This is shaping up to be the biggest election year in history with voters going to the polls in more than 60 countries, including the United States, India, South Africa, and Mexico.

When covering a live event of this magnitude, it’s critical to understand how different traffic sources like direct, search, and social behave before, during, and after the event. It’s also important to know how to prepare in advance of the most pivotal days.

How readers behave during elections

During past events driven by breaking news, we’ve found the majority of referral traffic in the first few hours leading up to and during an event comes from search, whereas pageviews from social stand out during and after.

When we zoom in on the days surrounding the last U.S. presidential election, for example, we see that pageviews from searches of the candidates started climbing in the days before the event, peaked the night of, and then declined the next day. Social traffic, by comparison, picked up once the event was underway and leveled off much more gradually following the event, offering more opportunities for post-event pageviews.

Where to focus efforts leading up to and during an election

Because search performance takes historical signals into account, we recommend concentrating on SEO earlier in the election cycle. Publishing related content prior to an event gives these pages more time to index on Google, and optimising your keywords will help articles appear higher in search results during the height of the election.

Here are a few other ideas for your pre-election preparations:

Create and test content well before election night.

The closer it gets to election night, the higher traffic will be, but that doesn’t mean readers aren’t seeking information during the primaries, debates, and rallies happening ahead of time.

Rather than focusing all your energy on competitive keywords such as candidate names during this time, analyse the peripheral topics and categories your audience is already engaging with to understand where their interests lie before they start searching for articles on them.

Recirculate traffic from breaking news to evergreen content.

Nurturing readership ahead of time should lead to a boost in direct traffic when it matters most, as readers who know what they’re looking for and who they trust to provide updates will return during important events.

To make the most of this influx in real time, prepare links that drive readers deeper into your site and improve the probability that they return in the future.

We’ve found live blogs tend to have higher average engaged time but lower recirculation rates than traditional articles, so if this is your vehicle for quick updates, pay extra attention to your linking strategy.

Use video to increase loyalty after an event.

The best coverage balances high-quality text with audio and video so audiences can read, hear, and see the action. It just so happens that’s also a recipe for increasing engagement and loyalty.

A Chartbeat study found visitors who watch video content engage with a page for up to two times longer, and new visitors who watch at least three videos in their first 24 hours on a site are significantly more likely to return within the next seven days than those who looked at a large number of pages in the same time period.

Applications beyond the election cycle

While we share these strategies with this year’s elections in mind, they’re a suitable playbook for all future live events. In the sports world alone, 2024 will play host to the Summer Olympics in Paris, the European Football Championships in Germany, and many more regionally important contests.

From elections to championship games to severe weather, thinking about your pre-, mid-, and post-event strategies now will ensure that you’re in the best position to take advantage of these high-traffic events.

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