Table Of Contents
Introduction
Step 1: Build a Responsive Website
Step 2: Find Your Niche
Step 3: Create Genuine Content
Step 4: Learn SEO Now, or hire someone who already knows it
Step 5: Get Backlinks to Your Editorial Website
Welcome to the first part of our comprehensive guide on creating your perfect editorial site! There’s a lot to cover, so we’ve split this guide into several parts so you can produce a successful beginning and future for your editorial site. Let’s hit the ground running with a brief explanation of just what entails running an editorial site.
If you’ve browsed a local news site, the rapidly growing Medium, or even your favorite Vogue site, you’ve experienced an editorial site. Editorials are more focused on news and relevant topical discussions. If that sounds familiar, you may be onto the fact that a topical blog also fits under that umbrella of an editorial website! You could also call this ‘How to start a Blog’ and not be in the wrong.
Let’s get into the starting steps of building a top-ranking editorial website!
Step 1: Build a Responsive Website
The first step you should establish in the creation of an Editorial site is building a responsive and well-designed web page. Browse your favorite websites and take a more critical eye to how they’re designed. How does it feel when clicking through the site? Is the more relevant content displayed first? How is everything positioned to catch your eye? Look at several in topics you’re thinking of for your site. Look at the top ten search results relevant to topics you’re looking to design your site around. Don’t forget to take extensive notes; they’ll come in handy later.
The easiest method of starting a responsive editorial site is by far through WordPress. They have an optimized dashboard that makes assembling posts easy once you get the hang of it and the amount of easily available tools for it, called widgets, is staggering. It’s practically a one-step solution for beginning your website.
It sounds a bit daunting, but research is the first rule of the content business. It’s a never-ending journey, but at some point, you’ve got to put your skills to the test. There’s a couple of methods to start a blog, such as from your social media accounts to the ever-popular and highly regarded WordPress. If starting your own site feels a bit overwhelming, don’t worry. We can help you out with that.
Step 2: Find Your Niche
By the time you’ve considered preparing an editorial site, no doubt you’ve had a general topic in mind to focus on. Your next step is to narrow it down further. Niche groups tend to be the most loyal since there are so few sites that cater to their particular hobby.
Often they also have groups of their own scattered around on various social media outlets. One of the most powerful ways to gain that following is to join and contribute to these groups outside of your own site. Sharing relevant articles and discussing the news with the other members is critical to establishing yourself as both an expert and a thought leader.
Note that you should never look at these groups as only a way to grow your site. Goodwill extends only as far as you treat them as fellow hobbyists on your site and create a welcoming environment for them. They can provide further avenues of growth and will likely tell their friends in the hobbies about your content and services.
Step 3: Create Genuine Content
As an editorial site, you are only as good as your content.
That is why in every step of the process. A quality article ensures it is both entertaining and informative in its scope. Whether you write the articles yourself or hire an editor, you should take a critical eye to both factors before publishing it. Avoid overusing clickbait techniques, have a variety in your niche, and don’t be afraid to talk on topics outside of your specific area so long as you can properly relate it to your overall site image.
For example, a music review site could highlight the differences between a cd, digital, and vinyl lp release of an album while discussing the pros and cons. You’ve not only touched upon the music itself for the fans of music reviews, but you also may attract the fans of the differing formats. Then in the next article branching from it, they could speak on the vinyl release of another album exclusively to lock in the attention of the vinyl enthusiasts as well, providing organic growth.
Step 4: Learn SEO Now, or hire someone who already knows it
We can hear the groans now. SEO is deceptive, as many site owners only think of it as optimizing keywords in the article itself to provide consistent relevance to google, yahoo, and any algorithmic search. Falling into such a simple idea is a fatal mistake you need to avoid at all costs. Here’s the golden secret to optimizing your site’s SEO for the highest view count possible.
Multiple types of content
As you were doing some research, did you notice one defining factor? Each and every successful site has embraced the idea of providing more than just one way to consume the content they produce. Many readers want to see a video at times or listen to a podcast on their way to work. If you don’t have a way to do so, they’ll turn elsewhere to satisfy that need.
Videos, Podcasts, and Infographics are all differing types of content when compared to the typical article structure of a blog. This adds more retention to your site as people consume various media day today. More importantly, search algorithms tend to favor sites catering to multiple content structures over a singular focus. You can also take it one step further by hosting the content on a platform like Youtube or Soundcloud to create a backlink to your site. Speaking of backlinks…
Step 5: Get Backlinks to Your Editorial Website
High-quality backlinks are a treasure trove in your growth efforts. It’s the lifeblood of outreach for any editorial site and should be your first stop in focused marketing. The importance of getting quality backlinks cannot be overstated as they are naturally positioned in places where your main audience visits regularly.
How do we get our links on other sites?
First is to look back to those websites you researched. Notice how some websites link over to news on other sites as well as their own? The key term is content aggregation, the tactic of posting articles and stories of other sites on their own web page in exchange for crediting and linking back to the original source. Spend some time to write some personal notes to the websites to see about the arrangements they have for guest posts. Remember to keep in mind that if you have to pay the admins to guest post on any website, it’s likely not worth it.
Also, take the chance to test the backlinks they do have on the site. Are they still working? Webmasters hate having broken links on their site as it negatively impacts their site rankings. Being kind enough to notify them earns major points and opens the door for you to suggest your own.
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In Conclusion
That’s only scraping the surface for high-quality backlinks. In the future, we may discuss a comprehensive list of all the tactics for creating backlink opportunities.
Now that you have these steps in place, we can begin building a strategy to build our viewer base. As any successful site knows, that’s only half the battle. Join us in part two where we discuss the avenues to turn that growth into a profitable and long-lasting business.
Have your website and audience built? Click Here to learn the top methods for making money from your new editorial site!
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