The Weekly Bulletin | November 21, 2023

Catch up on your members' content, check out the community buzz, and browse through job opportunities

Author

Vahe Arabian
November 21, 2023

Hi SODP community,

Let’s recap on what’s been happening last week, the new content, industry updates, tips, and more.

TIP OF THE WEEK

This week, I’d like to re-share a tip from Cyrus Shepard – founder of Zippy who also works as a Google Quality Rater.

Many SEO experts find it challenging to impact the "Authority-Trust" aspect of E-E-A-T directly on their web pages. What is said about your site on external platforms holds more weight than your own claims.

If your site exhibits low or absent E-E-A-T, overcoming this with mere author bios, About sections, navigation tools, or expert evaluations of your content is tough.

To gauge external opinions about your site, follow these steps:

  1. Search for your website on Google.

  2. Click the three dots next to your site's URL.

  3. In the pop-up, select "More about this page."

  4. This leads to Google's "About the source" section for your website.

This section presents references to your site from across the web, focusing on your website.

If the content here is sparse or negative, it's a key indicator of where to begin enhancing your site's reputation.

Actions you can take include:

  • Focus on becoming a cited resource, with company updates, starting with lower tier wikimedia pages towards the coveted wikipedia page and/or source.

  • Evolve your content standards.

  • Leverage UGC and commenting in niche topics to flag collective experiences.

  • Improve image indexation of your most important stories.

  • Increase brand citations on external sites by devising campaign-led digital PR with content assets.

SODP POSTS

———— SPONSORED ————

MagCast Review for 2024

Publishers are constantly competing for audience mindshare, which makes digital magazine apps such a compelling proposition.

Not only do magazine apps help publishers expand their audience beyond their websites, but they also create a direct connection with the audience. Publishers are just a click away from their audience once a magazine app is installed.

While many publishers have already realized the size of the opportunity that digital magazines present, the prospect of creating one that comes with its own apps remains a deterrent.

This is because the world of digital magazine app publishing remains shrouded in mystery for the most part.

MagCast, a California-based digital magazine publishing platform, attempts to lift the veil off the complex world of app publishing through its simple yet powerful platform.

Join us as we dig deeper into the platform to understand how it works, what its strengths are and any potential pitfalls.

The Role of AI in the Publishing Industry

A WAN-IFRA survey of news publishers showed that by May 2023 about half were actively using ChatGPT or similar tools, with 70% expecting them to help journalists.

There are many benefits of using AI in digital publishing:

✅ Cost efficiency
✅ Research assistance and fact-checking
✅ Content personalization

Of course, there is the flip side.

🔻 Organizations adopting AI often face financial and technical constraints. For example, smaller media may lack funding to hire qualified engineers.
🔻 Publishers must also consider the legal and reputational risks that the careless application of AI may cause.

We explore this and more in our latest post on the role of AI in publishing.

Headless CMS Explained: A Quick Guide for Publishers

Decoupling digital content creation from presentation means teams can create, modify and distribute content seamlessly across various channels. This flexibility both enhances operational efficiency and ensures a consistent cross-platform user experience.

But, as with any strategic pivot, switching to a headless CMS comes with its own set of challenges. Integrating, scaling and maintaining a unified content strategy isn’t a simple affair and publishers need to understand these challenges before making long-term strategic decisions.

Join us as we explore what a headless CMS is, why the industry is growing and the potential pitfalls of switching from a traditional CMS to a headless CMS.

Pubtech2023

JOB BOARD

➡️ Yahoo News is looking for a news-obsessed, results-driven director to build and manage an editorial optimization team (Remote, US). SEE MORE

➡️ Time Out is looking for an editor for Time Out Australia. This person will be responsible for crafting national news stories, commissioning national features, and producing SEO-driven content for various cities in Australia. (Sydney or Melbourne, Australia). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ The decline of local newspapers accelerated so rapidly in 2023 that analysts now believe the U.S. will have lost one-third of the newspapers it had as of 2005 by the end of next year — rather than in 2025, as originally predicted. READ MORE

➡️ Google has updated its search quality raters guidelines. It has been 11 months since the last update, see what’s changed. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Aleyda Solís on LinkedIn:

I've created a GPT to help with your content quality assessment: The Content Helpfulness and Quality SEO Analyzer 👀👇

Assess a page content helpfulness, relevance, and quality for your targeted query based on Google's guidelines vs your competitors and get tips! Try it now:

I hope it's helpful 🙌🤩

These are the highlights for last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP