intro and looking for help

[becca9]

Hi Everyone,
I can't believe I only found this forum now but glad I did!
I've just been assigned to run 2 news website-making money off eventual guest posting,
My company wants me to
1. Get 50000 readers in 6 months organically
2. Get indexed on Google news
I have no idea how to even start here and would love some guidance from industry insiders on
A. How to accomplish this and
B. what expertise I need to run these sites
I've read all the crap seo blogs on this and Google's new indexing practices but I want to hear from someone who is running a site.
More info: The sites are based on Wordpress, I have a target audience and topics I'm writing content on

[Dimitri]

Welcome,

Get 50000 readers in 6 months organically

50K per day? per month? over a period of 6 months?

By the way, be original, produce good and useful content if you want to get noticed. Keep in mind that, all subjects are already covered by tens, hundreds or thousands of web sites already. Think of how you can make a difference.

Promote your articles to get known by others.

Do not forget that the more a nice attract earnings (advertisers), the more concurrence there is.

If by luck, you are successful, be sure that others will copy you,...

Good luck with the Wild Wild Web,

[lammert]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld becca9!

You write that you are targetting the market of news websites and opt for inclusion in Google News, but at the same time, you mention that you eventually want to rely on guest posting. This is a little bit contradictory, especially in modern times where there is an issue of fake-news. Google and others are now tuning their algorithms in such a way, that smaller news-websites with unreliable or unverified sources are getting a harder time to rank anywhere than established news sources, so with your proposed article source, it may be difficult to gain traction in the news market and be reliably indexed in Google News.

[Dimitri]

This is a little bit contradictory

The thing is, it sounds like the business plan is to get money fast, easily and at minimal cost. (running multiple sites on Wordpress, and hiring a single person with no experience* to do everything in 6 months).

* no hard feeling, this is not a critic, just an ascertainment.

[engine]

It's also worth a read of Guest Posting, Stick a Fork in it." [webmasterworld.com...]

[becca9]

Thanks everyone for your responses!
Just to clarify, we're aiming at getting 50k traffic monthly within 6 months of launching the sites,
Since I am editor, guest posts will be clearly marked as "Sponsored" and I want to create sites giving valuable insights on news stories-not just a site to post any guest poster's links.
I'm planning on creating really great content, I'm just not sure where to begin to find all the information needed for both the on site and off site management a project like this requires.
I've been reading up everything I can find on-site SEO, seems pretty straightforward if very labor-intensive but I'm wondering what else I should be looking at.
Is there any SEO I can already be working on before the site launch?
Do I need to learn coding?
Is site auditing needed from the get go?
What are some tools I need to be using on the daily?
Can you tell me about your workflow? What a day in the life of a webmaster/editor/manager looks like?

[becca9]

It's also worth a read of Guest Posting, Stick a Fork in it." [webmasterworld.com...]

Thanks!
I plan on allowing guest posts only to legitimate writers wanting to expand their reach-no SEO whatsoever

[tangor]

Welcome @becca9 ... do you have a budget? Is any of it reserved for OTHER THAN SEO purposes? Radio, TV, Newspapers? Yes, you want the web to be your engine in the future, but you need to have visitors find you FIRST ... once word of mouth gets started things can improve. If near a large metropolitan area a week's worth of 30 second spots on talk radio can make a LARGE impression in a very short period of time.