SEO for news websites (www.ericschwar...) is critical to audience development. If your news can’t get found, it can’t generate advertiser impressions, leads, revenue, or make a difference.
This post is a summary of a podcast interview I recorded with ESPN.com (www.espn.com) director of SEO Louisa Frahm about best practices when it comes to SEO for headlines, how to build an effective program to prove the value of SEO to hardnosed journalists, and what she’s learned about creating resources to support SEO for journalists.
Louisa has a long history leading SEO for news websites. Before she joined ESPN.com, she was director of SEO at the Los Angeles Times, so she has experience in SEO for newspapers as well, so she also has experience in online newsroom (www.ericschwar...) best practices.
Elevating News Visibility with SEO Strategies
Search engine optimization for news websites is the art and science of creating online news coverage that can be easily found through Google News and Google organic search. Given that 86% of Americans get their news online (www.pewresearc...) , learning to cover the news in way that not only informs readers, but also grows audiences and drives sustainable traffic from search engines has become a crucial skill that journalists must perform.
I started doing SEO for news websites in 2002 when I founded iPressroom, the first online newsroom management service. I sold the company in 2011 and remain a shareholder. Today, I lead an SEO consultancy (www.ericschwar...) in Los Angeles SEO with extensive experience designing, building, managing, and search-optimizing online news sites. We get news sites indexed by Google News, train reporters on SEO, and help content marketers create and manage credible online newsrooms with content marketing value.
SEO for News Sites
According to Similarweb (www.ericschwar...) , ESPN.com is the 83rd highest-traffic website on the internet, with nearly 580 million unique visitors a month who average 3.6 pages per visit and spend almost nine and a half minutes per session. They know how to sustain their visitors’ attention.
Over 70% of the traffic on the ESPN.com news website is direct, and 21% of that traffic comes from organic search. After that is traffic is from social media at less than 4%, then email at over 3%.
Surprising SEO Athlete Rankings at ESPN
Interestingly enough, the top athlete names that are getting the most search results in organic traffic at ESPN.com are the tennis player Andy Murray first, followed by the combat fighter Connor McGregor, then combat fighter Patty Gimblett, and tennis player Rafael Nadal, which is curious because soccer or baseball or basketball or football are more prominent sports. Louisa explains why that is in this post about SEO for News Sites.
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SEO for Journalists
When Louisa started working with her analysts at ESPN to help reporters execute Google News search engine optimization best practices, her objective was to make sure that every single team and every single sport was equally prioritized within her department’s workflow.
Her team leads SEO training (/owned-media-bootcamp-digital-marketing/) programs for journalists, essentially teaching writers the right formula for news article SEO, including keywords that drive organic traffic, and write headlines most likely to rank high in Google News. Reporters rely on her department’s guidance, metrics, and analytics.
Her SEO team ESPN.com helps journalists sort through the various aspects of each of the four types of SEO:
1. On-Page SEO (On-Site SEO): The search engine optimization strategies implemented directly on a news website’s own pages. This includes optimizing the article’s contents, meta tags, headings, and internal linking. The goal is to make each page more appealing to search engines and user-friendly for readers, ultimately improving its ranking in search results.
2. Off-Page SEO (Off-Site SEO): Off-page SEO encompasses actions taken outside of the news website to enhance its online presence. This involves building high-quality backlinks from other reputable websites, engaging in social media marketing, and managing online reviews and mentions. Off-page SEO aims to boost a news site’s authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines.
3. Technical SEO: Technical SEO focuses on the behind-the-scenes aspects of a news website. It involves optimizing the site’s architecture and each page’s h tag structure, impro...
11 сен 2024
