SEO Analyst, News

Job Description

The Job

CNN Digital is seeking an individual who is passionate about SEO, journalism, and digital audience development. As a member of the Editorial Insights team, you will work in close collaboration with CNN's US news teams to drive audience growth and increase engagement in the US and Canada through our SEO efforts. You will have a deep knowledge of organic search and demonstrate a firm grasp of all elements of SEO, including tactics, technical knowledge, and content. The ideal candidate will have 4+ years' experience with growing SEO organically for news organizations, an eye for trending and emerging news stories, and a journalistic mindset to go with it. The candidate best fit for this role will have experience working cross-departmentally and will have the ability and willingness to speak up to push for results.

You will have the opportunity to work for the world-leader in global breaking news, delivering the stories that matter in a fast-paced but highly supportive environment.

The Daily
• Rapidly grow organic search referrals to CNN (US and Canada,) leveraging knowledge of the news landscape, search audience behaviors, and the ways search engines index and surface news content to drive readers to CNN's stories and videos.
• Identify opportunities and provide story and topic coverage recommendations that will enable CNN to grow search audience and increase audience loyalty.
• Perform keyword and trends research to identify what keywords to target in CNN's stories and explain the value of keyword selection to editors and writers.
• Train editors and newsroom staff on how to optimize news stories, features and evergreen content through page titles, headlines, editorial links, and meta descriptions.
• Work closely with the editorial news team to establish systems and strategies for getting more of their content in front of search audiences.
• Leverage knowledge of the US and Canadian news landscapes to execute audience development plans that enable CNN to acquire desired target audience segments.
• Provide real-time analytics feedback to help elevate the right content at the right time to the CNN audience.
• Identify scalable strategies, tactics and channels for audience growth.
• Act as a conduit between content teams and audience development teams, bridging editorial with audience development and analytics.
• Monitor the site for technical SEO issues and indexing problems and work with developers to ensure they are fixed.
• Identify and document product requirements for the improvement of the publishing platform to assist in SEO.
• Recommend and specify SEO tools that will help the CNN newsroom grow their reach.
• Partner across multiple teams to coordinate and improve on CNN's audience development and SEO strategy, tying together editorial calendars, social calendars, business priorities, product launches and more.
• Develop and champion improved processes for insight collection and dissemination across Audience Development, product and editorial teams.
• Support short-term content planning processes with editorial and programming teams.
• Conduit between content teams and Audience Development teams sitting within the CNN Newsroom, bridging editorial with audience development and analytics.

The Essentials
• 4+ years of progressively related experience.
• Experience in digital media publishing organizations is preferred.
• A good understanding of the US and global news cycles, a strong interest in news and social media, and the ability to flourish in a fast-paced newsroom environment.
• A strong understanding of Google's news algorithm and the key factors that can impact visibility in news search results.
• Experience of performing keyword research using Google Trends and other SEO platforms to identify real-time trending searches, keywords and topics.
• Understanding of SEO best practices to assist editorial and programming teams with site and story optimization.
• Strong interpersonal skills, a collaborative approach and the ability to use emotional intelligence when working with editors and writers in an often highly pressured news environment.
• Experience with SEO and analytics tools such as (or similar to) Adobe Analytics, Google Search Console, SimilarWeb, DragonMetrics, Chartbeat, Google Analytics, Screaming Frog.
• Strong analytical skills including the ability to explore data to measure and report on search performance.
• Strong competence in preparing reports and sharing data insights and SEO guidelines with editorial teams.
• Ability to develop and test hypotheses based on insights from audience targeting and analyses.
• Strong understanding of technical SEO, including the ability to recognize and identify indexing and crawl issues.
• Ability to identify and document product requirements for the improvement of the publishing platform to assist in SEO.
• Experience or knowledge of site migrations including preparation, planning and common pitfalls.
• Current knowledge of Search Engine Optimization topics by monitoring search industry websites, blogs and news sources.
• Basic knowledge of digital media technologies, particularly a good understanding of capabilities and limitations.
• Competent project management skills with experience managing workflow between different departments.

This position is required to work in person at one of our locations in the United States. WarnerMedia requires anyone working in our workplaces in the US to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Exemptions to this vaccine requirement are available to those entitled to reasonable accommodations for religious or medical reasons

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-r079k6-18-221-239-148-42 in your application.