SEO for planned & tentpole news events
Gear up for planned news with our news SEO guide. Here’s what to do before and during tentpole events to cut down on chaos and shine in big moments.
#SPONSORED
Breaking News: Track Google Discover Feeds!
🏆 Exciting Update! Introducing Google Discover Feeds Tracking: Now, track your visibility in Google Discover for any topic in any location and language. Identify top visible articles and videos, top performing sites and analyze competition. Don't miss out!
Hello, and welcome back. Jessie here, reporting live from beautiful Montreal, where I’m house sitting for the week. I’m counting down the minutes until dinner at Ohana — the most delicious vegan sushi I’ve ever eaten. Also on the to-do list: Parks, the mountain, Drawn & Quarterly and trying NOT to embarrass myself when ordering en français, s'il vous plaît!
This week: How to prepare for planned or tentpole news events — scheduled events that we can pre-plan for to capture the most search traffic. This edition includes a checklist of tasks news SEOs should consider before and during the event, plus tips for cutting down the chaos of big moments.
Are you the only news SEO in your organization? Join our new Slack channel! This is for solo news SEOs — those who might lack support or channels for discussion in their newsroom — to speak freely and post questions.
Let’s get it.
In this issue:
What is planned news?
Planning for tentpole events
What to do during planned news events
THE HOW TO
What to know about planned news planning
“Planned news events” refers to any non-breaking, non-daily news events that are scheduled in advance and have a set date — for example, the G7, the Olympics, the Euros, TIFF or the Grammys.
As The Athletic’s Ryan Mayer explained, the biggest difference between breaking news and tentpole events is the pre-planning. Advance planning helps you start with solid footing and reduce the chaotic nature of big events — especially since we know there will inevitably be breaking news within the planned event.
“The further out I start planning, and talking to all of the stakeholders involved, the better and more smoothly the event tends to go,” Ryan said.
All audience teams should have a shared calendar — a Google calendar, spreadsheet or other product — of upcoming events that is used to identify the key opportunities for your publication. (If you’re an AP Client, make use of their comprehensive calendar tool.)
How far in advance planning should start depends on the event. For the Olympics, a year or more makes sense given the scale of the global audience (and traffic/audience opportunity), volume of events and people to cover, logistical challenges and competition between publishers. Primetime news events are extremely competitive — everyone is covering the same thing, but readers don’t have infinite attention — so defining a clear audience strategy is key. For other, smaller-scale events like the G7, a few weeks is sufficient.
News SEOs and audience editors should be in all, if not most, planning meetings (you can skip the calls to book transportation for reporters 🙃). When discussing editorial priorities, audience editors should be there to bring a reader-first mindset.
News SEOs should compile a list from stakeholders outlining all coverage for an event: the main news files, key moments, live coverage, planned features, people to watch and other story themes.
For the Olympics, that could be the priority events or key athletes — for example, Team USA’s Katie Ledecky versus Canada's Summer McIntosh in swimming. For this last G7, a theme might be Canada-India relations as this is the first Trudeau-Modi meeting since allegations emerged about the Indian government's involvement in the killing of a Canadian last year.
This all depends on the resources available and priorities for your organization.
SEO tasks and priorities for planned or tentpole news:
With the initial outline for coverage in hand, it’s time to start thinking about what’s missing from the plan and iron out specifics on things you will push for. Keyword research — a review of top trends from previous years and close monitoring of rising search queries — can inform much of this work. What stories will you pitch? How will your homepage surface this content? What SERP features will you target?
Think through those questions and consider these additional tasks for early tentpole planning:
If it’s a recurring event, an audit of what you published last time. What topics or formats worked well? What could be improved?;
Conduct a competitive analysis and a review of share of voice on keywords to understand where your outlet stands now. Are you likely to rank easily, or is there more groundwork to be laid?;
Start a spreadsheet to track/compile all important and useful internal links;
Decide on the tag, topic or section/hub pages to collect event coverage;
Determine whether you need a live blog for minute-by-minute updates;
Look at the archive. What evergreen stories, explainers, guides or other content exists in your archive that can be refreshed and re-promoted?;
Set up keyword and rank tracking in your SEO tool(s) of choice;
Do a Google SERP analysis. What features are currently available for relevant keywords? Where is the news box, and what does that look like in the mobile vs. desktop landscape?;
Establish capacity. How many stories can your publication realistically expect to write daily? What about breakouts? Do you have a dedicated staffer to watch for and write off breaking news?;
Identify the key performance metrics and measures of success. There’s an infinite number of ways we can track the impact of our efforts.
Set expectations and goals within your teams. Is this an event where you have room to experiment, or are you short staffed? What are the priorities, and where — if needed — can things drop? Have those conversations before the event.
