#BREAKING: SEO for live news
Here's how to win on search during breaking news events. Here are best practices for determining when to "go live," how to update the blog and more!
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Hello, and welcome back. Shelby here, live from Vancouver, British Columbia, where I am spending the next week with my family seeing the mountains, drinking beer and attempting this thing called relaxing. I’ll report back on how it goes.
This week: Breaking news best practices for live blogs. Previously, we've outlined best practices for covering breaking news. This week, we're looking at how to determine whether to "go live" to capture coveted real estate on search with minute-by-minute updates, and the best practices for doing so. Here's how to win live on search.
Reminder: Shelby and Jessie are hosting a live community call on April 17 at 11:00 a.m. ET, all about building a great news SEO career. We will guide a lively conversation about learning and levelling up on the job, opening up the floor for our community to provide advice and lessons. Have a question? Reply to this email.
Let’s get it.
In this issue:
Planning for breaking news
Running a successful live blog
Knowing when to end a live blog
THE 101
Planning for and reacting to breaking news
Preparing for breaking news sounds counterintuitive. How can you plan for news that is, by definition, unexpected? It’s really about laying the groundwork. That way, when news breaks, you’re putting best practices into play quickly. Audience and SEO editors should be continuously monitoring search data and providing clear guidance for on-page text.
Build up your search instinct. Look at search data every day and learn different patterns/trends and what readers are searching for. Think about what you would search, too.
For breaking news, set your Google Trends timeframe to one hour. Look for key breakout search terms that align with your audience's interests or could work in a live blog headline.
“Breakout” means interest in a search term grew by more than 5,000 per cent in a specific time period. Consider those keywords for headlines, URLs, within your body copy and in decks/meta descriptions and for potential individual story ideas or blog post opportunities.
Consider what the audience is looking for. If your audience is national, adjust the filter to encompass the entire country. But if it’s in your backyard, make sure you cover it with a local lens.
THE HOW TO
When to publish a live blog (and best practices)
Not every event warrants a live blog. Straightforward breaking news moments can be covered in an article (perhaps with some video, commentary or an explainer). Evolving or more complex news events with many moving parts may require a live blog.
Live blog coverage gives up-to-date information over a period of time that readers can refer back to. If you think your newsroom can offer this level of coverage and sustain it to remain competitive in search, adjust your strategy to include it.
When news is breaking: In breaking news, speed is a priority. If your instincts say to publish a live blog, do so as soon as possible with the basic information to start ranking. For news that evolves over several days, consider a new blog (on a new URL) for each day, de-optimizing previous live coverage.
Live blogs are an excellent complement to your reporting. When running live blogs, send clear signals — to Google and the reader — that it is being updated regularly.
Set the URL right away. Write a keyword-focused URL of about 5 words, removing anything unnecessary (“the,” “at,” “and” are useless). Barry Adams has an excellent URL primer covering literally everything you need to know.
Write a clear, keyword-focused headline that also signals the page is frequently updated (“live” or “updates” should be in title). Front-load your headline with your main-focus keyword and work in names of key figures, topics or places before the 70-character mark (where it cuts off on Top Stories). The headline should reflect the latest significant update, too.
Change your headline often. Keep an eye on your on-page traffic fluctuations as well as the changing breakout terms and adjust the headline as necessary.
Change the image of your live blog often, using images that are different from your competitors. Include words like “watch,” “stream,” “see” in the headline if you have some form of visual component in the blog, too.
Update the file in chunks. “Paired updates” — changing the meta description, featured image, headline and adding a new chunk of content — tell Google the content is fresh and will keep the timestamp in news boxes (mostly 🙃) updated. This will also help it continue to rank in Top Stories on SERPs.
Updates should vary in length — 50 words, 150 words, 200 words, etc. — and provide the reader useful information and context about the event. If you’re covering something that is play-by-play (a game) or a speech, updates can be even shorter as long as there are a lot.
Try to keep updates no more than 5-10 minutes apart when interest/traffic is at its highest. Adjust the posting frequency based on fluctuating levels of interest in the event.
Link the live blog in other stories. Using either an intentional hyperlink or linking on a word, make sure the blog is accessible to readers on your site. Linking it in multiple stories shows the importance of the URL immediately to Google and can help its ranking efforts.
Include the live blog on your homepage. If this breaking news event warrants the resources of a live blog, it deserves space on your homepage to show readers (and Google) it is important.
