? The same can be said of business owners designing their Web sites. All too often the focus is on meeting current needs and demands and not on creating a scalable design that can grow with your ever changing demands. To that end, archives must be built around current information that must be placed in an environment where users can find it for years to come.
I am no prophet, but I can tell you that there are many “things” that will come to life over the next year that will affect your Web site. If your fall or springs plans are a redesign of your magazine or business web site make sure that archives are in your plans.
Archives are a constant topic of debate. The reason for this is very simple, people come to the net for three reasons; (1) E-mail, (2) Research and (3) Entertainment. Research is driving force behind the Internet. Enid Burns from the ClickZ Network, reported on Nov 20, 2007 that of the five major or "core" search engines, Google held a substantial lead over its rivals in September 2007, according to comScore research. Of the 9.4 billon searches performed at the five major engines, Google maintained a 57 percent share over competing search engines Yahoo (23.7 percent); Microsoft (10.3 percent); Ask (4.7 percent); and Time Warner including AOL (4.5 percent). An analysis of search activity at the top 50 Internet properties worldwide shows Google's sites lead the pack with 6.6 billion searches, followed by Yahoo (2.4 billion), and Microsoft (999 million). Thus, the ability for your archives to been “scrubbed” by search engines is more powerful then ever before. However, this dos not mean that you can or should blindly place every word of your magazine online.
I would encourage you to think about doing these three things to see significant success from your archives.
1. Get the rights needed to place articles online in perpetuity
2. Give users free access to key word heavy teaser paragraphs.
3. Make search easy to find on your site
The first step in your process toward archive success is getting the rights to place content online from your writers. Hiring a lawyer that specializes in the business of intellectual property law is mission critical. This is an important step that is often overlooked. Here is a paragraph from an online contract that speaks volumes, “Contractor hereby assigns to Company the perpetual, royalty-free right to publish said Content, in whole or in part, in any medium now known or later developed including online archives.” If you do not have language of this nature in your freelance writer contract, you need to call your lawyer. Online archives are your future. Freelances are becoming more reasonable than ever before on this issue. They may want to charge you more up front, but there is a benefit to you in the future. Most freelancers just want to be treated fairly. If a freelance writer is not willing to give you archives rights, you may need to look else where.
Second, find a content management system that will allow you to take the first paragraph of a story and make it readable to the general public free. (Google “content management systems” to find one that will meet your needs.) Then you lock down the remainder of the story behind a free registration system. If the public can read it, then the Googlebot™ can read it. This point alone is a controversial issue, but not if (a) you are a niche content provider or (b) you give the user enough reason to sign up for your site. All too often the sign up process is labor intensive or offers no reason for the user to make that step and give you personal data. This issue also does not apply to those media in the daily news business. There are far too many free no registration offerings to make site sign-up worthwhile on a daily news site. We operate in the niche media space. In this space our content is valuable and worth the price of admission. Especially if the price is just our e-mail and some basic demo information. Once you have a locked system in place you need to place as much of the article online that will meet the user’s research needs. You are not giving away the article because you have two lines of revenue, (1) you have their registration data to sell and use and (2) you can sell ads on the page as well.
Finally, make your search box easy to find on your site. This point alone is paramount to your success. Placing it in the top margin of the page is mission critical. Hiding it in the rail at the bottom is suicide by search. If the user is logged into your site than once they search they see the whole article. If they are not, they get the first paragraph of the story and then are required to sign in for the rest. The first paragraph of the story needs to show enough content that they get a general idea if they have found what they are looking for. Be sure that your editorial staff places a lot of key words in the first paragraph and writes in good old fashioned inverted funnel style and you will be set.
As niche publishers, never forget how valuable your data is online. There is a fine line to walk between free and the registered model we have discussed. I would caution you against a paid model online as it has been my experience that people are not yet willing to pay for the content especially if they subscribe to the magazine. With that said, investing in new technology that opens up the site to subscribers is emerging each day. Already many companies that offer digital solutions that have offerings to meet these needs in a variety of ways. All in all, you need to plan ahead for archives to be an important part of your web site. Never forget that meeting the current needs of your users is important, but using data from today to drive users tomorrow is your future. Get ahead of the archive curve and win in the end. Never forget what I preach over and over, he who owns the data wins.
The views of Ryan Dohrn are 100% personal in nature and do not represent the views of his employer, any other person, company or entity in any way. Any similarly is coincidental in nature. Please listen to Ryan’s audio version of this blog online at http://www.ryandohrn.com/
- Ryan R. Dohrn©2007
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