SEO Journalist

The Sun is the biggest news brand in the UK, publishing hundreds of stories a day and reaching over 170m unique users digitally every month. Its exclusives set the news agenda and its campaigns have changed the lives of many. Delivering news, entertainment, and sports coverage to millions of readers every day. With a rich history spanning decades, we are dedicated to providing accurate, insightful, and engaging content across print and digital platforms.

The Sun has a mass-market audience and aims to appeal to a diverse audience in the UK and beyond.

Your role: The Sun is looking for a talented individual to help drive forward The Sun’s SEO strategy. You will be responsible for producing stories for The Sun with SEO principles baked into every story we produce. Our SEO journalists work on a rota so some evenings and weekends are essential.

Day to day you will:

• Confident in identifying search trends and making recommendations
• Writing stories on a variety of topics
• Help grow organic search, Discover and Google News on all four of The Sun’s domains - thesun.co.uk / the-sun.com / thescottishsun.co.uk / thesun.ie
• Optimise The Sun’s content for large language models
• Ensuring all stories are grammatically correct and well-edited
• Able to conduct in-depth research to keep our readers informed and entertained
• Contact sources/PR executives for further information on stories when required
• Have a thorough knowledge of the IPSO Code of Conduct, media law and ethical considerations
• Analyse and report back to the newsroom on SEO successes and failures
• Perform competitor analysis and identify opportunities to improve and overtake in key markets
• Monitor algorithmic changes and developments and help recommend actions to relevant teams
• Be a go-to person for journalists and reporters seeking SEO advice

What we are looking for from you:

• Experience writing to a deadline in a fast-paced environment
• Strong understanding of daily news trends
• Be agile: Fast-moving and quick to flag emerging and declining trends
• Ability to implement ideas and strategies to help overall traffic growth
• Good understanding of SEO tools in the newsroom and ability to use them to maximum effect
• Passion for news and digital journalism
• Good team player

News UK is one of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland. Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local stations across Ireland. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multi-format brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose, we exist to promote a fair society, freedom of speech and a little bit of fun. Rethinking continually the business of storytelling, we represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter.

Life at News: Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information. To do this, we believe our employees must represent different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy, which focuses on three main priorities - attracting talent from a wider, more representative pool, developing equity programmes to drive better representation in our leadership, and ensuring diversity and inclusivity in our workforce as well as the journalism and content we produce. We also currently have 12 employee led networks and groups that support our strategy and connect like-minded employees socially.

Benefits: Some of our benefits include:

• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks
• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access
• Private medical insurance including coverage for pre-existing conditions
• Discounted gym memberships, free ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual yoga classes
• ‘Bikes for Work’ and ‘Electric Car’ scheme
• Access to exclusive events
• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times.
• Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities
• Access to wellbeing benefits such as EAP, physio/massage and counselling
• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%
• 30 days holiday, plus bank holidays and up to 4 volunteering days per year

We want to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to perform to their best when applying for a role. If you would like to receive any information in a different way or for us to do anything differently to support you apply for any of our roles please contact us on [email protected].