Content Structuring and White SEO
Hello! The starting days of the World Cup, I would like to think, are quite suitable for the start of the corporate blog Sports.ru , in which we plan to write about the sports Internet and - more broadly - about the evolution of media in the digital age. The goals of the blog are to tell about some universal solutions that we have tested and that can improve not only sports websites, but also hear more practical advice that can improve on Sports.ru. We ourselves are evolving quite energetically - over the past couple of years, Sports.ru has ceased to be a typical thematic site with texts and news, and it has also become, to one degree or another:
The main structural unit on Sports.ru is the tags that users of “Habra”, Flickr, Youtube and dozens of other web-dance sites have long been used to, but for some reason almost none of the leading Russian media still uses it. Almost all of them inherited from the newspapers and magazines the inflexible, outdated, almost on the very first day of the appearance of the Internet, the genre or general thematic rubrication. Meanwhile, tags are a great way to organize content (as well as its subsequent distribution), especially when there is a lot of content. We on Sports.ru tag tags all news, texts and photos for the past three years and have accumulated a lot of experience that I would like to share.
First, about the shortcomings: this is an additional time. We start tags for absolutely all organizations, teams, tournaments and characters that are heroes of publications and photos on Sports.ru. Even if these teams or characters are not well known. Even an obscure Japanese deserves his own tag, as he flashed on the regular news about the transfer from Nagoya Grampus Eight to provincial Dutch Venlo. After all, it may be that over time he will come to CSKA to score victory goals in the playoffs of the Champions League and go to the World Cup to practice with the Japanese team the same - as happened with Keisuke Honda . Today, the database Sports.ru contains more than 55,000 tags. Even if we assume that the institution of each of them (and the addition of basic attributes - nationality, date of birth, website, etc.) took a minute and a half, in total, 1,375 man-hours will run through. It also takes time to “tag” the tags to the news - however, thanks to the autocomplete function, the minimum.
Next - solid pluses. There are many of them - so I am tezisno:
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1. Additional navigation options for users. Now, when the number of texts / photos / news on the site has become colossal (on the day, only the editors publish more than 350 pieces of information - texts, news, photos; after all, there is also UGC), tags are an even more convenient way to navigate Sports.ru than sections / subsections. After all, there are enough readers who are not interested in all of football - but, say, only the English Premier League , not all hockey - but only the “Washington Capitals” with Alexander Ovechkin . But there are still people who are interested in news about sports television or the sports business regardless of the sport. You no longer have to search for relevant content in all this abundance. Each tag page is such a mini-site about the corresponding tournament / club / athlete, with all the news, texts, photos, statistics, etc. Information on any tag can be subscribed to using various exports and personal settings - but these are already separate advantages, numbered 6 and 7.
2. Increase the depth of viewing the site. The availability of archival information naturally increases the frequency of access to it. Accordingly, the texts / news / photos, published once upon a time and its already seemingly fulfilled, the reader returns again and again. The average depth of viewing on Sports.ru - 34 pages per month - is one of the highest among all Russian media, to a fair extent - thanks to the tags. The tag pages themselves are responsible for about 6% of Sports.ru traffic. It would seem a little, but because they are often not the ultimate goal of the user - but the navigator to other news, photos, forums, etc. Say, a reader who has a keen interest in the forward of Arsenal, Andrei Arshavin, we can now entertain 544 materials and 2039 news related to this player, as well as 178 photos . 869 of his personal fans can find each other in a couple of clicks - as well as, by the way, 68 haters . Sports.ru is slowly but surely becoming a medium for communicating on sports topics, in the light of which the connections between users and leagues / clubs / athletes take on special significance.
3. Additional functionality for editors . Every news and every material on Sports.ru has a block of “links on the topic” (which is also an additional service for the user and a way to keep his attention longer), and the editors no longer have to look for them. Relevant materials are offered by the system in semi-automatic mode, based on the coincidence of all the same tags.
