The Weather Channel® creates a storm with web content by Rachelle Money, 14 December 2007

weather.com has over 300 million visitors monthly who want to know how the weather is going to affect them. Whether you want information on how to keep your pets cool in a heatwave, how to drive safely when the roads are icy, or even if you want marine forecasts they’ve got it covered.

There are 15 main content areas on the site, each with its own product manager who have essential keyword research at their fingertips. We talked to search marketing manager, Derek Fulford about his operation.

The first thing most of us do in the morning is open our curtains and look up to the skies. Weather dictates a lot of what we do, from the little things like what clothes to wear or what the weather is going to be like at a football match, to those bigger decisions like where to go on vacation, or which month to have your wedding.

weather.com has over 300 million visitors monthly who want to know how the weather is going to affect them. Whether you want information on how to keep your pets cool in a heatwave, how to drive safely when the roads are icy, or even if you want marine forecasts they’ve got it covered.

Derek Fulford, search marketing manager of weather.com, says he has worked for three years on “getting into the mindset” of those who search for weather related topics.

“What is the motivation of the user? How specific is the phrase they are using?

I’ve been using Wordtracker for years, and it was one of the tools I took to weather.com when I began working here.”

Working with product managers

weather.com has 15 main content areas and a product manager for each. Fulford, who came from an SEO background, educates his product managers on how to use Wordtracker software so they can carry out effective keyword research on each of their sections.

The menu links on the home page give a clue to the detail Fulford and his team have gone into - each leads to sub-menus which are all keyword optimized.

In the above screenshot, for example, items include ‘rush hour traffic‘, ‘flights & business travel‘, ‘vacation planner’ and ‘scenic drive ideas‘. Each link takes you into pages packed with tips, ideas and information.

Not just ‘weddings’ but ‘outdoor weddings’

Fulford explains how they approached one of their most popular sections of the site - weddings.

“In the past we looked at our section on weddings and thought about how we can get into the mindset of someone looking for information on weather and weddings. We had to ask ourselves - what is unique about our site?“

Weather.com realized that users who submitted the search term ‘outdoor weddings’ viewed far more pages per visit than the average site user. Other similar search terms like ‘wedding planner’ were producing many fewer referrals. So they went about optimizing the landing page for the search term ‘outdoor weddings.’

“We decided we would target outdoor weddings and you can find out what historically the typical weather has been on particular dates“, says Fulford.

They have recently introduced a new section on the wedding page which features photographs of brides and grooms on their big day, with short comments from the contributor. There is even a sunset calculator tool, plus handy tips like making your wedding programs in the shape of fans to cool your guests down.

Fulford says one of the challenges weather.com faces is how to direct users to their various info-packed pages.

“Our key goals beyond giving people information about weather is to make them more aware of other content on the site. We don’t have outside marketing so we have to advertise our guides within the site.

We have guides on pollen, allergies, healthcare, how to look after your pets in the heat, which we need to optimize for search engines.”

Preparing content in advance

Although the weather can sometimes be unpredictable the seasons aren’t. As we edge towards the fall, weather.com has already optimized those sites they know will be hot topics in the months ahead, as Fulford explains.

“Our new projects like the hurricane center we optimized for the various hurricane names, before there were any active hurricanes“, he says.

“Thankfully for us, we can prepare in advance. We know storm season is coming up and they tend to release the names of hurricanes well in advance, so we can be the early bird and have those names ranking really well, sometimes even before people are searching for them.”

The site has tips on how to protect your home from hurricanes as well as satellite pictures and videos tracking the movements of storms as they take shape. Budding photographers are also given tips on how to improve their pictures of weather.

This kind of user interaction is something weather.com would like to enhance by providing a better platform for people visiting the site.

“Weather is always something people want to talk about. It’s the ultimate ice-breaker.

We’re developing a new social media community where we can leverage the content people are generating for search engine optimization. We want to give them a platform where we can generate their tags on videos and on photographs.”

Quick results

Fulford says weather.com is fortunate in that they change content frequently as the weather throws up different issues with the seasons’ change. Optimizing content this regularly means they get good results quickly.

The site is on pace for a 60% increase in year over year traffic from search engines, which is 30% up on an aggressive target they set.

With such fantastic results, there’s no stopping them. Fulford has now set his sights on their overseas websites, as well as specialist sites dedicated to how the weather is affected by global warming.

“I’m about to optimize our international websites like weather.co.uk which covers the UK and we also have a media presence in France, South America and Germany too.

“The content we have is tailored to the UK market. We are going to concentrate on the holiday planning section because we know the Brits get four to six weeks a year holiday but in the States, it’s only about two weeks,“ he explains.

Fulford went on to say: “We have a separate site dedicated to climate change called climate.weather.com. Our top key phrases for that site are climate change, green living and global warming. We used Wordtracker as a way to develop these keywords.

“We used to just have videos and news reports on the site but we’ve had to find ways to expand the content so we now have transcripts for the videos. The videos and transcripts have both got the keywords in them, and the variations of those phrases.

“In the footer we have video site maps which have a list of optimized videos with keywords in their tags.”

So what’s next for weather.com?

“We have 200 key phrases and are looking at the hot trends in global warming. We look at what’s in the press and then create content like blogs, videos, news reports and then utilize those key phrases around them. So it’s going to be a busy year for us.”