🚨New Pod Alert🚨 How The Times Maintains Trust and SEO Success with Luke Halls

The latest ‘Beers & SEO with Barry and Steve’ podcast is out, and this week we are joined by Luke Halls, Head of SEO at The Times and The Sunday Times.

This week Barry and I had a crackin’ exchange with Luke Halls. It was great to hear about the very healthy subscription model at The Times of London, in addition to their having one of the most engaged news apps in the UK.

So let’s dive in.

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Steve: Let’s find out a bit more about The Times. For those who may not know, The Times and The Sunday Times have around 659,000 subscribers. One of the reasons I’m such a fan is that I noticed years ago how often The Times would rank particularly high in search. What became clear was that it wasn’t just a search play, it was an app play as well, because you were creating very targeted articles that gathered people in via search and then added value inside the product. Before we go into the SEO strategy and how you might be dealing with our lovely AI overlords, it’d be good to know how you got into journalism in the first place.

Luke: Yeah, of course. I think, as with most people on my team and possibly in the industry as well, my route was quite twisty, bendy, windy. I’ve always been a music guy. I’ve been playing in bands for half my lifetime. When you’re a teenager, anything editorial to do with music really captures the imagination, so I was very into titles like NME, Q, Mojo, and Guitarist magazine. That was probably my first real introduction to journalism in a meaningful way. It only really kickstarted when I was about eighteen and managed to land a week’s internship at The Telegraph in 2013. I was on the SEO team, which is funny given where I am today. During that week I learned the fundamentals: internal linking, pitching content ideas, how taxonomies work, that kind of thing. Then I went to Liverpool Hope University, where I studied English and communication studies. As part of that, I did modules on newspaper journalism and digital publishing, and on the side I was writing music and concert reviews for the student radio blog. The copy was awful, but it taught me so much about the process of journalism and what good looks like.

Steve: In SEO, everyone has a lightbulb moment when they figure out that this is for them. Did you have one of those?

Luke: I definitely did. That came after university. I’d graduated and was still writing for music websites on the side, but I also landed an internship at Wallpaper magazine, which is an art and design-focused publication. I moved in as the digital intern and got involved in everything digital: production workflow, social, homepage management, and SEO. I spent a lot of time discovering the different pockets of digital publishing. A couple of years in, when I was given a permanent position, I realised I had a much better understanding of search and what meaningful traffic looked like, especially because we were a non-paywalled brand and search was a key referrer. This was in the days of AMP, so that was all the rage then. After that I moved over to HELLO! magazine, where I worked as an SEO executive, then moved into an audience editor role, which gave me the freedom to experiment and really focus on search as a referrer. I’ve been at The Times for almost five years now, exclusively in SEO roles. I came in as an SEO journalist, then moved into a tech SEO role as an analyst, then deputy head of SEO, and as of about three weeks ago, Head of SEO.

Steve: Congratulations. Tell us a bit more about the role of SEO at The Times. What are your objectives, how has it changed, and where are you focused at the moment?

Luke: I lead a team of seven spanning editorial and technical SEO. Fundamentally, my job is to make sure we’re meeting quality audiences via search with the aim of converting them into subscribers. The SEO team exists to support the editorial output of the newsroom across all desks through a search lens. In practice, that means identifying trends, capitalising on opportunity gaps, building up the newsroom’s understanding of SEO, and meanwhile striving for really squeaky-clean technical SEO performance. Basically, staying as 360 on search as possible.

Steve: The first thing that struck me there is that SEO is very much part of the machine to drive loyalty and subscribers, right?

Luke: One hundred per cent. We use data religiously in this newsroom, and we look at it through two different lenses: audience and subscribers. A huge part of our success is thinking about how we can add our voice to a conversation in a meaningful way that people want to read and want to subscribe to read. Because we have such a strong history as the paper of record, we’re also very focused on leveraging that expertise and elevating the perception of us as a trusted brand. We’re mindful of where we can add ourselves to the conversation in a way that makes sense for the brand.