4. A significant increase in search traffic . It is achieved due to the “Wikipedia effect”: the completeness of information about athletes and coaches on the pages of the corresponding tags and the wealth of the internal link base allow these pages to be on the first page of Yandex and Google in 80-90% of cases. Often this is the top 5 or even the top 3, achieved without any purchase of links. It is even more pleasant to realize that, switching to Sports.ru, such users find what they are looking for. According to Google analytics, the average user who has switched from a search engine, browses 6 pages per session on Sports.ru. No one gives such high-quality traffic today - neither Yandex-News (the viewing depth is almost twice as low), nor Rambler-Top 100, nor, even more so, traffic exchanges that disfigured the lion's share of Russian-language media with their teasers.
5. Increasing the relevance of the main page of the site (and pages of sections) to the interests of users at the moment. So far, almost all of the content management tools on the site are in the hands of editors - based on editorial policy and their own taste, they choose the main news and texts, link them to each other, etc. But now the reader is also involved in shaping the appearance of the main page (or of any of the sections - tennis , basketball , etc.), clicking on the news / materials with certain tags. The 8 most popular tags in the last 24 hours are placed directly below the menu, which allows the reader to get all the information on any really relevant story in one click. It is not the “web-dance” of the story itself that pleases, but the real effect: if the editors didn’t pay enough attention to any important plot of the last day, the readers themselves will correct it:
6. Additional opportunities for exporting information . You can subscribe to news and materials on any tag using RSS. For the tags of the most popular clubs, there are other tools. Spartak news, for example, you can receive directly to yourself on twitter , Livejournal and Liveinternet (respectively 158, 130 and 19 signatories to this moment), as well as by mail or using Yandex widget . In addition, thanks to this structuring of information, we are able to make informers with news on any tag or combination of tags for sites that may be interested in such news (for example, on the Russian-language website Manchester United there is an informer with news from the English Premier League from Sports.ru ).
Absolutely separate advantages of the tag system came to light when Sports.ru, in parallel with the media, broadcast part of the site, began to develop the service one - Fantasy , communities and other projects. This allowed us, in particular, to make in the forums (here, for example, the forum of Spartak fans ) modules with news relevant to this forum, to show news about certain players of fantasy-managers right on the territory of the game, etc.
7. Wide opportunities to personalize the site . Of course, we provided for the privileges on the formation of personalized news feeds or materials not only for users of third-party services, but also for registered Sports.ru users (we can also authorize using openID, by the way ). But about the various personal settings of the site, the level of demand for them, as well as the positive and negative experience of their implementation, I will tell you, perhaps, next time.
- social network of sports fans
- gaming platform
- sport database
The main structural unit on Sports.ru is the tags that users of “Habra”, Flickr, Youtube and dozens of other web-dance sites have long been used to, but for some reason almost none of the leading Russian media still uses it. Almost all of them inherited from the newspapers and magazines the inflexible, outdated, almost on the very first day of the appearance of the Internet, the genre or general thematic rubrication. Meanwhile, tags are a great way to organize content (as well as its subsequent distribution), especially when there is a lot of content. We on Sports.ru tag tags all news, texts and photos for the past three years and have accumulated a lot of experience that I would like to share.
First, about the shortcomings: this is an additional time. We start tags for absolutely all organizations, teams, tournaments and characters that are heroes of publications and photos on Sports.ru. Even if these teams or characters are not well known. Even an obscure Japanese deserves his own tag, as he flashed on the regular news about the transfer from Nagoya Grampus Eight to provincial Dutch Venlo. After all, it may be that over time he will come to CSKA to score victory goals in the playoffs of the Champions League and go to the World Cup to practice with the Japanese team the same - as happened with Keisuke Honda . Today, the database Sports.ru contains more than 55,000 tags. Even if we assume that the institution of each of them (and the addition of basic attributes - nationality, date of birth, website, etc.) took a minute and a half, in total, 1,375 man-hours will run through. It also takes time to “tag” the tags to the news - however, thanks to the autocomplete function, the minimum.
Next - solid pluses. There are many of them - so I am tezisno:
')
1. Additional navigation options for users. Now, when the number of texts / photos / news on the site has become colossal (on the day, only the editors publish more than 350 pieces of information - texts, news, photos; after all, there is also UGC), tags are an even more convenient way to navigate Sports.ru than sections / subsections. After all, there are enough readers who are not interested in all of football - but, say, only the English Premier League , not all hockey - but only the “Washington Capitals” with Alexander Ovechkin . But there are still people who are interested in news about sports television or the sports business regardless of the sport. You no longer have to search for relevant content in all this abundance. Each tag page is such a mini-site about the corresponding tournament / club / athlete, with all the news, texts, photos, statistics, etc. Information on any tag can be subscribed to using various exports and personal settings - but these are already separate advantages, numbered 6 and 7.
