The U.S. election cycle is a pivotal time for news organisations worldwide. During this week’s Webinar, presented by the Readers First Initiative, INMA members learned some of the best SEO practices organisations are using in this time of rapid change.

Jessie Willms, SEO strategist at The Guardian in Canada, and Vivienne Goizet, editorial lead/SEO at Bild in Germany, shared how their companies are approaching the challenges and opportunities of the 2024 U.S. elections.

“This is one of the biggest news stories of the year,” noted Greg Piechota, INMA’s researcher-in-residence and lead of its Readers First Initiative.

“Clearly this is a huge opportunity to maximise the visibility of our publications and get casual consumers who normally are not interested in politics, but the big election decision between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is going to be important for their lives.”

4 ways The Guardian maximises its reach

Willms, who also is editor of the popular WTF is SEO? newsletter, explained that the time leading up to the November 5 election is an excellent opportunity to reach readers who don’t typically consume political news: “November 5 is a huge date on the political cycle, and they’re engaging with journalism and our coverage and our content now in a way that they might not do outside of an election cycle.”

She outlined four key pillars The Guardian uses to make the most of the present opportunities and said they are relevant to any critical news event:   

1. Think about SEO in the context of a broader audience strategy.

“We don’t necessarily need or want to reach every single reader,” Willms said: “There’s a particular subset of the audience that is most valuable to us.”

Those targets may be people who are willing to subscribe or contribute, and they can be found through targeted keyword research that finds what potential readers are searching for. SEO can also be used to attract new readers at the top of the audience funnel and guide them through it.

2. Must-have content.

To capture the interest of readers during the election cycle, The Guardian focuses on producing essential, highly impactful pieces of content. These include poll trackers, election policy platform guides, explainers, profiles about individual candidates, and daily live blogs.

“And then one-off breakouts when there’s some sort of viral moment,” Willms added, noting that this step is “thinking about what are the pieces that I have to have?”

3. Content for every phase.

The Guardian tailors its content strategy to the different phases of the election cycle, understanding readers need change throughout the process.

Before the election, content focuses on in-depth explainers and policy guides to educate readers. During the election, The Guardian emphasises live coverage with timely updates to keep readers informed of the latest developments. Then, after the election, it continues providing analysis and follow-up coverage, as audience interest remains high even after the election day. 

4. SEO best practices.

Willms said the final piece is to maintain strong SEO practices. Best practices, she explained, fall into two categories: technical, which ensures the Web site has fast loading times and provides a great UX, and content, which means creating high-quality content that answers readers’ questions and meets their needs. 

News organisations should already be planning for the day after the election and should know what stories they will write, Willms said. This also provides an opportunity for pre-optimisation, including setting the URL, writing a TK headline, and ensuring that all the relevant links have been located and are ready to go live.

“Do as much of that work as you possibly can now so you’ll have an easier election day and the day after,” Willms recommended.

Bild grows its audience with events, young readers, AI

Events

As one of Germany’s leading newspapers, Bild also has developed a strategic approach to covering significant events. Recognising the increasing interest among German readers in U.S. politics, Goizet said Bild has tailored its coverage to meet the unique needs of its audience.

“We prepare more and prepare earlier,” Goizet said. “This year we actually had a kickoff quite early on preparations of explaining everything in the U.S. elections for Germans because there’s a lot of stuff we don’t understand about the two-party system; it’s different here. So there’s a bit more explanation needed.”

This has meant developing stories around how the U.S. political system works and other stories around the elections. And, like The Guardian, Goizet said SEO plays a crucial role in pointing Bild toward the topics and keywords that people are looking for.

Bild’s content is balanced between high-competition keywords and niche topics that other publications might not cover extensively, Goizet said. This dual approach ensures Bild can attract a broad audience while providing in-depth coverage on less mainstream topics.

Young audiences

One of the challenges facing Bild — and other newspapers — is how to engage younger audiences in a time when search is more difficult to optimise for and social media platforms are deprioritising content from news media organisations.

Goizet said Bild is approaching this challenge from the outside in: “We started a youth council, so we’re actually getting young people who are working at Bild to interact more or meet regularly with our editors-in-chief to develop concepts. Instead of having old people thinking about what they could want, we’re just going to go out there and ask them.”

The company is also experimenting with new formats, such as vertical video, which aligns with how younger generations consume social media content.

“The feedback we’re getting from young people more and more is like, ‘I’m not going to type anything into Google. I’m not going to type anything into a news media Web site or into my browser to get to URL. It’s all way too difficult.’”

That led Bild to make it as easy as possible to access its content.

“Either you are on the platforms where they are, or you create a place where stuff is easier to use — or where at least the new hot shit is easy to use as possible.” 

AI

One of the hottest things to use, of course, is AI, and Bild is also exploring its potential to enhance user experience. The company developed Bild AI, a tool designed to make interactions seamless. This tool provides users with easy-to-use prompts and suggestions, eliminating the need for complex inputs and making the technology accessible to a broader audience.

“When OpenAI came up, you had to log into an American-based Web site,” Goizet explained, adding that created an immediate challenge for users who didn’t speak English. “So we thought, OK, let’s do away the barrier of logging in and let’s make it in German.”

It also eliminated the barrier of someone needing to learn how to create prompts. Instead, Bild AI offers users ideas of what they can do: “It asks you three questions, you type some buttons, and you get the answer. You don’t even need to come up with stuff you can do with AI; we give you ideas, we give you the buttons, you don’t have to type anything. It’s easy.”

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