Tips and tools to improve your SEO

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Navigating the wealth of SEO tools on offer can be time consuming — LINA recommends a list of online SEO assistance tools and tips for journalists.

We’ve compiled a list of the best cost effective online tools to assist you with keyword optimisation, content editing, meta descriptions, backlinks and more. 

Firstly, what is SEO?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving your content to increase how many people you are reaching, and how relevant this audience is. There are a several techniques that help your articles (or other website content) rank higher on search pages so that when people look for information (e.g. by ‘Googling’) on a relevant topic, your content is more likely to appear.

LINA recommends: WTF is SEO?, a weekly newsletter and Substack helping you understand and prioritise SEO and strategy/content ideas for your news.

General tips for SEO improvement

  1. Use clear, concise headlines with key words. CoSchedule’s Headline Analyser can assist with optimising your headlines.
  2. Link to other relevant articles throughout your writing. Hyperlinks to both internal (other pages on your own website) and external (other websites, articles etc.) sources provide search engines with the context for your article, improving SEO.
  3. Make sure your articles are optimised for mobile use — Google gives preference to mobile-optimised content.
  4. Include images in your articles, and ad ‘alt’ text to these for accessibility.
  5. Be conscious of article length. SEO can often be improved by ensuring your articles are roughly between 300-800 words (depending on the type of content etc.).
  6. Fill out meta description for articles. If you need a hand with working out how to do this (or any other website support), book in a meeting with LINA’s Technical Manager Adrian.
  7. Use SEO insights to decide optimal publishing times, including updating content and creating new articles. WTF is SEO? shows you how.

Dive into more suggestions in LINA’s ‘Best Practice SEO’ shop-talk session from 2023 hosted by ABC.

The ABC also ran an SEO workshop at LINA’s 2024 summit — the session slides are available on our website. Members, scroll down to find the SEO Workshop summary. 

SEO tool suggestions

Yoast SEO (WordPress plugin) provides immediate feedback for keyword optimisation, meta descriptions, content structure and more.

$99/year

Google Search Console helps you track your website’s performance using the keywords they’re ranking for. 

Free

Surfer SEO offers a content editor, suggesting word count and keywords to optimise your article as you write it. It can also audit your site, suggest backlinks and much more.

$19/month

Grammarly improves the readability of your article, increasing user engagement which helps SEO. In the premium version, Grammarly also provides tone and style suggestions.

Free or $12/month

Note: Some of these resources have been compiled using ChatGPT.

About the author.
Evie Dinkelmeyer
Evie Dinkelmeyer

Evie has a degree in professional communications, where she garnered skills across public relations, journalism, advertising and media. Her key focus was in PR tailored for non profit organisations, an interest honed through a minor in contemporary politics.

At LINA, her focus is on building awareness of hyperlocal independent news publishers, and communicating the impact of local news in communities. Alongside her role at LINA, Evie is a freelance journalist and volunteers at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

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