Why Didn't My Content Rank Better?

As a publisher, editor, or SEO professional, you are eventually going to ask yourself (or be asked) "Why didn't this story rank or perform better?"

If this is the case, there are a number of factors you should look at:

• Is this a person or topic the site normally covers? If yes, how does it usually perform across traffic channels? And when was the last time the topic/person was covered?
• How are other sites covering it? I've seen newsrooms completely miss the news angle of a story, fail to include the news angle in the heads, or craft headlines that are better for print.
• Are the headline and page title straightforward? If not, tweak them.
• Was the article's focus narrowly on the topic, or was it on the topic and several other topics? I have had to explain that an article didn't perform for a particular topic because that topic was a small portion of the article.
• When was the article published in relation to when the news broke? The story could have been published too late, or in some cases, too early (meaning: no one is looking for information about it yet). If the article was published a little later in the news cycle, determine what types of follow up articles you can do - and link those back to the original article.
• It could just be that your site is not what the search engines consider an "appropriate" news source for this type of article. For example: A major celebrity is arrested for a slew of serious crimes. One would expect to see entertainment news sites in the Top Stories box and at the top of Google News. But the chances are great that the sites in those spots are going to be the ones that cover hard news, such as the New York Times, CNN, Washington Post. Where the non-hard news sites (entertainment news, magazine sites) will excel is in follow up content - reactions, explainers, round ups.