A sneak peek on how the global newsroom Quartz implements its search strategy

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SEO isn’t just for robots. It’s for people, too.

That’s the idea proposed by Luciana Cardoso, a product manager at Quartz and Vice Chairperson of News Product Alliance’s Board, who shared examples of how her newsroom is approaching Search Engine Optimization.

“SEO is for people to find our content in the right way,” Cardoso said.

Priyanka Vora, an audience editor at Quartz, said search is an audience insight tool collecting user data that helps reporters understand what their readers are thinking, and Quartz wants to make sure that all reporters and editors have the tools they need to optimize their stories, such as SEO dossiers and Google Trends.

Audience editors at Quartz create daily news roundups about trending stories and drop this information in Slack for reporters, Vora said. They also talk with relevant reporters about these stories, which could in turn generate story ideas for the reporters.

Quartz also has SEO dossiers, a document where they keep track of the topics that people search for and how reporters could match this information gap. Quartz uses this data to answer audience questions and to reach new audiences.

Google Trends, a tool to show how popular certain search terms are, can be used for news stories, Vora said. Trending searches reveal topics that readers are interested in, and the tool helps demystify audiences, since it shows what readers are searching in nearly real time.

Vora said her newsroom also introduced a Slack bot called Extra Extra, which notifies the audience team of any articles that don't link out to another Quartz’s article, so that reporters and editors can add a link.

Cardoso said SEO should not be seen as a separate product, but rather, organizations should connect the editorial and the product teams. News products should consider SEO, she said, and regular meetings should be held to discuss editorial and technical improvements.