The Weekly Bulletin | March 26, 2024

Hi SODP community,

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

TIP OF THE WEEK

In the face of significant challenges in the local publishing industry, the focus on local SEO as a vital driver of targeted traffic for media publishers has intensified. In a recent study from SODP co-authored by Andrew Kemp and I, we offered actionable insights into how small-scale publishers can leverage local SEO to navigate challenges and grow their businesses.

Despite obstacles like competition from tech giants and dwindling trust in news media, local publishing remains resilient. Here's a structured breakdown of the study's findings and actionable takeaways:

1. Audience Segmentation and Content Strategy: For publishers with less than 5,000 monthly visitors, shift focus from time-sensitive content to evergreen content to enhance SERP visibility, increase lifestyle content to broaden audience appeal, leverage user-generated content (UGC) to foster community engagement and utilize social media platforms to drive traffic.

2. Content Optimization and Engagement: for publishers with 5,001-25,000 monthly visitors, increase publishing frequency to maintain audience engagement, incorporate interactive elements to encourage repeat visits, create content hubs using story tags to enhance content discoverability and develop evergreen and seasonal content to boost search visibility.

3. Localized Content and User Experience (UX): for publishers with 25,001-50,000 monthly visitors, produce lifestyle content catering to both local residents and tourists, focus on promotional and editorial evergreen content to improve SERP visibility and consider UX enhancements to prioritize top-performing content.

4. Scalability and Diversification: for publishers exceeding 50,000 monthly visitors, prioritize original and locally relevant content creation, increase content volume while maintaining quality and relevance, repurpose content across multiple channels for broader reach and diversify traffic sources to reduce dependency on a single channel.

These are very useful and important takeaways:

✅ Segment your audience and tailor content to their interests and preferences.

✅ Optimize content for local search intent to improve visibility in local search results.

✅ Leverage user-generated content and social media platforms to foster community engagement.

✅ Prioritize evergreen and seasonal content to maintain search visibility over time.

✅ Invest in UX enhancements to improve user experience and content discoverability.

✅ Scale content production while ensuring quality and relevance.

✅ Diversify traffic sources to mitigate risks associated with dependency on a single channel.

By implementing these actionable takeaways, local SEO practitioners in the publishing industry can strengthen their strategies, drive targeted traffic, and ensure sustained growth in an increasingly competitive landscape.

MONETIZATION WEEK 2024

We are excited to announce our latest learning and engagement opportunity for our community of digital publishing and news media professionals.

Monetization Week 2024 is an online event featuring five 1-hour sessions hosted over five days. Register for an individual session or the entire event.

🗓 27-31 May 2024
🕒 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM CET

Confirmed presenters include:

✅ Susanne Sperling, Founder of Stratechmedia
✅ Gabriella Petrova, Head of Revenue Operations at PhoneArena
✅ Radu Tyrsina, CEO of Reflector Media
✅ Simon Beauloye, Founder & Publication Director of Luxe Digital

SODP POSTS

Sponsored
Newsifier Review for 2024

News websites are different from other websites on the internet that either sell products or services, or provide informational or entertainment-based content. News is topical, has a short shelf-life, and needs to be updated very frequently. All news content also needs to be instantly pushed out on all social media channels with the same frequency, thereby compounding the effort required.

On top of it all, news also requires an entirely different SEO ruleset because news websites get a large chunk of their traffic from the Top Stories Carousel, Google News and Google Discover, in addition to the regular Google search.

As a result, news publishers have to deal with far greater volume and frequency of content publishing compared to other websites.

This is why a generic, one-size-fits-all content management system (CMS) such as WordPress may be limited in utility for news publishers, as it requires a greater degree of customization to handle their specific requirements.

Newsifier, a Netherlands-based headless CMS offers an alternative to WordPress that promises to make life easier for news publishers.

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

JOB BOARD

➡️ SuperYacht Times (SYT) is expanding its editorial team to include an experienced Senior Editor (Hybrid, Amsterdam, Netherlands). SEE MORE

➡️ Canva is looking for a content strategist to lead and execute the content strategy for the website including optimizing UX, navigation and IA, publishing processes, measurement plans, SEO strategy, taxonomy and localisation strategies. (Melbourne, VIC, Australia). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Google is now testing AI overviews in the main Google Search results, even if you have not opted into the Google Search Generative Experience labs feature. Google said this is an experience on a “subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the U.S.”. READ MORE

➡️ Meta plans to officially shutter CrowdTangle, the analytics tool widely used by journalists and researchers to see what's going viral on Facebook and Instagram. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Dan Oshinsky on LinkedIn:

I’ll often talk with newsletter operators who tell me they want to launch another new thing: Another course, another ebook, another product.

But the question I always have to ask is: Have you gotten everything you can out of the stuff that’s already out there?

I’ll see newsletters with great engagement that are missing obvious monetization opportunities, like running ads or affiliate content.

I’ll see operators with a paid membership who aren’t promoting it nearly as much as they could — even though with every new member they get, they’re getting more value out of a thing they’re already working on.

Forget about launching new stuff for a second. Look at what you’re already doing — is there an opportunity there to get more out of the work you’re already doing?

READ THE FULL POST

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP