Using evergreen content to demonstrate the value of search-led publishing

• Search performance had become a growing concern as other digital publishers increasingly competed for high-intent traffic.
• GMA New Media was helping push broader SEO adoption across the organization, including training and closer attention to search fundamentals.
• Coming from earlier roles where SEO was already part of daily digital publishing, I saw an opportunity to demonstrate the basics through a practical editorial experiment.
• The initial pilot had no contributor budget, so the first writers participated in exchange for a byline and author profile. Paid commissions became possible later.

I led most of the topic development, recruited the writers, edited their submissions, uploaded completed drafts to the CMS, wrote the social captions, and coordinated with editorial for final publication. Only an editor could publish a story, so each completed package still passed through the newsroom before going live. I also coordinated contributor payments once a budget became available. During the pilot stage, contributors instead received a byline and author profile. My colleague contributed topics and articles, and led performance monitoring and reporting.

• Selected evergreen and seasonal topics around holidays, financial literacy, lifestyle, and major sale periods
• Recruited more than 20 writers, some of whom contributed multiple pieces
• Applied basic SEO principles including keyword targeting, search intent, clear headings, internal linking, metadata, and evergreen framing
• Edited and prepared each story in the CMS before handing it to an editor for publication
• Developed social captions so the articles could still be distributed through GMA channels while building search visibility over time
• Worked with my colleague to monitor traffic sources and distinguish search-driven visits from social distribution
• Compared the performance of #Pinned pieces with comparable lifestyle content from the regular editorial pipeline
• Shared reports and findings with internal stakeholders to demonstrate how search-oriented content behaved differently from social-heavy editorial traffic

• The series grew to around 50 articles from more than 20 contributors.
• #Pinned articles consistently performed more strongly in search than editorial stories covering comparable topics.
• They also generated stronger average pageviews per article despite publishing at a much smaller volume than the regular editorial pipeline.
• Traffic analysis showed that the series attracted a larger share of visits through search, while much of the existing editorial traffic remained heavily dependent on social distribution.
• The findings provided practical evidence for more deliberate SEO practices and helped reinforce greater attention to keyword choices, article framing, and CMS tagging in subsequent editorial workflows.