On a recent Google search, a surprise came up in the results list: an article from the New York Times – from 1982.



It’s a good example of how powerful your archives can be when it comes to traffic-driving. One of the reasons sites like About.com come up in search results so often is the power of sheer quantity. They do coach their writers to write for SEO, and often even come up with topics based on search research, but at the end of the day, having a lot of articles on a lot of things can get you far.



What archives does your publication have that you could be putting online (preferably with SEO-friendly titles and URLs)? Are you making sure to put as much as possible online now – and negotiating with freelancers to get web rights for all content? What else could you be doing to increase quantity without sacrificing quality?

(By the way, pineapples apparently don’t ripen after they’re picked, which is really the answer I was looking for.)