The Weekly Bulletin | December 6, 2023

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

Author

Vahe Arabian
December 06, 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

Ad intrusion significantly impacts SEO because it affects user experience, content helpfulness and what users expect to see when visiting a post or page. Other SEOs conducting qualitative analysis saw many ad-heavy sites being impacted during the Helpful Content Update.

According to The Better Coalition Ads study, a page with high ad density takes up more than 30% of above the fold of the scrollable section of the page.

For this ad experience definition:

  • Ad density is measured against the main content portion of the page, not the viewport.

  • The main content portion of the page excludes headers, footers, site navigation, and related articles.

  • Ads below the main content portion of the page are not included in the density calculation.

  • All ad formats count toward ad density, including “sticky” ads and inline ads. The height of each “sticky” ad is counted once for the purposes of this calculation)

  • Video ads that appear before (“pre-roll”) or during (“mid-roll”) video content that is relevant to the content of the page itself are not included in the measurement.

Want to conduct a quick on-the-spot check to ensure your page and ad layout are compliant? Simply us the Ad Density Chrome extension from DevriX.

SODP POSTS

10 Best AI Transcription Tools in 2024

AI transcription tools offer many industries, including digital publishing, the means to quickly and accurately convert audio and video files into text.

The US transcription industry was valued at $25.98 billion in 2022. While the industry was built on the back of human transcribers, the process was slow, costly and prone to human errors. The advent of AI, however, means it’s now possible to transcribe large volumes of audiovisual content within a matter of minutes with surprising accuracy, and at a fraction of the cost.

Join us as we look at the best AI transcription tools to streamline workflows, enhance content accessibility and boost productivity.

10 Best AI SEO Tools for Publishers in 2024

AI SEO tools use NLP to understand the meaning and context of content, which not only allows them to provide more accurate and relevant insights and recommendations but also write better content.

There are several AI-driven tools available on the market, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses, and we’ve drawn together what we consider to be the 10 best AI SEO tools for publishers.

Publisher SEO - Black Friday

JOB BOARD

➡️ NBCUniversal is looking for an experienced, passionate candidate to join the L.A. digital news team in a hybrid writer/editor role at E! News (Los Angeles, US). SEE MORE

➡️ S&P Global is looking for a lead editor to join a dynamic team of editors across the globe who will support all of S&P Global, but with a particular focus on Market Intelligence news and research content (Buenos Aires and Manila). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ How the WSJ, MIT Technology Review, the FT, El País, The Globe and Mail, BBC News, Middle East Eye, WaPo, and five other news outlets use LinkedIn newsletters. READ MORE

➡️ Google expands video requirements for “Video mode” where video must be main content of the page. If your video is not the primary part of the page, Google will not show your videos in search and within "Video mode" of Google Search. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Khalil A. Cassimally on LinkedIn:

We need to be more valuable to people. It's imperative for media organisations, it's important for any other content creators. Being valuable to others should be the north star. How to do it? This is something I've created that I hope helps …

Here's a process (read: work breakdown structure) to form a content operation that's focussed on audiences. Zeroing in on audiences, through this process, leads to publishing content that is even more valuable to them. E.g. we found that content published using this process was 50+% more engaging to people.

You'll see that the process follows a phased approach. In my experience, having clear phases allows for more accurate planning in terms of both resources and learnings. So, you basically start small, learn, get early wins, get more confidence and stakeholder backing, and scale. Scale creating content that is more valuable to people. Scale value.

Khalil Cassimally on LinkedIn

These are the highlights for last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP