Before you leave this article thinking “this is no longer a keyword research guide”, let me tell you something I learned firsthand working with national news editors: Keyword research for editors is entirely different.
The skills, processes, checklists and tools you currently use won’t be as useful in this niche.
Forget presenting your keyword list to an editorial team using the traditional keyword research method. These keywords are already out of date!
Also, let me save hours of time sifting through the thousands, if not millions, of keywords that news sites naturally rank for.
SEO for news is different – and so is keyword research.
It’s about winning top stories optimization. This will give you the most daily search traffic for a news site.
The goal of this guide is to equip you with a quick keyword research framework to teach your journalists so they can gain more from these top stories.
Why Is Keyword Research For News SEO Different?
Trending Topics
News sites require a different approach to keyword research than other types of sites.
They typically focus on timely, breaking stories that are often only relevant for a short period.
As a result, news sites need to quickly identify and rank for searched keywords at any given time (also known as trending topic optimization).
Optimizing for trending topics requires a completely different approach to keyword research.
Traditional keyword research is usually based on 12 months of aggregated data, while news keyword research is predominantly based on trending topics (which are topics that haven’t been searched for before).
Data
Most local and national news sites cover a variety of topics. If a story is of public interest, you can expect an editor to cover it.
For example, around Christmas, you would expect most news sites to provide holiday cooking tips or buyer’s guides.
You would also expect these editors to cover stories that capture public interest, such as COVID-19.
And just like seasonal events like Christmas or world events like a pandemic, these topics move in and out of mainstream public interest.
The difference is the data; When you’re looking at query data for a news site, you have seasonality and trending factors to consider. These factors could also be the reason why your traffic is increasing or decreasing.
Intent
When a topic is trending or interesting, Google gives preference to news sites for that query. This is known as a “query deserves updating” (QDF);
“The QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is ‘hot’. If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model considers it to be the one for which users are most likely to want current information.”
For this reason, news sites can hop in and out of the search engine results page (SERP) for any given query.
An easy example to explain this is comparing two US presidents, one from the past and one from the present.
If we take the current president, Joe Biden, and compare it to George Bush, the 43rd US president, we can see the QDF in action.
For Joe Biden, the top two stories are triggered at the top of the SERP and the news site’s topics are listed below.
Ahrefs screenshot, November 2022
Whereas if we look at the Bush results, the SERP is mostly informational.
Ahrefs screenshot, November 2022
Also note the bottom placement of top stories.
Entities
Keyword standards for news sites are based on the five Ws of journalism: who, what, when, where and why.
These are the fundamental questions any journalist should ask when covering a story.
Answering these questions in a story usually gives the journalist a good foundation.
To help journalists perform good on-page SEO with their headlines and subheadings, focus on the W’s and less on the “keywords” as we know them as SEO professionals.
Forget explaining concepts like keyword difficulty, monthly search volume, cost per click, or even impressions. Trust me, you will have lost them and they will go back to ignoring SEO.
Detail
People forget that just because a story is online, it could also be in the newspaper – and journalists need to tailor their work for both audiences.
In print, you can immediately absorb everything surrounding the title, such as all images and subtitles. On digital, there can only be a generic image and a title.
Space is the real issue, as there is a space limit in a digital layout.
In print, shorter words that have impact are key. And sometimes this is also related to the number of lines in the title.
But for SEO, it can get in the way of reaching that story.
The top optimization tip you can give journalists is to have them include one of the five Ws in the headline.
And don’t be afraid to give too much detail in the title.
Here’s a simple framework to use with a non-SEO journalist to help you understand keyword research.
Who Is The Story About?
People search for the name of the person, place or thing.
Tip: Using the full name of the person, place, or thing will perform better in the search.
Elon Musk will have more search volume than Musk.
Ahrefs screenshot, November 2022
What Is The Story About?
To help search engines return our stories when people search for them, we need to tell readers and search engines the facts of the story.
If this is about elections, then this needs to be in the headlines.
Search engines are always first-time users of your site; they cannot see the featured image the way a human can.
With SEO, if a title doesn’t contain the keyword or what the reader was looking for, search engines are less likely to show the story in their search results.
Where?
Tip: Adding exactly where the news happened or is happening will help your story rank better.
People can be passing by, briefly listening to the news on the radio/TV and using their smartphones to find out what happened.
Sometimes they might even Google the location to find out about the news. For example, “Ukraine”.
Screenshot of searching for [ukraine], November 2022
It’s less about keyword research and more about the story elements people are looking for.
The Why?
When something happens in the news, people have questions – and many people turn to search engines to help them answer their questions.
For example, in 2016, Great Britain voted to leave the EU; people looked for answers related to how it affected them. i.e. “Why did Britain vote to leave the EU”, “What does Brexit mean”, “What impact will Brexit have on business” etc.
Explaining what’s new is very effective for both SEO and generating new subscribers.
Breaking News Keyword Research
Breaking news is a term the media industry uses to describe real-time events or events that have just happened.
Breaking news could be something that just happened in your local area or something that is happening in the world.
More often than not, the topic may have had little previous research interest. As a result, traditional keyword research tools are less useful here.
Keyword research tools generally base their data on a 12-month average search volume.
For example, before COVID-19 became a worldwide pandemic and virtually all media covered it, it was almost never searched for.
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
And before February 2020, if you had used your standard keyword research tools, searching for COVID-19 would not return data (or indicate that there was no search volume).
So how do we do keyword research for breaking news when no data is available?
It’s simple: stop thinking about keywords like you usually do. Instead, think of entities when doing keyword research for breaking news.
Focus On The Five Ws
To prove that this methodology works, let’s use Google Trends for the top COVID-19 related keywords now that we have over a year of keyword data.
The main keyword for COVID-19 is, unsurprisingly: Covid 19.
Ahrefs screenshot, November 2022
Even the third or fourth keyword, “Covid vaccine” or even “Covid 19 symptoms”, is also answered by the question: “What is the story about?”
Tip: Keywords in headlines are a very strong signal that Google uses to display a news article in top stories.
And don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what Google’s own documentation says:
“The most basic sign that information is relevant is when an article contains the same keywords as your search,” referenced in Google’s guide on how to rank news content.
Perhaps this is why many media outlets have been instructed by their SEO teams to use what is known as a kicker before the main editorial title, i.e. {SEO Keyword}: {Editorial Headline}, as keywords closest to the beginning of the headline has a greater weight.
Using this approach can help a story rank high in top stories. But this is not always the case.
Depending on the authority of the publication, including terms anywhere in the title may also work.
When a story starts, as mentioned several times throughout this guide, the most important keywords to cover are the five Ws.
The What, Who, And Where Components Of The Story
Unlike social, push and bulletin alerts where people are notified of the update, when people search they are actively looking for information on a topic. This is especially true for breaking news.
People often hear a story in another medium, such as radio, TV or even a colleague. They are given the basic facts of a story. But people have questions.
Many people, when they have questions, turn to search engines for answers.
The best place to start researching keywords for breaking news is to open up Google Trends and use the first word in the story.
Google Trends
At the time of writing this – the topic “Typhoon Hinnamnor” was breaking news.
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
As you can see, before it was breaking news, there was relatively little research interest in the topic.
Ensuring the keyword is used in the title of any news updates on the topic is the first step.
As we can see from the SERP saved below for “Typhoon Hinnamnor”, all publications are using the main keyword in the title.
Screenshot of Google Search, November 2022
Tip: You can use – https://web.archive.org/save to save a search in time.
Very useful for capturing story top results as when a topic is no longer news or posts do not cover a topic, the top news carousel SERP feature is no longer displayed.
Let’s break this keyword down again using the formula above.
What Is The Story About?
Where Is The Story Taking Place?
Typhoon Hinnamnor in South Korea.
More often than not, people are looking for coverage of the most recent updates to a story – but as you can see above, Google has featured video, which means people are also looking for footage.
Once the latest news and video updates are covered, the next place to look is Google Trends.
Step 1: Type The Main Keyword Into Google Trends
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
What you’ll see is that there are topics and queries that are breakout queries.
According to Google Trends, a breakthrough search term means it grew by more than 5,000% in the requested period.
Related queries provide an indication of what searches might also be looking for.
What you want to do here is take related topics and search for your top terms.
For example, if we take the term “Typhoon” and filter it by its top related queries, we can see that “What is a typhoon” is one of the top related queries.
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
Note: Rising queries are the trending queries and top queries are the most searched queries.
Step 2: Use Google’s Related Searches
The next step is to type in the keyword and use related Google searches.
Screenshot of searching for [what is a typhoon], November 2022
This can be a great place to discover keywords and related topics to include in an explainer article about the news. These are also known as the “branches” of the story.
