Analyzing BBC News: SEO

Today's main headline on BBC World News covers a familiar and ongoing topic: the Hong Kong protests. Big deal, right? Normally this would just become another article I look through on my way through the site, but after sifting the rest of BBC's coverage of the protests, I discovered an interesting trend that reveals one of BBC's tactics in securing a positive search engine optimization (SEO) for their Hong Kong content.

 All of the articles regarding the situation in China are applied the same headline: "Hong Kong protests: ..." followed by the most updated news the site can offer. The title even appears on a subsection of all Asia content dedicated to the crisis. To those who don't know about SEO, this probably goes unnoticed. But, personally, I see the brains behind this operation: not only is this a smart and efficient way to ensure their spot at the top of the hierarchy we call Google, but it also provides BBC with an effective way to organize all of their Hong Kong content for later use. The simplicity of those three words, "Hong Kong protests," also work in their favor, as these are the words people will most likely search for when looking for new information on the crisis.

And a quick Google search shows that their efforts in SEO are working. BBC shows up as the top two news sources for the most current update on the Hong Kong situation.

However, that's not the only perk BBC is getting out of their well-planned headline. By titling each post the same way, they've also created a neat archive for readers to pick through. Simply Googling "Hong Kong Protests BBC" provides readers with easy access to all of the articles BBC has written about the topic, which, in turn, generates more page views for the news site. 

Overall, I found BBC's tactics well thought-out and very well-executed. Although it may not be noticeable to most readers, the amount of traffic going through BBC's site based off of their Hong Kong coverage is probably unavoidable.