The homepage of a news website is of great importance. This is because this page contains important references to articles and thus largely determines the next steps of incoming traffic. A few small changes can therefore have drastic consequences for SEO. In this article, we give a few tips on SEO for publishers.
Improving crawling through sitemaps
To improve a search engine’s crawling activity, we recommend news sites to create a sitemap. This is a list in which the most important pages of a website are listed. This makes it easier for users to navigate within a website. It not only promotes structure, but also adds value to a search engine. The pages can thus be found and crawled more quickly. Especially for news websites, it is important to add sitemaps so that Google is quickly informed about the latest news. Learn more about Google News here.
The impact of a homepage
SEO for publishers simply has a different focus than for general websites. For example, it is obviously important to use targeted keywords in the title of a post. Not only can the correct use of keywords make a big difference, but the position of a page within a website is also important.
This has to do with how the indexing of a page works. An article that is on a homepage is more likely to end up in the rankings than if it is on another page. Even if there is a more recent version on another site, in most cases it does not seem to rank any better than if it is on a homepage. In fact, Google tells us that ranking is based on several aspects, of which prominence is an important one. SEO for publishers is very much focused on this prominence. Whenever there is a high-profile event, you should make sure that the most recent version of an article is placed on the homepage with the right keywords.
We hope these tips have helped you learn more about SEO for publishers. Want to know more about link building? Then take a look at our website!