Steve: Without putting you on the spot — which I am — are there examples where you wouldn’t cover a story, or where you’d say, “We’re not going to cover that in that way. We’re going to wait, or take a different angle,” because there’s more correlation with subscription or loyalty?

Luke: My team is always very mindful of the trends we raise as potential avenues to drive search traffic. We’ve got heaps of data points that tell us where our core readership and our subscribers are showing interest, and where something might be fleeting or not that interesting. I can’t think of a perfect example off the top of my head, but essentially we place subscribers at the heart of what we do editorially and we don’t want to do anything to compromise that core readership. So we’re very mindful to target trends that cater to both sides.

Steve: Based on the audience information you have, has the introduction of AI changed the kinds of questions you’re asking? There’s obviously a lot of revision happening in news organisations with AI Mode, AI Overviews and so on.

Luke: We understand that AI summaries, particularly AI Overviews, are cornering certain areas of output, so we’re very mindful of how we package content with that in mind. We’re careful not to commission or pitch stories that we think are going to be swallowed up immediately on publication. We’re focused on identifying the gaps where we can tangibly make a difference. We know AI summaries are grabbing the attention top of fold, so we challenge ourselves to identify what the right opportunities are, what the best keywords are, and what is actually going to move the needle in a meaningful way.

Steve: I mentioned the ski holiday example because The Times came up for me as a really useful resource. That feels like one topic where you’ve always performed particularly well, but I’m sure there are others. Are you mindful in your weekly or monthly planning that you need to super-serve the topics that have already done well for you?

Luke: That’s exactly it. We continuously scrutinise our data, and understanding keyword intent is one of the main things we think about. It’s all about analysing things on a URL-by-URL level, monitoring search to see whether something has been absorbed by summarisation, and asking: if something has worked, how can we build on that and develop it as an area of expertise?

Steve: That leads into the current landscape with AI. How are you adjusting to the new search landscape?

Luke: We’re very aware of the parts of our website that are being most tangibly hit. Lifestyle content is probably the area that’s more likely to be swallowed up, and the rise of zero-click search is obviously something we’re continuing to talk about internally. So if we’ve commissioned a piece of content, we ask how best to serve it, where it’s going to drive the most traffic, or more importantly, the most meaningful traffic. We’ve always viewed Google Discover as secondary to organic search because it’s not as active or intentional as someone going out of their way to Google something.

Barry: That’s interesting because a lot of publishers end up being very Discover-first. They chase the spikes.

Luke: Yeah, and we’re quite careful with that. Discover can be useful, and we have seen encouraging growth in impressions, clicks and CTR, but because it is volatile, we don’t want it to become the core strategy. We’re quite sceptical of it in that sense. We look at whether something has a clear trend angle and whether there is obvious keyword intent, but even then, the fundamentals matter most: the headline, the lead image, and making it enticing without tipping into sensationalism.

Steve: And I suppose that comes back to being disciplined around the subscriber proposition.

Luke: Exactly. We’ve got very strict standards on headlines because we want the subscriber experience to remain front and centre.

Barry: One thing that strikes me with The Times is that it’s never felt like a brand that chases traffic for its own sake. It feels much more like you decide what is worth doing for the audience and then apply SEO to it, rather than the other way round.

Luke: I think that’s fair. We place subscribers at the heart of what we do editorially. If we are looking to commission something, it has to meet the demands of a readership that is paying for it. It has to provide value to those who are going to go out of their way to pay to read it.

Steve: That’s a really important distinction because in some organisations SEO became the tail wagging the dog.

Luke: Yes, and that’s not the position we want to be in. Search supports the journalism. It helps us reach people. But it doesn’t define the editorial mission.

Steve: How do you think about original journalism in that context? Because if AI summaries are swallowing more commodity content, then surely the moat becomes the things only you can do.