Zero in on keyword research
Use keyword research (and your instincts as a journalist) to make decisions about other topics to cover, when to publish stories, what breakouts to pitch or when a live blog is the best format for coverage. Look at the questions readers asked last time. Will they need those answers again?
Look at the SERP environment to think about what features — like the Top Stories box or a People Also Ask module — might be available over the event.
Consider any new elements for the event, like new categories such best stunt at the Oscars or breaking at the Olympics. What information will readers need about these new entrants?
Use Google Trends to look at reader interest: When did that interest spike? Why? For a multi-day event, when was interest consistently the highest? Use that data to inform publishing times.
Use Glimpse or AlsoAsked to identify the overall and rising questions. Use social listening tools to see questions surfacing on TikTok, Reddit or other platforms, too.
Return to the original coverage plans. Use your keyword research to inform what other explainers, guides or additional reporting you should pitch.
🚨Review our editions on keyword research, keyword research tools and expert tips for more detailed guidance.
Communicate with key stakeholders consistently. Create an event-specific Slack channel to share insights, ideas and centralize communication of programming info (shift handover notes, feedback etc.). Set up check-in meetings at a cadence that makes sense for your teams. Success happens when newsrooms over-communicate.
During the event: A shortlist of SEO considerations
In a perfect world, pre-planning means the event goes off without a hitch. However, we work in news. Be ready to be nimble.
As Ryan said, no news event is going to be “completely devoid of chaos. It's always going to have that certain level to it.”
Here is the shortlist of SEO work to do during the news event to achieve success:
Daily, real-time monitoring of the SERPs to see which keywords have a Top Stories box (or other rich snippet features), and where your stories are ranking;
Implementing on-page best practices when optimizing stories;
Executing an internal linking strategy (making use of that linking doc you created earlier!);
Pitching breakout stories based on any trending searches or breakout terms;
Managing live blog coverage and providing feedback to editors;
Working with programming teams to ensure key files are included on the homepage and linked in key spots (i.e., in the navigation);
Internal reporting for the newsroom. For example, writing a daily “wins and opportunities” note. This should recap the work done so far, how audience editors contributed and examples where competitors performed better with suggestions for future improvements.
Resolving any technical issues that might arise.
(We have detailed guides to — almost! — all these tasks. Review the links for more information or post on our Slack if we’ve missed something.)
After tentpole or planned news events: A review
Success should be measured against the key performance metrics that you set for your team before the event.
A report should include quantitative metrics like engagement, conversions or total traffic, and qualitative information like the impact of your journalism or reader reaction. Missed opportunities, wins and the results of any experiments also merit inclusion.
You can use the daily note as the foundation of an internal report, written after the event.
Share this event recap broadly in the newsroom, and with senior leadership. The report should encourage feedback and constructive criticism to foster growth. Planned news is not uncommon — so use the feedback to perform better during the next tentpole news moment.
📌 Great news: We will have more on running a news SEO-focused post-mortem in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
The bottom line: Planning for tentpole and planned news events minimizes the chaos of covering these huge news moments. News SEOs should be involved in planning at all stages, working to ensure best practices are in place for all stories and monitoring the SERPs to see if your efforts are paying off.
#SPONSORED - The Classifieds
Balkans' biggest SEO conference: The biggest 2-day international SEO conference in the Adria region, hosting some of the best SEO speakers the world has to offer. Get 25% off with code AGENCY!
Understand your audience in minutes. InstantPersonas, powered by AI, builds insightful user personas without a billion customer surveys. We provide marketing managers with actionable insights, SEO opportunities and downloadable templates. Try for free.
THE JOBS LIST
Audience or SEO jobs in journalism. Want to include a position for promotion? Email us.
Newsweek is hiring an SEO Journalist (preference in the UK).
RECOMMENDED READING
Google news and updates
🤖 Danny Goodwin: If your website is struggling to get organic traffic from Google Search, there are three core areas you should focus on.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: An interview with Elizabeth Tucker, director of product management for Google Search, on the March and September updates, the search leak, AI Overviews and more.
🤖 Danny Goodwin: 13 key takeaways from this conversation, including a comment about traffic to publishers.
🤖 Roger Montti: Is desktop SEO still necessary in this mobile-first world?
🤖 Google Office Hours question: Why would Google think a LinkedIn Pulse article is the original if it was first published on a website?
Even more recommended reading
🗞️ Barry Adams for Press Gazette: AI overviews could wreak havoc, but algorithm updates are the biggest current threat publishers face.
💸 Carolyn Lyden: How to successfully negotiate your SEO salary: A complete guide on how to do it.
😠 Jess Peck: How and why Google made its own product worse.
🧪 Jandira Neto: Four surprising SEO test results, including removing brand from title tags (Whiteboard Friday).
What did you think of this week's newsletter?
(Click to leave feedback.)
Catch up: Last week’s newsletter
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