By Greg Bruno | November 27, 2023
When news breaks, audiences instinctively reach for their device, and increasingly, it’s those devices, and the code that powers them, that are curating the news users see.
Consider, for instance, Google’s Top stories. How do publishers break into this coveted media real estate and earn the distinctive “LIVE” red label? Quality content is of course the first factor. But having the correct metadata attached is also essential.
That’s why we recently added a schema to our professional live blogging software, Live Blog, to ensure that search engines like Google can read, index, and surface posts as they are published.
LiveBlogPosting schema, a type of structured data, is a JSON code snippet that when injected into the metadata of a blog post, indicates that it’s connected to a live event or developing story.“When you have this schema embedded in your blog, it makes content available in real-time to search engine crawlers, which can grab the content and boost it in search results,” said Aleksandar Jeličić, a Live Blog product manager.
Live Blog clients don’t have to act, either. Simply update your Live Blog instance, and the schema will be added, silently serving as a beacon to draw search engines in.
There’s no guarantee that these updates to Live Blog will push your content into the exclusive domain of Google’s Top stories. Many other factors, most hidden behind Google’s algorithmic curtain, will dictate how high content climbs in the rankings.
Benefits include:
- Improved search engine visibility: With the LiveBlogPosting schema, live blog updates are more effectively indexed by search engines. This means they are more likely to appear and stand out in search results, potentially attracting more traffic than competitors who do not use this schema.
- Rich search results: This schema can enable rich snippets or enhanced search results. For instance, live updates might be displayed directly in the search results, offering users real-time information and making the content more attractive and noticeable.
- Timely information: The schema includes specific tags for the time and date of each update, which helps search engines understand the sequence and timing of events, ensuring that users get the most current and relevant information when they search for live events or news.
- Organized content presentation: The structured format helps to organize content in a more readable and accessible way, both for search engines and users. This is especially helpful for live blogs, which can have many updates that need to be presented logically.
“LiveBlogPosting schema ensures that your Live Blog content has the metadata it needs to succeed online,” said Jeličić.
“Bad SEO is something that even the biggest newspapers in the world can’t afford.”
in order to use this feature, embed your blog via SEO friendly method (ESI or Cloudflare).