SEO and Public Radio

I was doing a search on stories about the power outages in Connecticut. Around 800,000 power company customers were without power after the pre-Halloween storm. Many of those customers were still without power last night, the seventh night after the storm. Because of the slow response, CL & P (Connecticut Light & Power) has come under increasing criticism.  I was curious about how the public radio stations were covering the story. I went to Google and typed in CL & P and Connecticut Light & Power.

When I did a news search under CL & P, I scanned through 15 pages. When I searched under Connecticut Light & Power I scanned through 15 more pages. The primary NPR news stations serving Connecticut, WNPR, WSHU and New England Public Radio, did not appear.

A disclaimer or two - When it comes to website optimization, I'm a neophyte. I worked at WNPR for 21 years and at New England Public Radio for a month.

According to Wikipedia, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. 


Despite the resources and efforts put in by these stations to cover the storm and the outages, finding a web presence through Google was futile. (I did notice a lot of links to Patch.com.) In order for potential listeners to find public radio on the web in Connecticut, I think it is going to take a better effort to use Search Engine Optimization. Perhaps, a concerted effort to use keywords when posting? Google says that would make a difference.