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      Optimizing Live Center for Search Engines Visibility and Ranking

      As a news publisher using Live Center for live blogging, improving your search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for increasing visibility, reaching your target audience, and staying competitive in the digital news space. This guide will walk you

      Understanding SEO Fundamentals 


      SEO for live blogs revolves around three core components:


      1. Crawling: Search engines discover your live blog content using bots.
      2. Indexing: Your live updates are processed and added to the search engine's database.
      3. Ranking: Search engines determine where your live blog should appear in search results.

      For Live Center users, optimizing for all three aspects is essential to maximizing visibility and attracting readers to your live updates.


      How does SEO work with a live blog?

      Live blogs have a unique format compared to standard articles, requiring specific steps to ensure they rank well in search engines.


      Structured Data mark-up

      Google requires specific structured data markup for live articles or live blog posts. Every update must be marked up with this structured data and ensure it is visible on the page. This helps Google recognize that the content is a series of updates rather than one continuous article.


      (Example from Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

      Initial Ranking Factors: Headings, Subheadings, and Top Content

      One of the most common mistakes is not using an H1 text format for the headline. Headlines should always be in an H1 tag to convey its importance properly. Ideally, this is followed by a subheader in an H2 or another subheader in H3. For live blogs, this means that the article's headline should be H1, and each post in the live blog should be H2. 

      When first publishing a live blog, include a substantial amount of content, such as an introduction or summary, around 150 to 200 words. This sets the context for Google, which is crucial for initial ranking. Without this content, Google may perceive the page as empty, resulting in no ranking.

      Continuous Updates and Re-Indexing

      Google recognizes live blog articles and will recrawl a live article more often than a standard news article to find the latest updates. 

      While standard articles might not get recrawled until hours after the initial crawl, a live article could be recrawled several times within an hour.

      The structured data markup is a crucial component here as it signals to Google that the updates are part of an ongoing blog. Google aims to show the most recent news updates, which is why live blogs are often shown as part of “Top Stories” articles. They provide the latest updates on a specific news event.

      Live blogs in Google News´s Ecosystem - Optimize URLs

      Fresh URLs are crucial for live blogs to maintain their newsworthiness in Google's eyes. By creating a new URL for each day's updates, publishers ensure that Google treats the content as a new article, even if it's a continuation of an ongoing story. This practice is essential for inclusion in Google's news-specific ecosystem, where articles have a relatively short shelf life.


      News websites can leverage several URL-related strategies to enhance their SEO: 

      1. Canonical tags: For live blogs spanning multiple days, using canonical tags can help consolidate the SEO value of related content while maintaining separate URLs for each day.
      2. URL consistency: Maintaining a consistent URL structure across the website helps search engines understand and index the content more effectively. 
      3. HTTPS: Ensuring all URLs use HTTPS is crucial for security and can boost search results by providing a small ranking boost. 
      4. Mobile-friendly URLs: With Google's mobile-first indexing, ensuring that URLs work well on mobile devices is essential for news websites.

      Most importantly, when it comes to live blogs, creating a new live blog URL every 24 hours is a best practice that ensures the live blog has the opportunity to show up in the “Top Stories” section every day.

      Linking, social media, and engagement

      Linking back to internal articles encourages higher engagement and sends positive signals to Google regarding your site structure.

      At the same time, referencing original information sources is crucial for credibility and plays in your favor if you place links to well-reputed external sources.


      While embedding tweets or social media posts is beneficial, you should have a backup in place if the tweet or post is deleted. Taking a screenshot and providing a link to ensure the context remains intact is one way to prove what the initial post said.



      Increased Dwell Time
      Features that keep users on your site longer can improve dwell time, a positive signal to Google that your content is valuable.

      Higher Click-Through Rates
      Interactive elements can encourage users to click more links within your site, improving internal link metrics.

      Lower Bounce Rates
      Engaging content reduces bounce rates, signaling to Google that your site provides valuable information.



      By incorporating these practices, you can enhance user engagement and improve SEO performance, ensuring your content remains relevant and authoritative in the eyes of both users and search engines.

      Under the hood: let’s get technical

      How do JavaScript and HTML come into play?

      JavaScript and Client-Side Rendering

      Google performs client-side rendering as part of indexing, which means loading JavaScript. However, this rendering phase of Google’s indexing is not real-time and often happens with several hours or more delay. 


      This delay happens because rendering is resource-intensive, consuming significant CPU cycles. Google prioritizes quick crawling and indexing but performs rendering when its data centers have spare capacity, which isn't frequent.


      Server-Side Rendering (SSR) to optimize SEO

      Server-side rendering (SSR) has become a crucial technique for news publishers looking to optimize their SEO performance. This approach involves pre-rendering content on the server and delivering fully rendered HTML to the client, addressing many of the SEO challenges associated with client-side rendering. SSR can also reduce TTFB (Time To First Byte), a crucial factor in Google's page experience signals and can positively impact search rankings.


      Many modern JavaScript frameworks and content management systems now support SSR, making it more accessible for publishers. Live Center’s JS library, NcPost supports SSR and allows publishers to implement an SSR strategy. When implementing SSR, it's essential that the rendered content is included in the initial HTML of the publisher's site. This ensures that search engine crawlers can immediately access and index the content.


      For publishers who may find full SSR implementation challenging, prerendering offers a viable alternative. This method involves fetching pre-rendered HTML to serve pages, ensuring that content is readily available for search engine indexing.





      Summary: Stacking the odds in your content’s favor 

        1. Structured Data Markup: Implement and update structured data for every new post.
        2. Headlines and Subheadings: Use H1 tags for the headline and H2 (or H3) tags for subheadings.
        3. URL management: Update the URL to your content at least every 24 hours while your live blogs are still updating. Google will treat your live blog as a new piece of content.
        4. Initial Content: Provide an introduction or summary of 150-200 words to set the context before publishing your live blog for Google to index.
        5. Implement SSR: Google prioritizes indexing content that is less resource-intensive for them to render. Ensure your live blogs are indexed often by server side rendering it.
        6. Engaging content: Features such as commenting, Q&A, Polls, etc., that keep users on your page longer increase its dwell time. This, in turn, signals to Google that your content is valuable, increasing its visibility.
        7. Internal linking: Provide natural, interactive ways for users to click links inside your platform. This improves your internal linking metrics.
        8. Frequent Updates: Regularly update the blog with new content to keep it relevant and signal to Google to re-indexing it.
        9. Visible Updates: Ensure each update is visible on the page so that Google can index it correctly.
        10. Usability: Ensure your content is accessible to all readers, and use a live blogging technology with a minimal footprint on your page to keep loading time to a minimum.

      By following these steps, you can enhance the SEO performance of your live blog, making it more likely to rank well and attract continuous traffic. Additionally, URLs can assist in your content's discoverability on search engines.