Newsquest is looking for a top-class SEO specialist reporter to help lead its online coverage across the UK as part of the SEO Content Team.
Every day, our online news brands reach millions of people right across the UK, and you’ll be joining a team of driven, innovative journalists who understand how to meet audiences where they are by answering questions with content.
This role presents an exciting opportunity for a digitally-savvy journalist with knowledge of SEO trends and practices to spot the latest (and next!) trending news stories as well as features and lifestyle content.
The key for this role is tapping into these topics and making them not only relevant but insightful for local audiences. By using this lens to connect with our audiences, this role is poised to help build Newsquest’s rank and authority on search as the company invests in the future of its industry-leading digital coverage.
You’ll be delivering the sort of fast, agile and dynamic coverage optimised for SEO that our readers expect and deserve in 2021 – often before they know they want to read it.
You’ll be passionate about digital storytelling, with a desire to come up with new and innovative ways of telling those stories using a vast array of different skills, tools and platforms.
A big part of the job will also be immersing yourself in Google Trends as well as social media through various monitoring tools to help you tell your stories and spot the next big thing, whether that be hard news, showbiz and TV, celebrity, news features, explainers and ‘news you can use.
We want to give our readers the content they want to read when they want to read it. Your job will be to anticipate this and use your sparkling writing skills to ensure our coverage is the best, and where local audiences choose to come first.
Key responsibilities
- Using your SEO skills to reach the largest possible audience
- Using search tools to research and understand the topics people are searching for
- Identifying topics in which local brands can legitimately become an authority
- Writing high quality, accurate digital news stories, live blogs and features to deadlines as agreed by the Head of SEO
- Work with the Head of SEO to understand what to research and write next
- Building communities online and in real life to share stories with once published, and become engaged with readers about those stories
- Thinking creatively to come up with new story ideas and ways to deliver them to our audience that suit our digital platforms
- Building our digital audience following to bring our content to even more people in the community
- Spotting national/regional content that could resonate in your patch and making it relevant and interesting to our readers
- Helping devise and manage a carefully-plotted SEO forward plan calendar to ensure we don’t miss a beat
- Ensuring every piece of content is thoroughly researched and balanced prior to publication
- With guidance from editors, using analytics to identify what our readers like and what they want next from our coverage
- Joining forces with your counterparts across the UK to share ideas, best practices, success stories and skills
- Communicating with newsrooms around the country to ensure your coverage chimes with the local market
Our ideal candidate will have:
- An understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO) and skills in producing content that works in search
- Knowing what readers want to read, using both your keen news sense and data insights
- Passion for telling stories that will grow new diverse audiences
- Exceptional attention to detail
- The ability to write – and think – quickly under pressure
- Bags of ideas for how stories can be presented in the best possible way for our audiences
- An understanding of what audiences want, and when
- Excellent social media skills and the ability to spot stories and trending topics
- NCTJ qualification (including 100wpm shorthand)
- Excellent knowledge of relevant media law
- An adaptable style to produce everything from live blogs and listicles to long-reads and features
- Great people skills and the ability to get on with a wide range of people in the community
- A high level of organisation and the ability to manage your own diary out on patch
- Collaborative skills to pool ideas with the wider digital reporting team and take on board suggestions
To be considered, please send your CV by clicking apply now and a member of the Central Audience Team will be in touch.