News sites should be spending a lot of time on search engine optimization (or SEO). News sites especially are driven by ad clicks, which become frequent with high traffic.

Here are ten quick tips for news websites to funnel more traffic in their direction.

Linking To and From

Perhaps one of the most cliché SEO tips is to link with others. It is cliché because it is one of the most effective means to rank highly on a search engine like Google. The most effective means to gather links is to enter one onto a social networking network like Facebook. Of course, linking to other relevant articles that are very specific to a certain keyword is also an effective way to get an article near the top of a Google search.

Headlines Need Key Words

All headlines should have a keyword in the headline, and preferably at the beginning. A story about how to get rid of a cat’s fleas, should have ‘flea’ or ‘flea removal’ in the headline (i.e. Flea Removal for Cats). A bad headline would be “Why is My Cat Scratching?” This latter headline is vague, whereas the previous one is precise.

Have Plenty of Authors

For news sites, it is helpful to have plenty of authors contributing toward the website. Websites with an editorial team and a team of writers who all contribute regularly to a news site will be noticed very quickly by search engines like Google, Yahoo, Yandex, etc. Of course, all these articles need to be unique as well.

Publish Articles Regularly

When bots notice a website adds content regularly, the frequency of its visits also increase, so as to make searches more relevant for the specific search engine it is associated with. This is why more advanced search engines are likely to have results change almost daily for a particular search item.

Unique Content Drives Traffic

If a news article is just a regurgitation of another news article, it serves only as another way to degrade the value of news. News must be unique, and the content must be valuable and time-sensitive. When breaking news happen, the faster one can publish information about the subject the better. As news gets old and its demand decreases, an article can become irrelevant once everyone has satiated their appetite for information.

A good, informative, and timely article will excel through the ranks of less worthy news. As always, it’s also helpful to have at least one photo to go with the story.

These five tips will help any news site find their niche on the internet, and get a steady stream of viewers.