The main story is about the news from the typhoon in Japan, but the ramifications are what people also want to know now that they’ve heard the news.
Tip: Use an asterisk as a wildcard to represent a space that can be filled with anything. This will give you even more related questions to target.
For example, “what are the effects of a typhoon” might be a great title suggestion for an explainer of what a typhoon is.
Screenshot of searching for [what “typhoon”], November 2022
And if you want to do that research on a larger scale, freemium tools like answerthepublic.com and alsoasked.com will help you here.
The addition of including these branches as part of an editorial workflow for breaking live news is that these explainers become evergreen.
Here is a great example of an evergreen explainer created by The New York Times that ranks for over 400 keywords related to the difference between typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes that can be used whenever there is a related breaking news story.
Ahrefs screenshot, November 2022
This is the magic formula when working with editorial teams.
It’s the secret to how you can get editorial teams to commission more evergreen content.
When a story is trending and interesting, give them the perennial topic they also need to write about – but framed as “this is what our search audience is looking for in our coverage of this news”.
The beauty of this workflow is that not only will it serve the audience’s purpose for the daily news agenda as well as the subscriber’s intent, but it’s also evergreen and can be updated and reconnected when another hurricane or strong similar weather theme comes in. on the news agenda.
Now apply this logic to seasonal events like Christmas, Easter, and summer. There are topics that will be published every year.
The key is to time and provide evergreen keyword topics when the topic is happening on the news agenda.
News Event Keyword Research
Google Trends is a great starting point when researching keywords for an upcoming news event.
Take Black Friday as an example.
Step 1: Input The Target Keyword In Google Trends
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
This gives us information about when this topic is predicted to trend based on the previous five years. Naturally, it increases in November, when Black Friday happens.
Step 2: Find The Related Keyword And Filter By Top
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
This will give you an idea of the top terms people search for.
You’ll need to help your editorial team understand when and what to publish for research – not by looking at which keywords are trending at the time, but by what was trending historically.
You can use Google Trends to provide this information.
And David Esteve, an expert on news media audiences, posted the best Twitter thread on how to do this for now. According to David:
“Given that Google positively values the proximity of the time your news is published in relation to when there is a peak in search trends for that information, having “predictive” knowledge of when these searches will begin to occur offers an extremely powerful advantage. to the publisher that plans it that way.”
Twitter screenshot, November 2022
The key to getting this information for any topic is to modify the default URL parameters that Google Trends provides.
For example, if we were to do this for Black Friday 2021, which was Friday, November 26th, we would need to change the default URL that Google Trends gives us: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q = black%20friday&geo=USA.
We are interested in Friday, November 26, 2021.
So the first step is to use the date filter to get a custom date range i.e. from the 21st to the 27th.
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
Now, if you look at the top queries, you’ll see the specific queries searchers were looking for in that time period:
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
On Black Friday day, to decipher when and what to post using David’s formula to add the hourly data i.e. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2021-09-26T00%202021 -09- 27T20&geo=US&q=black%20friday.
We can see that the morning saw the peak of search interest – i.e. on the day of Black Friday it would be important to let your editorial team publish as early as possible with the best deals and not wait for them to show up as search interest can decrease as the day progresses.
Screenshot of Google Trends, November 2022
With news SEO and keyword research, what we’re looking at is informing editors about what the public is looking for, but also when they’re looking for it, to maximize the reach of the story.
As shown above, Google Trends is a really useful tool to help inform publishers of what people are looking for and when.
Key Takeaway
News sites traditionally rank for thousands, if not millions, of keywords.
It makes no sense to do keyword research for news using traditional methods when topics haven’t been researched before.
Instead, focus on the five Ws and teach journalists how to use them in the headlines and on the page to maximize SEO for news sites in the top news carousel.
Featured Image: Tero Vesalainen/Shutterstock
The keyword family includes the following field types: keyword , which is used for structured content such as IDs, email addresses, hostnames, status codes, postal codes, or tags. constant_keyword for keyword fields that always contain the same value. wildcard for unstructured machine-generated content.
What is keyword in C types?
Keywords are words that have special meaning to the C compiler. In translation phases 7 and 8, an identifier cannot have the same spelling and case as a C keyword. For more information, see phases of translation in the Preprocessor Reference. For more information about identifiers, see Identifiers.
What are the 32 keywords of C?
How many keywords are in C programming language?
C supports 32 keywords. All keywords are written in lower case.
Are there 32 keywords in C?
In the C programming language, there are 32 keywords. All 32 keywords have their meaning which is already known by the compiler. Whenever the C compiler encounters a keyword, it automatically understands its meaning.
How many keywords in C language and what are they?
There are a total of 32 keywords in ‘C’. Keywords are written in lower case. You cannot use a keyword as an identifier in your C programs, its reserved words in the C library and used to perform an internal operation. The meaning and function of these keywords are already known by the compiler.
What are the top SEO ranking factors in 2022?
In this section, we break down each of the top ranking factors in Google’s search algorithm in 2022.
- Consistently publishing engaging content. 🇧🇷
- Keywords in Meta Title Tags. 🇧🇷
- Backlinks. 🇧🇷
- Niche Specialization. 🇧🇷
- Internal Links. 🇧🇷
- Mobile friendly / mobile first website. 🇧🇷
- User Engagement. 🇧🇷
- Page speed.
What is the most searched thing on Google 2022? The most popular keyword winner is Facebook with over 1,102,800,000 searches per month. This is closely followed by YouTube, Amazon, and the weather, or “weather” for short.
How do I use Google Trends?
To get started with Google Trends, type a keyword into the search bar or choose one of the provided examples. You can also scroll down to see general information about current trends in your country. We can see a breakdown of the popularity of each term in each state.
How can I see what’s trending on Google?
On the Google Trends homepage, you’ll find a section for trending searches. Trend research is the hottest topic right now. You can browse daily trend searches, real-time search trends, and search by country.
What are keywords name?
Keywords are predefined and reserved words used in programming that have special meanings to the compiler. Keywords are part of the syntax and cannot be used as an identifier.
What are metaname keywords? Meta keywords are meta tags that you can use to provide search engines with more information about a page’s content. They are found in the HTML source code of a web page and are not visible to visitors. Here is an example of a keyword meta tag:
What are Google rankings based on?
To provide you with the most useful information, search algorithms look at many factors and signals, including your query words, page relevance and usability, font experience, and your location and settings. The weight applied to each factor varies depending on the nature of your query.
How do you rank number 1 on Google? To get to the top of Google’s search results in a competitive niche, you’ll need to: Follow Google’s Quality Webmaster SEO Guidelines. A site with a reputation for publishing original, useful and relevant content. A user-friendly and satisfying page experience for search visitors.
How long does it take to rank 1 in Google?
95% of published pages are not in the top 10 in the first year. The top 5% of performers who managed to rank in the top 10 took anywhere from 61 to 182 days. Sites with a stronger backlink profile tend to perform better than those with a weaker backlink profile.
How long does SEO ranking take?
The short answer is between 4-12 months. The longer answer has to do with all of the factors we’ve discussed that relate to your SEO strategy. If you target low competition keywords, you can start seeing results within 4-6 months.
How much does it cost to rank #1 on Google?
Approximate CPC is $2. 6,600 searches times the $2 cost per click times a 30% CTR = $3,960. So, using Google tools, we can estimate that we would pay $3,960 a month to be ranked #1 on Google for “Salon Nashville”. The annual value of that top Google ranking would be $47,520.
How do I check my Google ranking?
Google Search Console Just click on the ‘Search Results’ tab under Performance. Click ‘Queries’ to see all the search terms your site ranks for. Be sure to select the average position on the chart to see it in the table below.
How do I know if my website is optimized for SEO?
Make sure your web page URLs are SEO friendly. For links to be SEO friendly, they must contain keywords relevant to the topic of the page and not contain spaces, underscores or other characters. You should avoid using parameters whenever possible, as they make URLs less inviting for users to click or share.
What are Google’s top 3 ranking factors?
In no particular order, the top factors for ranking on Google are: High quality content. Mobile first. Page experience.
What is the approximate number of Google ranking factors*? 7 Confirmed Google Ranking Factors.
What is the approximate number of Google’s ranking factors quizlet?
Each search engine has its own proprietary ranking algorithm that weighs any number of factors (Google uses over 200 different ranking factors) that approximate the quality of a website’s content as well as the quality of the user experience.
What are the main processes the Google search engine uses to organize information online select three?
In this guide, you’ll learn the three main processes (crawling, indexing, and ranking) that search engines follow to find, organize, and present information to users.