The latest group of Northcliffe’s revamped newspaper websites is now “live”.

Regional daily titles such as the Nottingham Evening Post, Lincolnshire Echo and South Wales Evening Post are among 48 thisis sites sporting the new look.

Weekly titles in Kent and Sussex have also joined the revamp which Northcliffe started in May with the Hull Daily Mail.

Some of the new sites also contain the hyperlocal ‘sub-sites’ which take readers to news exclusively around their small town or village away from a newspaper’s main patch.

Robert Hardie, content strategy director for Northcliffe Media, said: “This latest tranche of 48 ‘thisis’ sites is the next phase of our roll out of all online content to our ‘Next Generation’ platform.

“Not only are we upgrading the network to introduce evolutionary design changes and enhanced multimedia content aimed at maximising interaction with end users, but we are also enlarging it to more than 150 sites in total.

“The big winners in this set of site launches are users in Kent who go from having just one site covering their area to 30 in total – a major step forward both for Northcliffe’s long-standing businesses in Kent as well as the ones acquired from Trinity Mirror only last year.”

The new sites boast permanent archives meaning that all stories are now kept forever with 10,000 new articles added per week.

Robert added that the rollout was enabling better use of search engines such as Google to drive readers to Northcliffe Media sites.

“We’re already seeing significant traffic uplift from the leading search engine optimisation (SEO) technology that the Next Generation platform delivers,” he said.

“As journalists get even better at writing SEO-targeted headlines and adding specific keywords, the scale of that uplift will continue to grow.”

Comments

Rob (21/08/2008 10:51:46)
SEO targetting has nothing to do with the local reader. These are supposed to be local newspaper websites, so why target aimless hits from google searches? The value to advertisers can’t be high if people get to a site and then realise the story is not really whatthey are looking for and click off it immediately.

Matt @ PRBristol.co.uk (22/08/2008 10:09:55)
Agreed. Hits are one thing but actively engaged readers are another.
Surely they should focus on the local markets and build brand loyalty there, rather than chase global eyeballs?
Note: For example there are 18 destinations called “Bristol” in the USA. Are these visitors going to buy into the local /regional advertising on the site?

Nigel (22/08/2008 14:51:36)
From what I have seen it is a backward step from the sites in place before. There is less breaking news, the search engines provide information on areas miles away, older stories are not on there and the number of comments from readers also seems to have fallen away.

Lizzie (22/08/2008 16:24:38)
….but where on earth do we find Family Notices ie hatched, matched, and dispatched?

web user (22/08/2008 23:27:50)
The high number of negative comments left by readers on www.thisisscunthorpe.co.uk shows visitors do not like the revamp and much prefer the layout of the old site. Why fix something if it isn’t broken? Now, if you use the ‘Search this site’ facility you expect to see news from your locality, not from the other end of the country as is now the case! At the heart of all things local – definitely not!