Luke: Absolutely. Readers associate us with premium original journalism. That’s where our authority is strongest. We know people come to us for trusted reporting, expert-driven analysis and distinctive editorial products. Those are the areas where we think we can continue to add real value and where audiences will still go beyond the summary because they want the depth.

Barry: Do you think that applies particularly to things like guides and recurring editorial franchises as well?

Luke: Definitely. We have areas where we know we already have authority and established demand, and the question is how we deepen that. If something works, we ask how we build on it, how we develop that expertise, and how we make it even more useful for the audience.

Steve: Let’s talk about paywalls. One thing I’ve always found interesting is that The Times has stayed very firm on the idea that the journalism is worth paying for.

Luke: It’s always been a very conscious decision that our journalism is worth paying for. We have run a couple of open-paywall weekends in the last few years to measure the interaction with that, and it was a useful reach exercise. But fundamentally we’re very self-assured in the quality of our content. Across referrers, if people find us, they find high-quality, expert-driven journalism that we believe is worth the paywall.

Barry: Do you experiment with things like gift links, like The New York Times and The Financial Times, where subscribers can gift an article for free to a limited number of readers?

Luke: That’s a very good question. I don’t have the answer to that — that would be something for our marketing team.

Steve: I think you should pick that as your idea, because I do think it helps with subscription rates. Actually, I just subscribed for £1 on The Times and I did get an alert saying I could share that to two or three people under a friends-and-family approach.

Barry: Beat me to it. Well done.

Steve: It’s an interesting point about paywalls. Some publishers have them, some don’t. In the conversation around AI-resilient content or original journalism, there’s a lot of language and a lot of exercises you can do with editorial teams who don’t have paywalls to get them to invest more time in original research. Obviously that has to be supported higher up so teams are given the freedom to experiment. But sometimes it might just come down to asking: if you had a paywall, what kind of content would you produce? Sometimes simple prompts like that can elicit great ideas. I’ve found with teams I’ve managed in the past that when traffic has been challenged, asking “What would you write if there weren’t any targets?” produces a lot of great original ideas. Sometimes being too wedded to a target can lead to playing to the algorithm instead. I don’t know if you’ve got any response to that, Luke.

Luke: That’s a really good question. I think it does come back to confidence in your journalism and understanding what your audience actually values. If you know what your readers come to you for, then it becomes easier to prioritise the ideas that will matter in a subscription context and not just because they look attractive in a dashboard.

Steve: On the subject of Discover, do you actively optimise for it or do you just recognise when something has the right shape for it?

Luke: More the latter. We don’t necessarily monitor Discover trends explicitly, but we do look at whether a story is tangibly anchored to a trend and whether there’s clear keyword intent behind it. That shapes how we package the story for the audience we want to reach. For us, success in Discover still comes down to fundamentals that haven’t changed for a long time: the headline and the lead image, presented in the most enticing way possible without being sensationalist. We’ve seen strong results from headlines that are first-person led, expert driven, or curiosity inducing without drifting into clickbait.

Steve: On your point about headlines, I’ve recently done some work advising on content management systems, and one of the recurring questions is how many headline fields you should have. Years ago you might have had one headline for the article, an SEO title or page title, and an OG title for social. Now you also have Google Discover in the equation. Some publishers have decided to go with just one headline field. What’s your view on that?

Luke: It’s very topical, because it’s something we’re discussing internally at the moment. I think The Times has maybe been a little late to the party with multiple headlines. We currently have two: the homepage headline and the article headline, which is what you see in search and across social. We’ve been scoping out the idea of SEO-only titles for organic search because we know there are situations — live blogs, for example — where the article headline may be anchored on one point while other publishers are ranking in search on slightly different topical points. We’re looking to develop more flexibility there. But more broadly, we’re very confident in our headline construction. Our production staff are wizards at their craft. They can take a keyword and turn it into something reader-friendly, accurate, interesting and eye-catching.

Steve: Do you use AI in any way, shape or form for that? I’ve seen some AI integrations in CMSs recently, and some of the headline suggestions are actually quite impressive.

