Half the world votes in 2024. Our guide to election SEO

Prepare for an election with expert tips on SEO tactics and audience strategy. Here’s how to effectively plan your reporting for high-stakes elections

Jul 15, 2024

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Hello, and welcome back. Jessie here, back from another summer weekend, complete with a Ben Howard gig, run club and three — three!! — softball wins. The best part: I remembered sunscreen and stayed hydrated (no four hour naps needed!).

This week: Voters in over 50 countries will — or have — cast their ballots in national elections in 2024. In this newsletter, we’re outlining the pillars of election coverage for search along with expert advice from SEOs at three different outlets.

With constant updates to algorithms, a volatile news cycle and competing demands for readers' attention, publishers are struggling. Let's talk about it — join our July 17th community call!

Let’s get it.

In this issue:

Get a sense of the competitive landscape
Pitch, assign and track must-have files
Use post-mortems and reports to communicate best practices

Elections and SEO: totally low-key, no stress

THE 101

Elections are everywhere in 2024. Here’s how to prepare

Half the world’s population will vote in major elections this year, and readers will be actively seeking out information to make sense of the high-stakes moments. As audience and SEO editors, our job is to meet the moment, and surface the information and context readers need most.

Audience editors are essential in these moments. They bring a crucial reader-first mindset and can identify gaps in coverage or questions being asked, but not yet covered in reporting.

Planning is key, and should start early. How early depends on just how long your election cycle lasts.

For Samantha Wernham, Deputy SEO Editor at The Times, planning for the 2024 U.K. general election started in December 2023. The SEO team reviewed the performance of the 2019 race to identify what worked and what didn’t, before ramping up efforts following the snap election call in May 2024.

Meanwhile, in countries like the U.S. with fixed-date elections, the timeline for planning is more concrete. Americans head to the polls on November 5, so preparation for this should be well underway, including key moments like debates and conventions.

Start by thinking about the audience

Start with the audience: Who are the readers you want to serve, and which topics matter most in this election?

This should align with your audience funnel, metrics and goals. For example, a national free publication might focus on broad reach (overall traffic), while a paywalled outlet might concentrate on their topical niche (conversion/subscriptions).

Distinctive reporting and exclusives are the top priority for the SEO team at the Wall Street Journal, says Will Flannigan, an SEO Editor. The goal is not just overall audience and traffic growth, but attracting the right readers (those interested in finance or international news).

Samantha echoes this sentiment. When consulting Google Trends for keyword research or pitching stories, the focus is on ideas that communicate The Times' value proposition, she says.

“We have to look at those queries that we can answer that you're not going to be able to find elsewhere,” Samantha says. “We’re going to see less conversion when targeting the hugely popular, ‘how to vote’ or ‘what is X’ queries.”

Instead, The Times dials in more on “why” focused questions, or queries about how election promises will affect readers directly. This fulfills a clear audience need while also fitting within the outlet’s overall strategy.

Identify the must-have coverage components

Bring audience-first thinking and specific election ideas (with supporting data) to pitch or story meetings. Outline the must-have files early and the writers/editors responsible for updates.

Must-have files might include:

Poll and results trackers;
Explainers about party platforms and leaders;
Live blogs;
Timelines.

This is in addition to daily reporting and analysis from the newsroom.

Prepare prewrites on results and storylines ahead of time so they can be edited and ready to go immediately. Optimize the headlines, URLs and subheadings for search well in advance.

“Prewrites are so crucial to ranking because we can post stories faster and with the best possible SEO in place,” says Torin Sweeney, SEO Editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I've worked with sites in the past that were resistant to this level of planning and it showed in the results.”

At The Times, the SEO team pitches search-driven explainers, suggesting optimal publication times and structural elements (e.g., subheads and questions). If approved, the news desk commissions these ideas, written by experts. While writing, the teams work together to ensure it is evergreen or can be easily updated.

The SEO team tracks the performance of each piece over the election and looks for necessary tweaks to the headline or body copy, always confirming with editors to ensure accuracy and timeliness.

Screenshots of poll and results trackers.

During an election season, readers have many questions. Consider the five Ws (who, what, where, when and why) and one H (how) as a framework for questions:

What is my riding? What issues are important this election?
Who is my candidate? Who are the candidates to watch for?
Where is my polling station? Where does each party stand on the issues?
When are the debates (and where can I watch them)? When will results be available?
How are the leaders polling nationally?
Why is there an election again?

