Search engine optimization (SEO) is useful not only as a marketing tool. News organizations use exhaustive analyses of their search rankings to help push their coverage of a given event higher on Google News and other aggregators.
Kim Krause Berg, writing a column at Search Engine Land, says that "algorithm chasers rely on analytical tools to help understand searcher behavior. They are equipped with keyword data, target market information and demographics."
Krause Berg uses the example of a mass shooting in Fort Worth, Texas – along with the attendant blizzard of media coverage – to showcase the "adrenaline rush, with phone calls and text messages flying out to copy editors and a team following Twitter, researching keyword trends in Google Insights, re-writing headlines and debating word choices" that, she says, happens all the time in news search engine optimization (SEO).
How good the news outlets are at SEO, however, is open to question. Experts say that a select few newspapers and networks are responsible for the bulk of the news content on the web, yet some of the biggest journalistic heavyweights in the profession have struggled to successfully monetize that content.
