Times online traffic boosted by SEO

8th May 2008

The number of web users visiting the Times Online website has been boosted by the use of search engine optimisation techniques, according to its editor in chief Anna Spackman.

Speaking at the Periodical Publishers Association's annual conference she said that 35 to 40 per cent of Times Online traffic comes from the homepage, with readers going directly to the site and searching for news stories internally.

But increasingly she explained that search engines were helping to bring web traffic to the site, with around 27 per cent now coming from Google as users search for particular news stories externally.

She said the Times Online is training its journalists in search engine optimisation to ensure that web traffic is captured from these external sources.

This includes monitoring the search terms readers use to enter the site to better understand the interests of their target audience and the kind of stories they like to read.

Sunday Times writer James Ashton recently suggested that effective search engine optimisation is essential to businesses as most web users click on the first few links returned in a search engine query.