SEO Guidelines for Articles

URLs with words relevant to your stories helps readers understand what to expect when your URL is shared.

Having excessive keywords within URLs appear as spammy and makes your article seem less trustworthy.

Best Practices:

Avoid:

Good: /why-amazon-went-on-sundance-shopping-spree/

Bad: /sundance-netflix-amazon-oscars-disney-box-office/

Your headline is one of the most important parts of your story because it’s your first chance to convince readers that you have the information they are looking for. Headlines should be compelling and concise, between 2 and 22 words.

Best Practices:

Avoid:

Good: U.S. COVID-19 Cases Could Cross 220k On Germany’s Growth Trajectory

Bad: [UPDATED 3/23/2020] U.S. COVID-19 Cases Could Cross 220k On Germany’s Growth Trajectory

High quality images go a long way in captivating your audience. Providing good context will increase the overall experience of your readers. Images should have well-written captions, descriptive filenames and descriptive alt-text. Alt-Text is alternative text for your images used to provide more information to users that are blind or visually impaired and uses a screen reader to understand your content. 

Best Practices:

Avoid:

Good Alt Text & File Name: <img src="puppy.jpg" alt="Dalmatian puppy playing fetch"/>

Bad Alt Text: <img src="puppy.jpg" alt="puppy dog baby dog pup pups puppies doggies pups litter puppies dog retriever  labrador wolfhound setter pointer puppy jack russell terrier puppies dog food cheap dogfood puppy food"/>

Bad Alt Text & File Name: <img src="image3.jpg" alt="A dog"/>

Compelling content of premium quality is the most important element of your story. When readers enjoy your content, they are more likely to share it. The more people share, popular your content will be and the more likely it is that people will link to your content The more links you have pointing to your article, the more trustworthy it may be perceived to be. Quality, popularity, and trustworthiness are some of the signals Google uses to serve the most relevant content for search queries.

Think about how users might search for the information you are providing and be sure to clearly answer all the related questions around that topic.

Best Practices:

Avoid:

Links are considered either internal (pointing to another page on the same website) or external (pointing to a page on a different website)

Internal Links

Including internal links is a great way to resurface some of your relevant content while also providing additional or background information necessary to fully understand how a topic is changing. This may also transfer SEO “Juice” from one page to another.

External Links

Using external links is a great way to provide supplemental information for your readers and may even be the source of the information you are reporting on. Linking to an external site is also viewed as a vote of approval. The more external links a page has, the more it is perceived as an authoritative source on the topic.

Best Practices:

Avoid:

Good: To learn more, check out our SEO guidelines

Bad: Click here to learn more about our SEO guidelines