The Weekly Bulletin | February 27, 2024

Hi SODP community,

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

TIP OF THE WEEK

Video has matured to become a channel-agnostic traffic driver for publishing sites.

We have been increasingly hearing from our publishing clients questions related to how they can drive traffic to their video section or be able to increase the awareness of their videos for better engagement.

Did you know? According to Wyzowl, 86% of marketers report increased website traffic through video usage, while 79% of consumers make purchases after watching brand videos. This underscores the importance of Video SEO, particularly with the rise of short-form videos on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and others. 

So I want to drill down to the top three Publisher-specific strategies to get you started.

1️⃣ Make sure your video drives engagement as soon as it goes live by applying top SEO best practices. You must consider the platform algorithms to boost your chances of being able to be seen on the front page. For example, you will have to comment on other creators' videos within your niche, post polls to bridge the gap between brands and customers, and also utilize the comment and like functions on your videos.

2️⃣ To enhance video engagement, curate a playlist with highly topical themes. Strategic playlist curation is essential for maximizing video engagement across various platforms. By handpicking content that resonates with your audience's interests, you can captivate their attention and encourage longer viewing sessions. Whether on established platforms like YouTube or newer channels, the thoughtful selection of playlists serves as a potent tool for driving increased engagement and viewer interaction.

3️⃣ Continuous optimization is also very important. You will need to remain abreast of emerging content trends, refine video production techniques, and adapt to algorithm changes. Instead of spending so much time creating tags and descriptions for each of the platforms, use generative AI to help provide these recommendations. This will afford you the time to focus on the right content descriptions, thereby helping you to maximize time usage. You can use ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.; I can assure you that this will be helpful.

While video production may seem time-consuming, automation tools like ChatGPT script generation can streamline post-production.

This week, we kicked off WP Publisher Success Week.

➡️ On Monday, Anil Gupta (CEO and Co-founder of Multidots) presented on the developments in the WordPress ecosystem that digital publishers should be aware of (some neat collaboration features are getting released this year!)

➡️ Today, Pete Pachal (Founder of The Media Copilot) and Liam Andrew (CPO at The Texas Tribune) shared some amazing advice on implementing AI projects in newsrooms.

There are still two days of workshops and panels left!

➡️ Tomorrow, Google’s Barry Pollard, Blasting News’ Angelo Paura, and Multidots’ Aslam Multani will be conducting a workshop on website performance optimization.

➡️ On Thursday, Stephanie Solomon (Chief Revenue Officer at Foreign Affairs Magazine) will be discussing monetization strategies and revenue growth.

SODP POSTS

SPONSORED

The last two episodes in our seven-part WordPress teardown series are out! Watch the videos on our YouTube channel or listen to the episodes as a podcast.

EPISODE 6: Macworld: Coding a New AI Experience – Eliminating the Buyer Guide Puzzle?

As publishers, we all know the way to reach an audience is by anticipating demand and getting ahead of its peak by providing timely value. However, do AI-assisted features help aid the user's journey to purchase?

We explore MacWorld, your source for all things Apple and one of the leading industry news sites.

EPISODE 7: Keeping True to The New York Times’ Past Editorial Values for a Sustainable Future

In November 2023, The New York Times achieved the 10-million subscriber target it set in the Digital Publishers Innovation Report in 2014 due to staying true to its editorial values of covering national interest, product bundling, and several acquisitions. What lessons can publishers learn along the way? And is The NYT on track to reach the 15-million target by 2027?

In this episode, we discuss The New York Times – one of the longest-running newspapers and a prolific digital media publisher.

JOB BOARD

➡️ Forbes Australia is looking for a commercial editor. This role will start as 2 days per week with the opportunity to become full-time (Remote, Australia). SEE MORE

➡️ Condé Nast is looking for a manager of customer experience. (NYC, NY, US). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ News reader Particle.news, developed by former Twitter engineers and which uses AI to summarize articles and aims to fairly compensate authors and publishers, enters private beta. READ MORE

➡️ Substack on Thursday announced that more than 3 million customers subscribe to paid newsletters on its platform, up from 2 million announced last year and 1 million in 2021. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ John Shehata on LinkedIn:

Many publishers and News SEOs were concerned with the news of Google removing the News Filter/tab from search results. Google has confirmed that the test has finished and they have no plans of removing the filter.

Based on @newzdash data below, News Tab traffic is minimal and doesn't account to any significant traffic.

There are 4 news surfaces within Google; Top Stories (News Box within SERPs), Google News (news.google.com), Google Discover, and News Tab/Filter.

News Tab constitute a very small portion of the Google traffic to any news publisher; less than 2% of Google's traffic to the majority of publishers.

Analyzing GDdash.com 936M clicks over the last 90 days for 122 publishers, News Tab Traffic is 1.6% of total Google Clicks.

BTW, Google News is 6.4% and Google Discover is 48%, which means 45% of Google traffic is Web (including Top Stories, Images, Videos, and other tabs).

So Calm Down and Keep SEOing :)

READ THE FULL POST

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP