SEO is journalism’s best friend when it comes to breaking news like the Labour Party split – here’s why

It has come as no surprise to me readers have written in bemused by the term SEO. As SEO editor, I go to dinner parties and after describing myself as a journalist, my specific job title brings only blank faces.

So here it is: SEO literally means search engine optimisation. For online news organisations, it is the art of getting your stories as one of the top results on Google when the most used key words or phrases are typed into the search bar.

The birth of The Independent Group was a fun test for us SEO wonks. We were prepping headlines for breaking news pieces without knowing the name of this splinter cell. Rumours it was going to be a new political party called “Go Forward” did not pan out. Turns out – despite only it only involving seven MPs – “Labour split” was the key term until people started searching for the rebel group’s nom de guerre.

Clearly readers felt this was the start of something greater within the Labour Party as opposed to a small minority jumping before being pushed.

An increasingly large number of readers who come to The Independent do so through Google and other search engines.

While SEO is a business-critical process to produce increased revenue for The Independent, it also holds great editorial value. Through studying search trends in real time, we gain greater understanding of the topics and stories readers nationwide and across the globe are most interested in.

It won’t be a shock to anyone that Trump, Brexit and weather forecasts are perennially important topics. However, the phenomenon of Love Island’s widespread popularity became evident before the hordes started admitting their addiction on social media.

When it comes to the well-ploughed topics of Donald Trump and Brexit, we are able to use analytics tools to discover what specific facets about these all-encompassing subjects people most care about; whether it is the potential splintering of families due to the deportation of EU nationals post-Brexit or a need to understand how exactly a sitting US president can be deposed.

These subtle insights help us make informed decisions about our future coverage.

So the next time you have a specific question you need answering about current affairs, type the question into Google and see if there is an article tailored to your enquiry. If there is, the art of SEO will have been at work.

Yours

Matt Payton

SEO editor