Andrew Shotland, CEO of Local SEO Guide, joined BIA’s Rick Ducey in Episode 8 of BIA’s podcast series Leading Local Insights. The latest podcast, News SEO – Getting Your Digital News to Rank Higher in Search, Rick and Andrew discuss how to advise local news publishers on effective SEO tactics that help their digital news rank higher in Google and other search engines.

A little about Andrew’s background. He has a unique background in digital news and SEO that he shares with clients. Andrew’s early career found him NBC in their startup internet group where he did a lot of work with NBC News in their early online ventures. He then moved into SEO where he’s been for the past 15 years helping media and other clients get their content to rank higher in search engine results pages.

In the case of news publishers, there are special constraints when it comes to SEO. For example, if Google’s AI determines your content is news, its algorithms put a 48-hour clock on it for prioritization purposes, then it’s not considered “fresh” news anymore.

Click here to listen to the 15-minute podcast that covers three major topics: (1) trends in news SEO, (2) actionable tactics you can take with your team, and (3) how to prepare yourself for the future.

Here’s a summary of important issues Andrew calls out in the podcast:

• Trends in News SEO. Google has really mixed it up with Google News. You no longer apply to be in Google News, Google just automatically decides whether or not you are good enough to be included. Another of changes relates to Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) for fast-loading mobile user experiences. To get into Google News it used to be that you had to have AMP pages. This no longer is the case. With Google’s deprioritizing AMP pages, publishers may be seeing dramatic changes in Google News traffic or from Google Discover, Google’s personalized news feed.
• Actionable Tactics for News SEO: News is different than other content for Google. When you publish a typical article and use normal SEO tactics, it may not get a lot of traffic right away as it takes time to build authority in Google. On Day One you might get one visitor but a year from now you might get 1 million. For what Google determines to be “news” you have maybe 48-hours to for that item to the majority of its traffic. It needs to be perfectly SEO-optimized out of the gate. For example, there are multiple ways to write headlines to target different kinds of searches. The best tactic of all is to have a best practices system and a process for implementing it. Really good images are important and account for maybe 50 percent of the Google News SEO.
• News SEO and Preparing for the Future: It’s funny, we really don’t think about the future so much. There’s so much to do in the present. We do know that it’s likely most newsrooms are behind in their Google News SEO process. If you’re thinking about what you can do in the next year or two, it’d really be to come up with a solid process for approaching news sites on search engines and trying to dominate them. Use highly credible authors, independent and original content, and make multiple daily updates. Make sure your team knows what they’re doing technically with Google News as you really can’t afford to screw it up.

About the Leading Local Insights Podcast

Get on-point analysis of the local media marketplace with BIA’s Leading Local Insights Podcast. Each Tuesday, BIA shares its current insights on major topics including digital ad spend, broadcast media, print, media ad platforms, advertising revenue estimates, financial valuations and more.

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Have an idea on a topic you’d like us to cover in the podcast? Email us at podcast@bia.com.