Luke: We would never, strictly speaking, write an article exclusively using AI. We do have a tool in our CMS that can look at the copy and provide suggestions, but if that happens it is rigorously sense-checked and always for the human reader. We don’t want something that’s just garbled language or that removes the meaning we want the story to have. The functionality exists, but we’re very mindful about how it’s applied and we tread carefully.

Barry: They are getting better, though. I’m a bit of an AI sceptic in this regard, but I’ve seen some really interesting newsroom integrations where AI alleviates a lot of the busywork that journalists and editors have to do — things like OG headlines, alt attributes for images, even internal linking to some extent. I’m not sure how much you can say about this, but is that something happening at The Times as well?

Luke: I can’t talk too much about it, but it’s definitely something we’re thinking about. From my team’s perspective, those monotonous tasks are absolutely areas we think about. But if we do pursue anything, there always has to be a human at the end of the chain to sense-check it and make sure it’s logical, sensible and ultimately in service of the reader.

Steve: Barry, on the question of headlines, there’s been some talk in the press about Google rewriting headlines. Do you have a view on that?

Barry: Yes. There was an article in The Verge saying Google is rewriting headlines using AI. I read it, saw the screenshots, and thought: that’s basically what Google has been doing for years, just now with AI involved. I haven’t seen evidence of Google rewriting Top Stories headlines, which is the context where news publishers should really care. In the standard blue-link results, Google has always tweaked titles to some extent. In Top Stories, it generally picks from one of the existing headline variants — the visible headline, the structured data headline, sometimes the OG title or SEO title. I haven’t seen it invent a headline out of thin air. In many cases, when Google does rewrite a headline, it actually helps the website because it improves click-through rate. So rather than objecting to it, I’d say watch what Google does and learn from it.

Steve: That’s an interesting one, because we don’t want reporting like that to discourage people from investing the time in headline optimisation. Headlines really are the windows of your shop. Luke, if we finish with a look ahead, what are the key things you’re thinking about now?

Luke: Understanding what makes our subscribers tick and leveraging that more is a big one. SERPs are changing so much, and I’m keen to understand better how both Discover and organic are evolving, especially with things like Reddit and social bleeding over. I’m also excited by the idea of more cross-collaboration between different audience teams internally. YouTube is another area I’d like to spend more time learning about, because when we look at search behaviour week to week, we see so much YouTube carrying through. It’s a search engine in its own right, so it would be silly not to leverage the expertise of a team that works on search engines to benefit performance there too.

Steve: Let’s try to get the YouTube version of this podcast ranking for some classic keywords for you, Luke.

Luke: I already hope so.

Steve: Brilliant. It’s great to have you on. We’ll have to check in with you again in six to eight months’ time. Barry, I believe you have an announcement regarding an event happening towards the end of 2026.

Barry: Yes — we’ve launched the 2026 News and Editorial SEO Summit, already the sixth edition. The first batch of speakers has been announced, most of the agenda is nailed down, and I’m very excited about the line-up. We’ve expanded the event a little as well. It used to be a two-day online event; now it’s three days, each with a specific theme. Day one is SEO in the context of news. Day two is broader SEO and AI. Day three looks at audience growth beyond search and Discover — podcasts, video, newsletters, that sort of thing. Tickets are now on sale at super-early-bird pricing.

Steve: It’s a great event. It really opens this space up to a wide range of specialists, and it caters to the whole spectrum of people who are starting their journey in audience growth, because it’s not just exclusive to SEO. There’s video optimisation in there too, and it’s moved into more of a search-everywhere approach. Lastly, I have my own Search and AI Fundamentals Visibility course in London on May 19, aimed at people trying to make sense of how to move forward as a journalist or newsroom manager in this space. It very much builds on the kinds of conversations we’ve been having today. I think it’s “the wood for the trees” — this beer is beginning to take effect. But let’s leave it there. Thanks so much, Luke, for coming in, and we’ll get you on a future pod.

Luke: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, guys. Great chat. Take care.