Sport SEO Editor (FTC) – The Sun

The Sun Online is the biggest mobile news brand in the UK – and still growing! – with a young, talented, diverse team who publish the best coverage of news, sport, TV and showbiz, lifestyle and family value.

Our hugely successful, award-winning Audience Development team sits at the core of our publishing operation and is constantly evolving, growing new audiences, and building engagement and loyalty with our readers.

We’re looking for a Sport SEO Editor (fixed term contract) to work in our fast-paced newsroom and provide support to the Sport department, journalists and editors – from day-to-day guidance to longer-term insight.

Day to day you will:

Act as a daily go-to person for journalists and reporters seeking advice or improvements to articles
Ability to understand what makes sport blogs drive search traffic at key search periods
Manage our live football, boxing, darts, snooker and other sport blogs in a minute-by-minute environment and liaise with key homepage editors on look and feel
Report each morning on the top SEO keywords driving traffic
Make recommendations to journalists for relevant keywords and keyword combinations to target on articles and blogs
Make further recommendations on what articles should be earmarked to do well on Google Discover and how to keep them optimised
Report each morning on how The Sun’s sport pages are ranking compared to rivals
Pre-plan for future articles and events by building out topics and doing keyword research for upcoming exclusives or events
Monitor trending data for newsroom suggestions and pass to editorial desks
Optimise top pages for relevant keywords
Forward link top traffic driving pages to other more recent articles to encourage circulation
Monitor daily output and ensure relevant cross-linking in articles e.g. ensure 2 other article links in copy, relevant anchor text and links to topic pages. Either by editing themselves or by working with the relevant desk
Ensure articles and pages are correctly tagged
Build out topic pages and tag existing articles
Edit or ensure that picture captions are suitably written and include crawlable/indexable data e.g. Taylor and Tom take to the skies in private jet vs The couple boarded her private jet
Have an appreciation of how great visuals work in a crowded marketplace on Google Top Stories
Edit and/or complete metadata on topics and articles
Work across a rolling rota, including some nights and weekends, to cover the biggest sporting events

Skills and Experience:

Editorial background with experience in a digital publishing environment
Expert knowledge and interest in the British sporting landscape
Knowledge of US sport desirable
Good understanding of the principles of SEO
Experience of optimising websites for SEO
Familiar with a range of SEO tools such as GSC, SEM Rush, Trisolute News Dashboard or Majestic
An understanding of how Google Discover works and best practices
Experience of working within WordPress