SEO Checklist and Word Template for News
- Denise Meyer
This word template is devised to integrate the features available to optimize news stories in Beatrix with the writing and editing process. The sections of the template align with the data fields in Beatrix that you will use to post your news story to the web.
Download Word Template
SEO Checklist for Communications Officers with SEM Rush account logins.
After an article is written, use the checklist to optimize your content for online search:
Before starting your research, think about the terms and/or phrases you would use to search online for your article. (These terms and phrases, or keywords, are likely the topic/main point of your article. For example, if you are writing an article on a new drug for Alzheimer’s disease called X, some terms and phrases might include “Alzheimer’s disease,” “Alzheimer’s disease treatments,” “X,” or “side effects of X.” Presumably, all of this information is already included, in some form, in your article. Keyword research is about understanding how many people are searching for those terms and how much competition there is for those keywords [more on that below], as well as uncovering related keywords you may not have thought of during the writing/editing process but that support your article and can help boost the article’s ranking in the search engine results page, or SERP, by weaving them into the text of your article.)
Log on to
https://www.semrush.com , and click on the menu on the left-hand side of the page. Under “Keyword Research,” click on “Keyword Magic Tool.” Enter various search terms and review the results. Play around with other ways you might express the term; for instance, “heart disease” and “cardiovascular disease” are separate keywords and should both be looked at; other examples include “knee injury” and “knee pain”; “flu” and “influenza”; etc. Pay particular attention to “volume” (average number of monthly searches for a given term) and “KD” (KD, short for “keyword difficulty,” is a percentage, from 0 to 100, indicating how difficult it is to rank in the top 10 Google search results; the higher the number, the more difficult it is to rank).
This is an inexact science, but you should generally aim for keywords with a volume in the thousands and a ranking of about 45% to 85%. Websites with a higher domain authority have a better chance of achieving higher-ranking keywords. For more on keyword difficulty (KD): Keyword Difficulty score .
Once you determine the best search terms, which are often reworded variations, include one or more of these terms/phrases in a well-written headline, lede, and H2s, for which a question format often works well. You can aim for more than one keyword, but don’t create awkward sentences just to include multiple keywords. Excessive use of keywords is known as “keyword stuffing,” which is penalized by Google. For more on keyword research:
How to Use Semrush for Keyword Research
4. Review your article to see if there are places where you can link to existing YSM or YM content that relates to terms/phrases within your article. This is an important step that can help in achieving higher rankings in Google.
For a scoring of your article’s readability, SEO (with other suggested keywords you may want to add), tone of voice, and originality of your article, go to the menu on the left-hand side of the page and click on “Content Marketing,” then click on “SEO Writing Assistant.” (You will need to enter your keywords into the “Content Recommendations” box—you’ll need to separate keywords or keyword phrases with a comma or semi-colon. Then, in the main box, paste the text from a word doc. Use the H1 (headline) and H2 buttons on the top left of the box to appropriately mark the headline and H2s/section headings. Then hit “get recommendations.” From there, you can incorporate any suggestions from the four areas mentioned above into your article. Note: For “readability,” you may need to change the target word count in SEMRUSH to better match the length of your article.)
Return to your SEO template and write your meta description. This is the brief description that may appear on the search page when your article shows up. It should briefly summarize your article (in about 160 characters or less) so that the person searching will want to click through to read your article. Meta descriptions that are longer may be truncated in the SERP. For more on meta descriptions:
What Is a Meta Description? (+ How to Write One & Best Practices)
Include a relevant image, if possible. This also can boost SEO if you include alt text that clearly and succinctly describes what’s in the image (about 125 characters). For more on alt text:
Image SEO: How to Optimize Images for Search Engines & Users
Rev: 9-6-23