🔥 Pro tip: Since every publication will compete on these search terms, consider what fits your audience strategy and how to 10x your content. Instead of a simple guide to each party’s platform, could an interactive quiz help readers understand which party manifesto aligns with their views?

With elections, a lot of these pieces will be durable content, or evergreen-ish files. They have shorter shelf lives and require more frequent updates than true evergreen, however, a structured approach can keep the content nimble. Use search data and interest — and your own instincts — to inform these guides.

🔥 Pro tip: Maintain a “hot” section at the top for rising queries or updates and a “cold(er)” section for top-level informational queries lower down. Rising queries or questions on Google Trends can be included in a durable explainer at the top, then broken out into a separate file when warranted.

Bandwidth is often an issue during these events. It's less work to continually edit and update a durable explainer than to write an entirely new article.

Analyze the SERPs for ranking opportunities

During early election news moments, check the SERPs to see which Google Search features you can rank for. Events like primary campaigns, rallies and debates can serve as practice runs for election night.

Observe Google's behaviour during live news, and make adjustments to your keyword and content strategy accordingly.

“Early on in the [U.S. election] primaries, we found a woeful lack of news boxes, which was quite shocking to us,” says Will. During the Iowa caucus, there was no Top Stories box for the search term “iowa caucus.”

Fortunately, this was corrected later in the primary contest, and Google’s Top Stories surfaced in other moments. However, understanding the layout of the SERP — and the positions you’re competing for — is essential to planning.

SERP for “what time is the debate tonight.”

Primaries were an “opportunity to really observe how Google was going to proceed with the general election” for the WSJ, and as a result of those lessons, “we’re going into the general [election] better prepared,” says Will.

Look at SERPs and Google Trends to inform your keyword strategy. If Google isn't serving Top Stories for broad search terms, or you're struggling to rank in a competitive environment, focus on breakout or rising queries instead.

Remember: Hitting every branch of the tree can be a successful strategy.

SERP with explainers after France’s election.

Analyze how live blogs perform during early election events, too. Live blogs are not only a valuable product for readers, but because there’s so much interest (opportunity to rank) and a high degree of investment from the newsroom, they can also make for a useful sandbox for experimentation.

Try different approaches to timing for launching the blog, how to optimize the headline, the frequency of posts, the images and overall editorial strategy to see how Google responds. These learnings can be applied for other live blogs, and other story formats.

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Track your performance and update content accordingly

Use SEO tools to track your performance in real-time to see which stories are ranking for specific keywords, and get alerts when a story is falling out of Top Stories.

Perform competitor analysis to identify if/why other outlets are outperforming you, along with Google Trends research to understand if search behaviour is changing (and reflect that in the on-page text).
If a story drops in rankings, find new angles or questions to incorporate, or use them as the foundation for a breakout story.
Enhance story visibility by linking related articles with optimized anchor text and promoting the story on the homepage, on key section pages or in the navigation. Reach out to outlets that reference your work if they haven’t linked back to your coverage.

This real-time work during the election season is essential to maintain your visibility and ensure your journalism is reaching a wide audience.

Host post-mortems and write internal reports

A good post-mortem starts during the news event. Create a dedicated Slack channel for communication during conventions or election nights, and share screenshots as well as notes about what works and which efforts aren’t succeeding.

Involve key stakeholders early to gather their perspectives, then run a post-mortem meeting soon after the event. Use the time to discuss what went well, areas of improvement (including what audience editors can do better) and key takeaways for the next news event. Keep the meetings short until the final post-election debrief.

For internal reporting, remember to tailor it to your newsroom's specific goals and KPIs. Key wins and opportunities should be included in a concise overview, along with the metrics that matter to your outlet (i.e., newsletter signups, registrations, conversions, total traffic or engagement time, etc.).

The goal is to highlight wins and reinforce best practices by communicating when things are done correctly, and where there are areas for growth. Everyone in the newsroom is busy — and never more so than during an election. Encouragement and reminders from the SEO/audience teams of best practices can be key to overall success.

Join our community of more than 1,300 news SEOs on Slack to chat any time.

The bottom line: Elections are high-stress, high-stakes news moments. The job of audience and SEO editors is to help ensure our coverage meets the moment, and helps readers find the content and context they need. Start planning early, reflect and review efforts often, and aim to be nimble in your coverage.

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