Learn the roadmap for a successful SEO strategy for media outlets

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It turns out that, unlike SEO for SMEs , corporate blogs or e-commerce , SEO for media has particularities that increase the competition and complexity of organic positioning.

Just imagine being in charge of the SEO team at a moment of why choose vk database breaking news ! Dozens of media outlets competing, almost in real time, to appear in Google's Top Stories carousel.

In the world of immediacy, driven by digital transformation , SEO for media becomes especially important. But the matter is far from over, since the migration of media outlets to digital requires them to deal with an increasingly constant flow of news.

In this scenario, journalists must not only know how to write; they must also learn to optimize their pages to win the competition for content dissemination and user attention.

Do you want to know what SEO for media is all about? Keep reading to learn the key factors and best strategies to boost the organic positioning of your content.

15 Effective SEO Strategies for Media
1. Create valuable and original content
Let's start with the basics, shall we? One of the essential actions in any SEO strategy is the creation of complete and original content that keeps the reader informed with truth.

Don't forget that it is essential for the media to create content that, in addition to being relevant and original, follows the ethics of journalism and editorial guidelines.

In the end, we don't just want to please Google, we also want to communicate valuable information to users.

As a general rule:

The title of the content must not be misleading or offensive;
The body of the content should be correct and present detailed information.
It should be noted that the title plays an important role in web positioning by showing the search engine what the central theme of the content is, therefore it is good practice to include the keyword in it .

Regarding the content of the text, another important point is that it is organized into subtitles according to the metadata hierarchy (H2, H3, H4, etc.), since they make it easier for the user to read .

These resources can be selected in your CMS editor and help the search engine algorithm understand which groups of information are the most important on the page and which subtopics are addressed.


2. Optimize your content
Related to the above, there is little point in writing the best report in the world if no one will see it. This is where content optimization becomes crucial.

Some key factors in On Page SEO for media are:

creating attractive, concise and keyword-rich headlines;
URL optimization with a friendly structure;
meta descriptions with an eye-catching glimpse of the article's content;
heading tags structure;
images with alt text and credits to the photographer;
content categorization and labeling.
Since EAT SEO is one of Google's ranking factors, another good practice is to add a page with information about the author of each content.

A good example of an informative publication that stands out for the quality of its author pages is TechCrunch, an American digital newspaper specializing in technology. Take a look at this example:


In addition to including information about what the author of the publication does, his previous professional experiences are also described, which give him the necessary credibility to express himself on the subject.

When crawling the page, Google can capture this technical authority by identifying in the text about the author the keywords linked to the subject of the publication. By ensuring its quality, it tends to value it when defining its ranking in the results.

3. Try to appear in Google Top Stories
Have you seen those cards that appear at the top of search results pages (SERPs) after performing a search with a trending term? These are Google Top Stories, which are one of the formats of Featured Snippets .


Although competition is high and the shelf life of these cards usually does not exceed 24 or 48 hours, it is worth positioning your content in Google Top Stories to radically increase your CTR (click-through rate).

The easiest way to get a spot in the so-called "position zero" on Google is to make some optimizations that range from publishing 100% original content to writing headlines based on the questions "how?", "why?", "where?", "when?" and "who?".

When it comes to SEO, it is essential that the website has:

an Accelerated Mobile Page ( AMP ) enabled,
Images at least 1,200 pixels wide
and structured data that indicates the type of content being published.
4. Create hybrid content
Media outlets typically have a higher volume of news content versus evergreen content , resulting in their content pieces having a very short shelf life.

So, one opportunity for SEO for media is to take a timeless approach to content creation and thereby attract a recurring traffic base . This can be achieved through hybrid content!

In addition to positioning in the Featured News, hybrid content mixes current and evergreen information, so it can be updated over time.

With this type of content, you can address topics with a constant search volume and explore new formats such as:

interactive content pages ;
multi-format content;
infographics ;
vlogs;
podcasts ;
live interviews;
mini-documentaries.
A notable case of journalistic content that attracted a lot of attention due to its original nature comes from the Washington Post.

In an interactive report, the report provides a detailed verification of how many campaign promises US President Donald Trump fulfilled during his administration.


These types of posts tend to gain more engagement from users, due to their level of creativity and unusual content design. In addition, they tend to encourage the user to stay on the page for longer, which is of utmost importance in the eyes of Google's algorithm.

5. Implement data journalism resources
Digital transformation has allowed data journalism to increase its opportunities thanks to the rapid processing of large databases , which brings more interesting possibilities for editors, journalists and writers in general.

By reviewing massive amounts of information on audience behavior, market research, and trend reports, news media professionals can:

gain insights into content gaps and explore them in future articles;
find new topics of interest for readers;
decide on the best times and days to publish;
evaluate which news to take up and update given the interest they have.
Furthermore, the capabilities of Big Data systems give media outlets the ability to produce large, authentic news stories that will have permanent value, generating a high volume of traffic.

A classic example of this is The Pudding, a US publication that mines large public databases for the information they need to find an interesting story to tell.

They did so in the following note, in which they mapped the most common themes and expressions among the tweets of the parliamentarians of the US Congress:


The interesting thing about this note is that it can be updated over time, which allows it to receive many backlinks and gain authority to organically position itself for different keywords.

6. Evaluate technical SEO
Do you have your content optimized? Great! You're halfway there, the other half of SEO for media is technical SEO .

Due to its depth, it is best to frequently perform an SEO audit of the website in which the following are evaluated, among other things:

loading speed ;
the structure and organization of the website and its contents in categories and tags;
correct crawling and indexing of content ;
the existence of orphan content;
the removal of broken links or 404 errors ,
the potential problem of page cannibalization ;
etc
Keep in mind that these technical SEO aspects will ensure that your website's performance is impeccable , so that Google's algorithms will reward you with the best positions in the SERPs.

What can you start with?

One of the positioning factors that we know is the loading speed and, broadly speaking, this depends on factors such as the hosting service, Web Performance Optimization ( WPO ) techniques and the elimination of unnecessary codes and plugins .


You can also make sure you have an updated sitemap with the latest news or articles within the last 48 hours. This will make it easier for new content to be crawled and indexed.

7. Improve mobile user experience
Considering that 52 % of internet users browse via mobile devices , you can see why creating an outstanding user experience is imperative .

Some of the actions you can implement to optimize the mobile experience is to choose a responsive design for your website, which adapts to the multiple screen sizes of mobile devices.

Additionally, installing AMP will make your pages load faster, improving dwell times on the website.

seo guide
8. Create pillar pages through internal links
With the vast volume of content in news outlets, internal links become great allies when it comes to providing better navigation between categories and posts within your website.

In addition, it is a fundamental strategy to facilitate the traceability of content by Google bots and drive traffic to content that is no longer current, but has great potential to prolong its positioning.

Many digital news outlets use internal linking strategies. You can visit an outlet you follow and see how the content within the home page is organized into sections (or pillar pages ).

But between the pages of notes it is also very important to put into practice this cohesion with internal links, so that the Google algorithm understands that your medium masters various aspects of the topic.

Suppose you have a technology magazine and you produce articles like:

"Mexican startup opens new offices in Argentina";
"Report X reveals the challenges of internationalization of companies in Latin America";
"The region's entrepreneurial ecosystem received more than X million pesos in investments in the first half of the year."
It sounds logical that those three pages are linked to each other, right?

These correlations are very important for SEO, because when crawling pages, Google's algorithm tends to value the fact that your publication is constantly producing updated and relevant content on various points related to a topic.