The Answer Book' was a print mainstay for years for the Patriot Ledger and the Enterprise in Mass. It's gone all-digital.
From Online Editor Ken Johnson: "In 2011 we moved our annual Answer Book, a collection of everything you ever wanted to know about the 50 communities we cover, to the web. We set up one general Answer Book microsite at the Ledger and one on the Enterprise, and a site for each community. The general page had stories and links to regional resources, such as voter information, transportation, entertainment, police websites, education, senior citizens and health care, and the communitiy sites had local material, include contact information for elected officials, links to public agencies, houses of worship, local facts and figures and feeds to the latest stories and photo galleries. We updated it whenever we became aware of a change."
This year they overhauled the sites as well as updated them.
"We added more photos to give it a fresh look and moved the news feed to the top of the page. (The Answer Book pages also serve as a find-your-local news link on our home page. Click on Abington in and it takes you to patriotledger.com/Abington or enterprisenews.com/Abington.)" Johnson wrote in an email.
The sales staff got involved as well, selling ads specifically targeted to the community pages.
The result, a deep, rich, evergreen, relevant resource for each community they cover. In addition, they're giving themselves a great boost for search engines, since linking to a community page from a story they publish about that community is excellent SEO practice.
The Answer Book' was a print mainstay for years for the Patriot Ledger and the Enterprise in Mass. It's gone all-digital.
From Online Editor Ken Johnson: "In 2011 we moved our annual Answer Book, a collection of everything you ever wanted to know about the 50 communities we cover, to the web. We set up one general Answer Book microsite at the Ledger and one on the Enterprise, and a site for each community. The general page had stories and links to regional resources, such as voter information, transportation, entertainment, police websites, education, senior citizens and health care, and the communitiy sites had local material, include contact information for elected officials, links to public agencies, houses of worship, local facts and figures and feeds to the latest stories and photo galleries. We updated it whenever we became aware of a change."
This year they overhauled the sites as well as updated them.
"We added more photos to give it a fresh look and moved the news feed to the top of the page. (The Answer Book pages also serve as a find-your-local news link on our home page. Click on Abington in and it takes you to patriotledger.com/Abington or enterprisenews.com/Abington.)" Johnson wrote in an email.
The sales staff got involved as well, selling ads specifically targeted to the community pages.
The result, a deep, rich, evergreen, relevant resource for each community they cover. In addition, they're giving themselves a great boost for search engines, since linking to a community page from a story they publish about that community is excellent SEO practice.
