How to do SEO for news websites: Top 5 Tactics

In our era, news delivery is changing and improving as technology expands. Due to the browser experience from smartphones or tablets, you are very familiar with online news websites. Many people consume online news and top news channels have their news websites competing with other online news websites. To get more eyeballs and traffic, you need to understand SEO for publishers. Whatever great point you have in terms of content and delivery, without SEO for news it is not going to be seen by lots of people. In this blog, you will see what are news SEO tactics and how to do SEO of a news website. 

Characteristics of a news website

• General Convention of style
• Easy navigation
• Multiple grid format
• Relevant links to the stories
• Responsive design
• New content is presented on a white background and black text

News SEO Tactics 

News websites have to be engaging and SEO-optimised to deliver the best results. These are the following steps you need to execute to make your website SEO friendly.

• The website has to offer an easy browsing experience

News websites need to deliver interesting news as soon as possible to the audience. When you provide information on your news website it needs to be easily browsable to understand the content. The entire browsing experience on a website solely depends on an SEO Content Audit. Such an audit will give insights into the following things:

• A search bar is a must-have – You are running a news website and the latest stories of news need to be findable easily. Without a search bar, it is not possible to search articles and get results. A search bar and search button are a must-have.

• Infinite scroll – The interaction technique is the best thing you can embrace for navigation. If you include this, your readers can see the whole content just by scrolling an infinite scroll.

• Tagging and creating categories – Tags and categories are very helpful and indeed part of SEO for News Publishers.  Broad groupings of topics can be organised with categories. For instance, Entertainment might be a board topic and art, cinema, radio and award nights are some of the categories you can include. On the other hand, tags are words that news websites use to connect with similar content. Generally, tags are added to a story. Adding categories and tags help search engines to better understand what content you provide.

• Breadcrumbs – Breadcrumbs are also known as clickable text links that you can use on your news website to promote navigability. They usually appear at the top or bottom of the web page allowing easy navigation between web pages. Jumping to another category or previous page is easy peasy and essential since you have tons of news stories.
  
• On-page optimisation

Just like you optimize a regular website, you need to optimize a news website. SEO for News publishers comprises several on-page optimization tactics to be searchable on search engines. First of all, you need to have high-quality content and use keywords in header tags as well as structured data. Creating content and optimising need to be executed with lightning speed otherwise you will lose your target audience as news needs to be digested at the moment. 

• Image optimization is a must

Images need to be resized and compressed as per the requisites of your news website. What you can do is ensure the images on the news website meet the guidelines of  SEO for News Websites. To make images SEO-friendly, first, you need to incorporate them into a format that search engines reward and keep them small without compromising quality. 

• Content Duplicacy

Duplicate content has no place in SEO for news. The authenticity, relevance, timely content delivery and cohesiveness are what readers expect from your news website. If you fail to provide these, the traffic you intend to receive will go to your competitors. Moreover, SEO content best practices by Google do not approve copied content from other websites. 

• Technical SEO

Having an operational website is an integral part of SEO for News Websites. Technical SEO need to be incorporated so check these attributes are part of your website.

• Site loading speed

When a reader clicks on a story and lands on your website,  but the link takes too much time to load, the reader abandons your news and receives the same from competitors. Fast loading speed is a factor in increasing dwell time and engagement. With the help of search engine optimization services, you can attain the desired page load speed. 

• Mobile-friendliness

Searchers and visitors who come from smartphones are in great numbers. So, you can build a website with a responsive design so that the customers can easily experience a satisfied user experience. Large and legible fonts also increase readability and load quickly. If your news website is not mobile-friendly, it can adversely affect user experience and search engine optimization.  

• Link Building

SEO for News Websites must cover link building without fail to increase authority, blogs, articles, third-party websites, directories and online forums are some of the places you get quality backlinks. 

• Use of social media

You are running a news website and you should have a strong social media presence. Having a social media handle is an advantage as you can post it regularly. You can be there on many social media channels as part of SEO for news to get more traffic and engagement to your news website. If you could handle all social media platforms, you will see hefty traffic consistently. SEO for news strategy must include social media marketing and optimization. A periodic analysis of the social media handles, you can make appropriate changes. 

So you get an idea of how to do SEO for a news website. Implementing these and other practical steps helps you be a website that thrives very well in the online world. Just like SEO tactics, user generated content such as social shares, comments and reviews affect SERp ranks and kind of traffic per month.