SEO tips for news publishers

Here are some tips to help publishers improve their organic search performance.

• Set up Google Trends alerts to notify you of keyword trends. See if any of the keywords are relevant to your site or worth reporting on.

• Use your homepage as a tool to rank other pages within your site. Add a trending now bar that links to relevant keywords of the latest news such as “war in ukraine” or “coronavirus”. This will help Googlebot find content and rank it in the search results.

• Publish news as quickly as possible and share it on other social channels to widen the audience. This is a good way to get organic backlinks to your website and get your pages indexed faster.

• Make evergreen content part of your strategy. If a news article stops receiving traffic, maybe transform it into an evergreen piece that’s timeless. Overtime, continue to update your evergreen pieces if it begins to lose traction. Do keyword research and find potential evergreen content pieces.

• Encourage writers to link internally to other pieces of content within the website. Internal linking is often overlooked but is a very powerful tool to ensure other pieces of content are discovered. This will help Googlebot crawl and navigate the site efficiently and can easily rank pages in the search results.

• Headlines are one of the most important pieces of text on the page. Take extra time to craft a good headline and keep your most important keywords to the left so it doesn’t get cut off in the search results.

• Users like visualizations. Make sure to use high quality images within your stories. Charts, tables and data are excellent ways to tell a story. Keep accessibility in mind and add alt text on all images.

Additionally, I’ve asked the AI to provide even more results on how to improve SEO for news publishers, here’s what came back:

• Optimize headlines and subheads: The headlines and subheads of your articles should include relevant keywords and accurately reflect the content of the article. This will help search engines understand the content of the article and can improve its search engine rankings.

• Use structured data: Using structured data, such as Schema.org, can help search engines understand the content of your articles and display them in a more visually appealing way in the search results. This can help increase the click-through rate of your articles and drive more traffic to your website.

• Optimize images: Optimize images by using descriptive file names and alt tags. This will help search engines understand the content of the images and can improve the search engine rankings of the articles that they appear in.

• Create a sitemap: A sitemap is a file that lists all of the URLs on your website. It helps search engines understand the structure of your website and can improve the search engine rankings of your articles.

• Create an XML feed: An XML feed is a file that lists all of your articles in a structured format. This can help search engines understand the content of your articles and can improve their search engine rankings.

• Optimize for mobile: Many people are accessing the internet on their mobile devices and it’s important to make sure that your newspaper website is mobile-friendly. This will ensure that your articles are easily accessible to mobile users and can improve their search engine rankings.

• Use internal linking: Linking to other articles on your website can help search engines understand the structure of your website and can improve the search engine rankings of your articles.

• Get external links: Getting external links to your articles can help improve their search engine rankings. Try to get links from reputable websites, such as other newspapers or industry publications.

• Use social media: Use social media to promote your articles and drive traffic to your website. This can help improve the search engine rankings of your articles and increase the visibility of your newspaper.

• Monitor your analytics: Monitor your website’s analytics to understand how users are interacting with your website and how your articles are performing in the search results. This can help you identify areas for improvement and can help you make data-driven decisions to improve your search engine rankings.

This article was written with AI and fact checked by myself, a Technical SEO, who has knowledge of SEO in the publisher industry.