Why Standard Article Templates Fall Short for Live Blogging: Lessons Learned

Live blogging has become a cornerstone of real-time journalism, delivering timely updates on critical events like elections, sports, and breaking news.

While numerous news publishers acknowledge the importance of providing continuous updates on on-going, live events, not everyone approaches this the same way. Many publishers use standard article templates or even word docs or google sheets and updated their article continuously with short updates at the top, adding the time of the “post” for every new entry. While this approach might seem like a practical solution, it falls short on a number of aspects and penalizes the published article in terms of SEO crawling and user engagement.

TVNZ, New Zealand’s leading broadcaster, discovered this firsthand when using article templates for live updates. This practice limited their visibility in search engine results and their ability to engage audiences effectively.

This article delves into the pros and cons of using an article template versus a sophisticated live blogging platform for breaking news coverage, to help organizations make informed decisions that align with their newsroom strategy.

What is the difference between a live blog and a news article?

A live blog is a dynamic, real-time format designed for ongoing coverage of events, offering frequent updates as the story unfolds. In contrast, a news article is typically a static, polished report that presents a summary or analysis of an event after it has occurred.

Key Differences include:

1. Updates: Live blogs are updated frequently, often minute-by-minute; articles are static with fewer updates.
2. Structure: Live blogs show updates in reverse chronological order; articles follow a traditional narrative.
3. Content: Live blogs integrate multimedia like videos and social media; articles are primarily text-based.
4. Engagement: Live blogs encourage repeat visits for updates; articles offer a one-time reading experience.
5. SEO: Live blogs rank higher during events due to frequent updates; articles focus on long-term relevance.

Having clearly defined both formats, we will now take a look at the benefits and disadvantages of publishers choosing to cover live events with a standard article template.

CMS Article Templates for Live Reporting: The Pros and Cons

Pros:

1. Familiar Workflow: Newsrooms already adept at creating standard articles can adapt templates to live blogging with little additional training.
2. Simpler Setup: Using existing CMS functionality can seem cost-effective, avoiding the need for additional tools.

Cons:

1. Limited Multimedia Integration and slow pages: Embedding videos, images, or social media posts strains templates, impacting load times and occasionally not displaying certain elements.
2. Poor User Experience: Readers must refresh pages repeatedly to see new updates, and with website cached content the latest update might not seeom visible to them, which leads to frustration and potential drop-offs.
3. Limited Interactivity: Article templates lack interactive features like comment moderation, live Q&A, or polling, which engage readers.
4. Inefficient for Rapid Updates: Standard articles require the entire piece to be republished with every new update. This process slows down publishing and risks SEO penalties for delayed content indexing​​.
5. SEO Challenges: Google prioritizes fresh, dynamic content. Traditional article templates fail to update metadata like timestamps or descriptions dynamically, missing a crucial signal for search engine crawlers​​.

“We couldn’t direct our audience to a specific part of the live blog easily, and embedding large numbers of videos and social media posts made our articles very heavy to load. Our audience could sometimes miss an update if they hadn’t refreshed the page” explained Veronica Schmidt, General Manager, Digital News and Content, TVNZ.

Efficient and SEO-ranking Live Blogs

Live blogs are inherently designed to capitalize on SEO opportunities during live events. Integrating seamlessly with other newsroom tools makes platforms like Live Center highly easy to use, allowing editors to cover the latest news within minutes of their occurrence. Here’s why sophisticated live-blogging solutions outperform news articles in this context.

1. Lightning-Fast Setup for Breaking Events
Creating a live blog is incredibly quick for content creators, testifies Sky. In under five minutes, journalists can draft an introductory post, fill in the teaser headline, SEO headline, standfirst field, add a photo, and hit publish. The live blog is instantly live, ready to deliver real-time updates and signal search engines for maximum visibility.

2. Structured Data and Metadata Optimization
Many live blogging solutions automatically include structured data markup, improving search engines’ ability to understand and prioritize content. This helps live blogs appear in Google’s “Top Stories” and Discover feeds​​.

3. Dynamic Updates
Live blogs continuously provide fresh and relevant updates, which search engines prioritize for indexing and ranking. This frequent refresh signals to Google that the content remains relevant​​.

“Google recognizes live blog articles and will recrawl a live article more often than a standard news article to find the latest updates. While standard articles get recrawled hours after the initial crawl, a live article could be recrawled several times within an hour.” – Barry Adams, SEO Expert at Polemic Digital

4. Improved Engagement Metrics
Live blogs continuously provide fresh and relevant updates, encouraging visitors to return for updates repeatedly. This boosts engagement metrics like dwell time and returning visitor rates, both of which are critical SEO factors​​.

5. Multimedia Enrichment
Incorporating videos, social media embeds, and images enhances user experience and SEO. Rich content keeps readers engaged longer and reduces bounce rates​​.

6. Increased Visitor Traffic
Live blogs drive 2-4 times more page views than static articles, turning these views into opportunities for ad impressions or subscription conversions​​.

How to get a live blog listed on Google News?

Using the Google LiveBlogPost Schema, news publishers can increase their chances of getting their story among Google’s highly visible News section. Read more in this dedicated article on how to set up your live blog with Google Schema. While completing the necessary steps do not guarantee that an article will indeed be featured in the Google News section, setting up the markup schema does increase the chances significantly.

The Outcome for TVNZ’s: Unlocking Real-Time Potential

“We really wanted a tool that was easy for our team to use, and that could handle a large number of embedded videos, images and social media posts. It needed to be a great user experience for a wide range of content – from sports matches to political events to breaking news.” – TVNZ

Dedicated live-blogging solutions are highly effective for SEO because they combine real-time engagement with technical optimization, making them a powerful tool to increase visibility and attracting audiences. The example of TVNZ provides a good case of when news publishers and broadcasters should consider using a dedicated live-blogging solution. With Live Center, TVNZ was able to transform their live coverage strategy approach and solve the following critical challenges:

• Efficiency Gains: Updates were published instantly without republishing the entire article.
• Better Engagement: Features like deep linking and interactive Q&As improved reader interaction.
• Increased Traffic: Live blogs consistently ranked among top-performing content, drawing up to 150,000 unique visitors during major events​.
• Returning visitors: TVNZ recorded a significantly higher rate of returning readers with live blogs compared to traditional articles, as audiences frequently revisited a page to stay updated on the latest developments.

Conclusion

News articles won’t perform as live blogs do.

While article templates are optimal for in-depth and longer coverage, they falter under the demands of dynamic, fast-paced live updates, from both a technical as well as from an editorial point of view. Dedicated live-blogging solutions enable media organizations to stay ahead of the curve, delivering content that’s timely, engaging, and optimized for modern readers. TVNZ’s success underscores the value of embracing the right tools for the job—because in live-blogging, every second counts.

Ready to take your live publishing strategy to the next level? Talk to our experts and request a demo of Live Center!