2. Increase the depth of viewing the site. The availability of archival information naturally increases the frequency of access to it. Accordingly, the texts / news / photos, published once upon a time and its already seemingly fulfilled, the reader returns again and again. The average depth of viewing on Sports.ru - 34 pages per month - is one of the highest among all Russian media, to a fair extent - thanks to the tags. The tag pages themselves are responsible for about 6% of Sports.ru traffic. It would seem a little, but because they are often not the ultimate goal of the user - but the navigator to other news, photos, forums, etc. Say, a reader who has a keen interest in the forward of Arsenal, Andrei Arshavin, we can now entertain 544 materials and 2039 news related to this player, as well as 178 photos . 869 of his personal fans can find each other in a couple of clicks - as well as, by the way, 68 haters . Sports.ru is slowly but surely becoming a medium for communicating on sports topics, in the light of which the connections between users and leagues / clubs / athletes take on special significance.
3. Additional functionality for editors . Every news and every material on Sports.ru has a block of “links on the topic” (which is also an additional service for the user and a way to keep his attention longer), and the editors no longer have to look for them. Relevant materials are offered by the system in semi-automatic mode, based on the coincidence of all the same tags.
4. A significant increase in search traffic . It is achieved due to the “Wikipedia effect”: the completeness of information about athletes and coaches on the pages of the corresponding tags and the wealth of the internal link base allow these pages to be on the first page of Yandex and Google in 80-90% of cases. Often this is the top 5 or even the top 3, achieved without any purchase of links. It is even more pleasant to realize that, switching to Sports.ru, such users find what they are looking for. According to Google analytics, the average user who has switched from a search engine, browses 6 pages per session on Sports.ru. No one gives such high-quality traffic today - neither Yandex-News (the viewing depth is almost twice as low), nor Rambler-Top 100, nor, even more so, traffic exchanges that disfigured the lion's share of Russian-language media with their teasers.
5. Increasing the relevance of the main page of the site (and pages of sections) to the interests of users at the moment. So far, almost all of the content management tools on the site are in the hands of editors - based on editorial policy and their own taste, they choose the main news and texts, link them to each other, etc. But now the reader is also involved in shaping the appearance of the main page (or of any of the sections - tennis , basketball , etc.), clicking on the news / materials with certain tags. The 8 most popular tags in the last 24 hours are placed directly below the menu, which allows the reader to get all the information on any really relevant story in one click. It is not the “web-dance” of the story itself that pleases, but the real effect: if the editors didn’t pay enough attention to any important plot of the last day, the readers themselves will correct it:
6. Additional opportunities for exporting information . You can subscribe to news and materials on any tag using RSS. For the tags of the most popular clubs, there are other tools. Spartak news, for example, you can receive directly to yourself on twitter , Livejournal and Liveinternet (respectively 158, 130 and 19 signatories to this moment), as well as by mail or using Yandex widget . In addition, thanks to this structuring of information, we are able to make informers with news on any tag or combination of tags for sites that may be interested in such news (for example, on the Russian-language website Manchester United there is an informer with news from the English Premier League from Sports.ru ).
Absolutely separate advantages of the tag system came to light when Sports.ru, in parallel with the media, broadcast part of the site, began to develop the service one - Fantasy , communities and other projects. This allowed us, in particular, to make in the forums (here, for example, the forum of Spartak fans ) modules with news relevant to this forum, to show news about certain players of fantasy-managers right on the territory of the game, etc.
7. Wide opportunities to personalize the site . Of course, we provided for the privileges on the formation of personalized news feeds or materials not only for users of third-party services, but also for registered Sports.ru users (we can also authorize using openID, by the way ). But about the various personal settings of the site, the level of demand for them, as well as the positive and negative experience of their implementation, I will tell you, perhaps, next time.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/96420/
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