Grow your SEO by copying how ESPN does cross-linking

Excerpt from our 21st Century Local Publisher Course

This is a lesson from our 21st Century Local Publisher Course which explores all aspects of running a profitable local media brand. It's available a la carte or as a free benefit for all publishers and their teams working with Locable Publisher Network.

One of the most common questions we get from local magazine and newspaper publishers is how to rank more prominently on Google - it turns out, that's a more complicated question than they realize.

Ranking on Google really has two axis... how to expand the search phrases you rank for and how well you rank once you are included in the results.

We did a video audit of one publisher's website where we identified a number of key opportunities for them to improve to expand both the types of searches they appear in and how well they appear.

This article focuses on how to appear higher up on the content you're already creating.

More recently, we share this article from Search Engine Journal, Site Structure & Internal Linking in SEO: Why It’s Important

"The goal of this organization is to create a site that is easily navigatable by users while simultaneously allowing search engines to crawl the site easily... From both a user and search engine perspective, internal links help with the actual discoverability of a page. If a page isn’t linked to it becomes harder to find and is less likely to be crawled as often, if at all." - Jesse McDonald

Cross-linking is simply connecting related content for readers (and Google)

Often, local articles refer to businesses, nonprofits, clubs, or other organizations. These should appear in your directory and there should be links between the article and the directory listing - and from the listings to those related articles.

Other times, articles refer to prior articles or continue a story arc. Again, there should be links.

In our Community Content Engine, we have a simple tool we call Content Snippets that also enables you to re-use content from one area in an article. This is great for highlighting event information from your calendar in Editor's Picks articles, as an example.

The goal is the simplify and streamline the process of creating more impactful, engaging, and SEO-friendly content.

Looking to improve your presence and profitability? We're here to help.