The Weekly Bulletin | December 3, 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 this edition of the community newsletter, I’d like to share a piece of advice that stood out to me during Day 3 panel of PubTech2024 on SEO & LLM in the age of AI. The panel featured Jiji Ugboma(SHE Media), Harry Clarkson-Bennett (The Telegraph), Clara Soteras (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), and Jay Wilder (deepset). More specifically, the discussion on how small publishers can leverage AI tools to level the playing field.

Small publishers can adopt AI tools faster since they lack red tape or bureaucratic frameworks that larger organizations often have in place. Agility comes at a cost as it can also increase the risk of mistakes, particularly while deploying AI for content creation.

“AI can be and should be amazing for content creation, but only when it is applied properly and with people who really know what they are doing,” cautioned Harry Clarkson-Bennet. While it certainly has some novelty value, interest in AI-generated content can wane quickly when compared to programmatic content.

The panelists preferred using AI tools as co-pilots or productivity enhancers, handling mundane and time-consuming tasks in the content creation process. Smaller publishers can also leverage AI creatively to increase user engagement and CTRs on their websites. Examples include:

• Wedding website that helps generate custom wedding vows using AI

• AI-generated games and trivia

• Using AI-generated headlines for content and AB testing

• AI tools that can generate realistic podcast audio from text content

Jay Wilder offered a word of caution: “You have to review the (AI-generated) content and make sure that it really reflects who you are in terms of brand identity.”  

JOB BOARD

➡️ Complex is looking for a head of audience development to lead the strategy and execution of initiatives to grow, engage, and retain Complex’s audience across digital platforms (NYC and LA, US). SEE MORE

➡️ The Sun is seeking a customer marketing director who will lead and execute its marketing strategy with a key focus on driving customer loyalty and revenue (London, UK). SEE MORE

➡️ deepset, an AI startup, is looking for a sales development representative (Remote). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ Google has fully rolled out its recommendations section within Google Search Console. Google launched it as an experimental feature back in August and has now fully rolled out the feature to all profiles within Google Search Console. READ MORE

➡️ Ad tech, marketing tech and digital content deals are surging to the highest point since the first half of 2022, shortly after the 2021 advertising boom. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Declan Flaherty on LinkedIn:

Here’s a programmatic SEO experiment website I launched mid last year.

95% of the traffic is from organic search, Australian users - so why the analytics screenshot and not search console?

Funnily enough I only got 231 clicks from Google in the past year - big ups to Bing! Turns out its still got a decent following here…

Paid backlinks? None!

Monetised? Unfortunately not yet!

Any Adsense approval specialists feel free to hit me up.

The programmatic side serves more as a functional purpose and assists in making the website more valuable to use (I should note this isn’t AI content or blogs in bulk ). Unique pages are created dynamically from a user form submission with a community based approach in helping improve the content of them over time. All made possible with some Make & Airtable wizardry from the team.

SEE THE FULL POST

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP