A beginner's guide to news SEO guides
Why guides are a must-have for publishers, and the step-by-step process for creating guides. From keyword research, to structure and formatting, here’s everything you need to know
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Hello, and welcome back. Shelby here, counting down the hours until I’m on a plane to sunny Jamaica for my birthday celebrations. Sandy beaches, jerk chicken and an unlimited number of mango rum daiquiris. Let’s all hope I make it back alive!
This week: How to create successful SEO guides. We explain why guides are a must-have for publishers, and outline the process step-by-step for creating guides. From keyword research, to structure and formatting, here’s everything you need to know.
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Let’s get it.
In this issue:
What is a guide?
What to include in a guide
Step-by-step: How to create a guide for news SEO
THE 101
What is a guide?
A guide is a piece of service journalism that provides context on a topic and answers questions readers have. They can cover anything, but mostly pertain to an event or breaking news moment. Often, they're a publisher's first point of contact with a new reader.
Guides come in various formats and do not adhere to a set structure. Meant to complement your overall coverage, a guide collects a bunch of information on a single topic to offer a straightforward, concise overview.
Many people will use search to ask the basic questions when trying to understand something, and these guides can be an easy entry point that also provides a valuable service.
Why are guides important for news SEO?
There’s a misconception that guides are “SEO content” or fluff pieces. This is because of the simplicity of the structure, usually with questions in <h2> tags as subheadings followed by a few paragraphs of text. Guides heavily rely on the who/what/when/where/why/how queries — questions readers are actively asking — and answering those in the best way possible.
Everyone searches for the most basic of information every day, including timing for an event or the definition of something that’s in the news. Every day, we’re learning something new and asking new questions — and guides make sense of it.
Guides are also a great opportunity for internal linking to other related journalism that’s more in-depth — investigations, features, opinion essays and analysis that people may not directly search for, but want to explore (and may even be willing to pay for).
THE 201
Creating a guide with SEO 101: A walkthrough
Let’s walk through an example of determining content for a guide and providing SEO-driven recommendations. The NFL free agency window opens in a few weeks, so I have been working with the desks to determine what kind of explainer/guide coverage we need. Even though NFL free agency isn’t a marquee event, readers still want to know when it is, which players are available and if this will be an exciting window.
We want to produce multiple guides and trackers, but ensure they don't compete with each other. Guides should bring all of our coverage together.
Use keyword research to inform the content and structure recommendations for each guide. Use data in the recommendations to get better buy-in, too.
When determining what questions (and how many) to include in your guide, consider the following:
Breadth of coverage: Do you have expert reporters on this topic, or journalists on the ground of the event?
Additional resources: Have we written before on this topic, or if it’s a breaking news situation/new topic, will we write more on it?
Timeliness: Is there enough time to get the return on investment of a guide?
Usefulness: Is this a one-time guide or can it be updated in the future?
Not every guide needs to be updated after publication. Depending on your editorial strategy, evergreen guides — such as “What is the NFL free agency?” — can be repurposed each year.
Must haves in a guide
Determining what should be included in a piece of service journalism can be tricky, and every newsroom is different.
A guide should answer a question, or multiple questions, on a topic in a simple, clear way.
After that, a guide should have:
The who/what/when/where/why/how answered;
Supplementary information easily linked for more detail;
Links to livestreams or alternative resources off-platform that aid in understanding;
Any embeds or visuals that provide context.
The process
Keep notes of all of your research in a document so you can go back, refer to your thoughts and format recommendations.
1. Begin in Google Trends and search your seed keyword — the main topic. If Trend allows, opt to use the “Topic” view versus the “Search term” view, as it will give you a macro view. Search terms will only give you data for the specific keyword you input. In this example, the seed keyword is “NFL free agency.”
Using the Glimpse extension, I look at the keyword in Google Trends over the past five years to determine seasonality. Google Trends and Glimpse indicate that March is the peak time for interest, which makes sense since the window opens the third week of March.
Additionally, Glimpse shows interest over the past quarter up 2,900 per cent, which means we can begin really ramping up our coverage.
Pro tip: On a regular basis, use the who, what, when, why, how view on Google Trends. This is a very effective approach for trending content, and can help inform any last-minute additions to your strategy.
2. Determine when exactly interest spikes. Shift the timeframe view on Google Trends to gather a variety of perspectives, including a day, 7 days and 30 days. If it’s a breaking news event, set the time frame to an hour or four hours.
Look at the following:
Is the topic trending up or down?
Is there a specific time interest is especially high, and do you know why?
Does Glimpse say whether interest has been higher or lower than usual?
What are people looking to read about? Who are people looking to read about?
Do the breakout and rising queries change much based on the timeframe?
For recurring events, look at the last year: Consider the peak of search interest and when interest began to take off. These will be helpful notes for determining publishing time and — if there are multiple stories — potential publishing cadence.
3. Scroll the Glimpse’s “People Also Search” section. These are all of the “top” queries on your subject. If you find some helpful, take note. Then, filter by “Growth” to see keywords that are rising in interest right now. This is useful for knowing real-time search interest, which is not influenced by total volume.
Click over to the Questions tab. This is your gold mine — questions on your topic that are rising in interest.
There’s a lot of overlap in the questions on this topic — when is NFL free agency, what day does it open, how long is it and its relevance to the draft. This tells me I need to create a “when is NFL free agency guide.”
This rising interest over the last 7 days indicated readers want to gain knowledge about the general details of the event – something my publication can provide.
In a Google doc, I’ve begun making keyword research notes and what I may want to include in a guide.
4. Check rising and breakout related queries in Google Trends. In Related Queries, look for other questions or topics related to the 5Ws & 1H, or terms that may be of interest to your desks to fulfill later.
Below is a look at the related queries for the “NFL free agency” view. Overall, most related queries are players, which is useful for the potential “best available” tracker noted in the above screenshot. These names will be added to the list.
“NFL franchise tag” is a related query, so I make note of that as a potential question in my guide, or an additional piece of coverage — this will be determined later, depending on content depth and newsroom bandwidth.
Note: Not all questions or topics I put in my outline need to be answered — starting with too much and then cutting back is always the best option. It’s important to think about which questions will be most useful to readers. Use your journalistic judgment.
5. Look at the SERP for your topic in Google search. Next, search the seed keyword and the main “question” you hope to answer in search. Look at both SERPs and how they differ. Likely, one of the questions will have a rich snippet at the top which directly answers the question.
Below is the SERP for “when is NFL free agency,” which shows a rich snippet from FOX Sports, a People Also Ask feature, followed by the Top Stories carousel.
Analyzing this SERP tells me a few things:
Google answers the question with a rich snippet;
Including some of those questions in “People also ask” could help the piece perform better;
Google does want publishers to provide this information;
Multiple publishers are already ahead.
Make note of other questions in the People Also Ask that you want to include in your guide(s).
6. Competitor analysis. Once you’ve established which competitors are showing up for your target questions/keywords, check out why they’re already ranking.
Consider the following in your competitive analysis: :
What is the current headline? What’s the length? Where is the main keyword?
How is the URL structured? Where is the main keyword?
How does the page answer the question you searched, and other associated questions?
How do they link to and from this page internally?
How do they include tags or links to build topical authority on this page?
What media (photo, video, interactive element) is included?
How long is the story?
How is the story found by readers on their site? Is it on the homepage, section page or available in sidebars?
What can you provide that they can’t? (Think about 10x content.)
Note the answer to these questions and any other information you want to consider in your own coverage in your doc.
7. Check other tools for other keywords you may be missing. Most keyword research can be done with Google properties; but, if available, use other tools to uncover any overlooked keywords or questions.
SEMRush has a fun mind map feature that helps cluster questions on a topic together. But like most non-news tools, there will be questions that are not directly related or relevant. Use your journalist instinct to determine which of these are valuable for your coverage.
Carefully review your research and narrow down the list of five or six to answer in earnest. The key is making the guides as simple and straightforward, while still being as informative as possible.
8. Bring it all together and craft your recommendations. Use your journalist instinct, audience skills and your understanding of your newsroom to determine the following for the guides you are recommending:
Headline: Optimized for the main keyword or question, with additional information;
URL: Optimized for main keyword or angle of the event;
5-7 questions to answer;
Supplementary or additional coverage that should be linked in the story;
Embeds or visuals;
Publishing times;
Promotional recommendations;
How each of the guides/coverage pieces will work together.
Here’s how this would look when I provide this to my editors.
You may need to provide more data or reasoning behind the questions, and that’s entirely warranted. Whatever helps you sell your idea, include it.
From here, work with the respective desks to determine deadlines, publishing time and promotion. Ensure you are thinking about how these pieces are linked on-site and to each other. Everything is about providing a valuable service to your readers.
The bottom line: Guides are a great top-of-the-funnel effort — and a great complement to your overall coverage for major or breaking news events. Consider how they fit in your strategy.
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THE JOBS LIST
Audience or SEO jobs in journalism. Want to include a position for promotion? Email us.
The Dallas Morning News is hiring a Sr Audience Journalist (Dallas).
Pro Football Network is hiring an SEO Director (remote).
RECOMMENDED READING
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🤖 Search Engine Roundtable: Google says, again, it’s up to publishers to decide what old content is or is not useful.
Even more recommended reading
🖇️ Barry Adams: Turns out, Google really is about links and clicks.
💬 The Verge: A deal reportedly worth $60 million per year will give Google real-time access to Reddit’s data and use Google AI for Reddit’s search.
📄 404 Media: “Reddit's filing with the SEC makes clear that training AI with user posts is a core part of Reddit's new business model.”
📸 Poynter: How Sora, OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool, could harm journalism and society.
🔍 Tech Crunch: Court filings in a case against Google over its alleged monopoly in the search market has revealed a few notable tidbits of information about DuckDuckGo and Neeva.
📉 Moz: How to boost your traffic in Google Discover — and what to do.
📰 Gisele Navarro and Danny Ashton: How Google is killing independent sites and why you shouldn’t trust big publishers ranking at the top.
📈 Level343: Unlock the potential of low to no-volume keywords.
🔗 SEO for Journalism Slack: When should you update the URL for a story?
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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