Include the live blogs of significant importance in the navigation. The nav is one of the first things Google crawls. Consider including a link to your live blog in the navigation.
Use your LiveBlogPosting schema. Many publishers have live blog templates in their CMS that are already equipped with the correct LiveBlogPosting schema. If not, refer to our structured data newsletter for a rundown on the markup that's necessary to get the red LIVE pill in search results.
Work with your team of writers and editors to create a holistic blog — one that covers all important angles of the story. For example, if you’re covering a major catastrophic event, focus on different topics — victims, legislation, recovery, public response, etc. — as it's a better reading experience and enhances those E.E.A.T signals.
Keeping a breaking news live file going
As an event carries on, your newsroom will determine whether it’s worth continuing a live blog or sunset (ending) it to focus on other stories that better match changing search intent.
Check Google Trends regularly and see how search interest is changing on your event. This provides an indication of where people are turning their attention.
Also look at your on-page analytics and traffic. If concurrent visitors are falling, or traffic is declining (while you're still investing lots of human resources, i.e., writers), it might be worth ending the blog.
If interest is there, but your current live blog file is not getting the traffic or attention it should be, consider publishing a new blog and de-optimizing the previous article. Refresh its content, as if you are starting new, and link it where you can. If the blog ends up surfacing in SERPs and your return is substantial, keep updating the blog. Otherwise, it may be time to move on.
Reviewing your performance
Wait at least 24 to 48 hours after the “end” of a breaking news event to measure success. There are four key metrics we can consider to evaluate our efforts.
Organic traffic from search: Using your preferred analytics, look at the number of readers — both total raw and per cent of total views — of who arrived from search. Is it above or below the average for a story on your site? For pieces informed by search insights, was Google the top traffic referrer? How does the traffic for that piece compare to other stories on the subject, or against your overall site average?
Keywords: For the targeted keywords, did your stories rank on the first page?
Also check Google Search Console or another SEO tool to see which keywords drove the most traffic to your stories. Were those the keywords you targeted? Did you rank in SERPs for your target keywords?
Competitors: Use a news SEO-specific tool, or a general analysis of the SERPs, to determine what your competitors did and how you fared in comparison. Did your competitors constantly beat you in SERPs, or did you find that your blog stuck around more?
Page speed: Check your hub or main breaking news files to see if they loaded in two seconds. If not, what elements were non-essential and could be skipped in the future?
Write a report that highlights the content and technical SEO metrics that align with your organization’s goals. Outline what your team learned and what can be done better next time.
Success can mean many things: beating your competitor, bringing in new subscribers or simply learning from your mistakes. Share what you learned widely. Newsroom-wide fluency in search is the biggest success of them all.
To recap — news SEO best practices for live news:
Start with keyword research to understand what information readers want, and the content type or format that would serve that intent.
Set a keyword-focused URL, and publish early with a solid headline. Update the headline often, prioritizing keywords and incorporating key figures, and maintain a consistent posting frequency. Strategically link the live blog within other stories. When closing a live blog (and starting a fresh file), de-optimize the older story.
Technical SEO: Make sure your pages are correctly indexed, then check page speed and load time for pages. Use Google Search Console to spot (and fix) errors.
The bottom line: Google is granular and will update SERPs on a minute-by-minute basis, especially during breaking news. In a live news moment, a blog can be a key component to your coverage, helping inform readers and winning the search landscape.
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RECOMMENDED READING
Google news and updates
🤖 The Financial Times: Google is considering charging for AI-powered search in big change to business model.
Even more recommended reading
🤔 Lily Ray: Thoughts on Google's algorithm updates — March Core and Helpful Content Updates [video].
🧵 Barry Schwartz: Google explains searchers seek out forum threads from Reddit and others.
Reddit moderators are removing responses from Google’s Search Liaison in the SEO subreddit.
👎 The Washington Post’s Geoffrey A. Fowler: I tried the new Google. Its answers are worse.
❓ Alex Kantrowitz: Will Search be generative AI or blue links?
🕳️ Joshua Hardwick: How “deep content” will help protect your site’s SEO metrics from AI.
🤝 Madeleine Smith: How The Wall Street Journal is developing long-term relationships with its young audience.
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Have something you’d like us to discuss? Send us a note on Twitter (Jessie or Shelby) or to our email: seoforjournalism@gmail.com.
Written by Jessie Willms and Shelby Blackley