Which UK newspaper or news provider performs best in SEO?
It may come as no surprise but the BBC ranks first for visibility when it comes to best SEO positions in Google UK across news related searches. Plus they also appear in the top 100 positions in Google for the most search terms within our search term groups.
In the charts below we have broken down relevant news based search terms into two groups:
Chart 1) All general news terms – Google UK
Below is a compilation of eight search term groups covering 100s of separate search terms including: News, Breaking News, Sport, Entertainment, Financial, Travel, Regional news
As you can see the BBC performs best for SEO across the range of search terms with a visibility score of 80% which equates to an average position of 5 in Google UK. ITV, at number 10, has performed well recently with the launch of their new site last year, they now appear for 50% of news related search terms.
The usual suspects of The Guardian and The Telegraph also have strong positions across the board, with online only channels of newsnow and Yahoo appearing for over 70% of search terms (such as “news” “breaking news” “world news” etc). Perhaps most surprising is the relative poor performance by The Daily Mail, who are in position 6 for General News searches but nowhere to be seen for pure news (made up of world news, latest news, breaking news groups).
The Daily Mail presumably gains a large amount of its considerable traffic through more daily related celebrity terms. But for the general terms (which we focus on here), which are searched up to a million times a month, they only appear for 70% of them with a visibility score of 30 – therefore very little conversion.
Chart 2) Pure news terms – Google UK
Below the chart shows a compilation of 4 search term groups covering 100s of separate search terms including: News, Breaking News, Financial News and World News
When we take entertainment and sport out of the mix The Daily Mail are now nowhere to be seen. The more serious offerings of Reuters and Bloomberg appear, with good performances in World News and Financial news.
How is the Visibility Index score calculated?
At Pi Datametrics we give each search term position a score out of 100, with position 1 the best, and position 100 the worst. This is all amalgamted together and the site in question is given a visibility score for that particular search term group.
This is how we score each search term. Positions on page one are given much more credit than lower positions.
To find out more or how your publication is ranked among these media outlets please contact us.