SEO guidelines and free tool kits for news publishers

While the digital platform has faded all boundaries and brought the content competition to a global level, it has resulted in a very friendly SEO war. The fight to rank higher on Google is as steady as ever. Google has been coming in with new updates every year to ensure that the best of content shines through. This means that publishers have to fight to land their place. Getting noticed by Google news is one of the biggest challenges today. Optimizing one’s news website is crucial. This is where SEO comes in. You understand how to optimize your content by looking closely at the search engine trends and gauging your website’s performance.

Here’s a quick SEO checklist for digital publishers which will help you manage content better and focus on the right areas. Search engines are changing their algorithms every now and then, but good content always wins.

• Focus on your target audience

• Include popular keywords in search to your content

• Make your website and content structured for better reader experience

• Answer what is being asked by audiences with authentic and well informed content

• Rather than having the same content everywhere, have authentic content in one space

• Look into cross channel promotion and relevance

• Optimize your multimedia content to have a better website performance

• Make use of social media and encourage engagement

Here are a few of the many free SEO tools publishers can use to understand their website better and improve their search engine ranking with time.

1. Google Keyword Planner

You need a google ads account in order to have access to Google Keyword planner. This is a free tool and is used by a lot of SEO tools to gauge the right keywords and search patterns. This is ideal for finding new keywords that you can center your content on. You can also get search volumes and forecasts for your keywords. It also has a filter feature wherein you can prioritize the keywords that would give you the best results and would be the most relevant for your brand.

2. Answer the public

Unlike Google Keyword Planner, this tool helps you find questions that are being searched online. This includes questions asked on blogs, social media and other digital forums. You can find those similar to your industry/product and service and craft content accordingly. If you know what your consumers are searching for, it’s easier to answer their queries.

3. Woorank

Here’s an extension you can quickly add to your chrome and get your SEO scores on the go. Something that stands out is how it provides you specific feedback. It tells you exactly what’s not working. But not only that, it shows you the potential solutions. Now being a tool has its limitations but one could benefit greatly from such a tool - find a solution that fits you.

4. Mobile Indexing

This is another Google tool that will tell you if your site is mobile friendly. Due to the shift in the algorithm, this is an interesting tool where publishers can easily check the mobile-friendliness of their website. In typical Google fashion, it tells you if you make the cut and if not, it tells you where to improve. This will help you ensure that google crawler can locate your site and index resources.

While many may argue that SEO is not as important, it continues to be relevant for publishers. Journalism, although still focuses on covering meaningful stories, it needs to look into SEO scores to reach a truly wider audience. This is where we bring in an SEO friendly approach. It’s important to encourage writers to bring out original written pieces. Looking into SEO will only ensure that these quality articles are being read by a larger audience.

Readers today hold immense power. They’re often spending time on the internet knowing exactly what they want to know. They’re happy to engage with content creators and other readers to learn. Search engines feed on the curiosity of the readers. Features like Google News and Google Discover take pride in bringing readers a personalized experience.

SEO expertise will not only help you rank higher in the search engine rankings but more importantly it will help you create content that is more relevant to your target audience. It also helps you gain visibility on platforms mentioned above. SEO is not mastered in a day or even two. It takes time to see results and it’s important to be patient. With the right SEO efforts, you can ensure that your content gets the attention it deserves. We hope you could benefit from the tools mentioned above, do you know of any more free SEO tools? Share them with us in the comment section.