How can you leverage simple technical adjustments to improve your news site’s SEO?

This week’s Back to Basics reviews several simple solutions for improving your site’s article page SEO.

Also in this issue:

📍 Flipboard joins the Fediverse

📍 Telegram courts creators with new way to monetize via subscriptions

📌 Back to Basics #4: Articles need these crucial SEO elements

Let’s start.

Flipboard users can now follow anyone using the open social ecosystem known as the Fediverse

Flipboard, the social-media-slash-magazine app, now lets its users follow Fediverse accounts, including those on Mastadon and Instagram Threads. What is the Fediverse? It's basically an open social media ecosystem that allows creators to publish content from anywhere to all of their followers on all their accounts. It's enabled not through a particular platform but by the ActivityPub protocol.  (The Verge explains this best.) 

By leveraging the Fediverse, publishers and creators gain more control over their content and increase their reach. This decentralized system lets publishers avoid the algorithms and rules of big social media platforms, ensuring their content is seen by the people they want to reach without outside interference. Plus, because the Fediverse platforms can connect and share content with each other, publishers can reach a wider audience while still maintaining full control over their data and how it's used.

Of course, it has its drawbacks. Unless publishers find viable alternatives to the current advertising model, monetizing content on the Fediverse will be a challenge. It is platform-less, which means no rev-shares or display ads. However, there are potential solutions, such as direct audience support through platforms like Patreon, or sponsored content partnerships with other publishers in the Fediverse.

Other platforms using the Fediverse include WordPress and Ghost. The slow but steady growth of the Fediverse is a positive sign that there is still hope for a more open web. 

Telegram now lets creators build monetized channels

The messenger app known for its robust privacy features and the option to reach large audiences through "channels," now lets its creators sell monthly subscriptions to their channels. To join a monetized channel, users pay Stars, Telegram's native currency, when opening the invitation link. 

Back to Basics #4: Articles need these crucial SEO elements

Welcome back to Media Tech Report's Back to Basics series, where every week, we review one easy-to-accomplish solution to an extremely common problem—and highlight the brands doing it best. 

There are two keys to improving search engine optimization for content websites. The first is the content itself: what you're writing about and what words you're using. The second is the tech: how you're presenting those words to readers and search engine crawlers. To improve ranking and clickability on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) media companies need both. 

Quick Tips for Content SEO

• Article Length: Articles with more than 1,000 words often rank better because they allow for the natural integration of many long-tail keywords. Read more about it here.

• Topic Competition: Where you can focus on topics that have high search volume (meaning lots of people are searching for it) but low competition (meaning few websites are providing the answers).) Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and KWFinder can help you discover the ideal topics for your site. Here's a great, 3-minute tutorial on how to do it.

• Keyword Placement: Google wants to connect the best answers to every search query. Make it easy for Google to understand what information is in the article and what answers your article has by using relevant keywords in your title, headers, and the first 100-200 words of your article. Need help determining which keywords are best? This 12-minute video makes the process clear.

• Search Intent: Make sure your content matches what the user needs. Some searchers want straightforward information pieces; others may want the ability to make a purchase or compare products. This article has a few good tips about aligning your content with search intent.

• Relevance to Domain: Focus on topics that align with your site's expertise. This helps build credibility and improve rankings. Google cares about so-called E-E-A-T, so anything that boosts Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness is worth considering.

Quick Tips for Technical SEO

Content is important, but it's just one (admittedly large) piece of the greater SEO puzzle. Making technical adjustments to your article templates can also improve your domain's position in SERP. To give your site the best shot at search traffic, make sure your article templates include the following: 

1. Author Bylines and Miniature Bios

This one is recently controversial. After The Verge wrote an article about how SEO experts "ruined the internet," Google reps took to X to say that author bylines are not a ranking factor. However, there is often a gap between what Google says and what Google does. This was made abundantly clear in the recent Google Pagerank algorithm leak, which, by the way, confirmed the importance of author entities for SEO. 

The reality is that author bylines and bios tend to correlate with higher levels of Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), which are qualities that Google values highly. (But also maybe not. Thanks, Google.)

Another important point: bylines are absolutely vital for news sites. You need them to join Google News and/or Apple News, both of which can hugely expand audiences for content-based brands. 

2. Category Breadcrumb

Breadcrumbs are an important tool for both user navigation and SEO. They help readers easily find their way around your site by showing the path back to previous pages or categories. For Google, breadcrumbs provide a clear structure, helping it understand how different pages on your site are related.

This is particularly crucial for news and lifestyle media websites, which often host tens of thousands of pages. Each article should be linked to a relevant category, making it easier for both readers and search engines to crawl and index the right content.

Breadcrumbs can have a positive impact on your crawl depth, helping more of your content be discovered and ranked. (You can read more about this here).

3. Article or NewsArticle Schema

Web schema labels components on parts of a webpage so that search engines can understand the content quickly at a glance. When you use the Article or NewsArticle schema, you're giving search engines important details like who wrote the article, when it was published, and what type of content it is. This helps search engines efficiently categorize your content, confidently display it to the right search users, and pull in relevant details into features like quick results blocks.

Using schema markup is important for SEO because Google prefers well-organized content, both at the content catalog level (i.e., taxonomies-like categories) and at the article level (i.e., with clearly labeled Article schema). When your content is labeled correctly, it's easier for search engines to understand, which can help improve how and where the information appears in search results.

4. Subheaders

Subheaders play a key role in making your content more scannable and accessible to both readers and search engines. Here's how they help:

• Improve Readability: Subheaders break down content into smaller sections, making it easier to read and understand. They also make it easier to find the part of the article that most directly answers the search query.

• Support SEO: They provide natural places to use keywords and related terms, enhancing your content's relevance for search queries.

• Enhance User Experience: Because subheaders allow users to quickly find the information they need, readers theyare more engaged and less likely to bounce to a new domain.

For more detailed tips on writing for SEO, check out the full guide by SemEMrush.

5. Interactive or Multimedia Elements

Non-written components like videos, infographics, and audio can encourage readers to engage with your content. Thisincreased engagement and time spent on your website can signal to Google that your content is valuable, which can potentially improve its domain authority and average article ranking. Interactive and multimedia content can also give your content new opportunities to appear in other Google search results, like Google Images or Google Videos.

Plus, YouTube is owned by Google, so it's not impossible for the search engine to rank articles embedding YouTube videos higher on search result pages.

6. FAQs

Like subheaders, an FAQ section can make it easy for readers to digest a long article or complex topic. Plus, if you use FAQ web schema Google may show your answer in the People Also Ask (PAA) section.

Who Does it Well:

https://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/room-ideas/g2429/small-kitchen-roundup/

https://www.popsci.com/environment/why-do-cats-make-biscuits/

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/food-drink/cate-zone-chinese-cuisine-excels-in-its-second-location-42603399