Wednesday 8th May: In SEO, the bad guys are the big digital publishers

Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Peter.

Are you a publisher with newsletters or podcasts? Then you absolutely must have Wednesday June 12th in your diary.

I’m not a big fan of acronyms, mostly because I forget what they mean, but SEO and SERP are burned into my brain. For years, search’s S-words have been obsessed over by publishing management - get it right and great riches wait, get it wrong (or be unlucky) and watch your traffic tank.

Google’s lastest core-update shenanigans are, on the face of it, little different than what has gone before. In its quest to deliver the most helpful content it can, the Notorious G has tweaked its rankings to try to stop unhelpful practices. What’s different is that some of the bad actors being targeted are household names that the searching public should be able to trust. Here’s Press Gazette’s latest rankings research (draw your own conclusions).

Glen Allsop of Detailed.com - the Bloomberg of SEO - told Brian Morrissey that “in the eyes of many ‘niche site owners’ the bad guys are the big digital publishers, who have rolled up tons of properties and spun up commerce-focused SEO operations that have flooded the SERP.” The good news is Google appears to be on the case. The bad news is it might be too late for independent sites like HouseFresh, which has ‘virtually disappeared’ from Google Search results.

We’re looking forward to bringing together some of the industry’s leading publishers to share the strategies and learnings behind their podcasts and newsletters. Monocle’s Fernando Augusto Pacheco will kick off the Publisher Podcast Summit and newsletter doyenne Sian Meades-Williams will get the show on the road for Publisher Newsletter Summit. See more news on workshops and speaker sessions and get tickets at publisherpodcasts.com.

Jacob Donnelly raises an interesting conundrum in A Media Operator: Should publishers be suing AI companies like OpenAi or doing licensing deals? His view is licensing is repeat revenue, while lawsuits can only deliver a one-time payment. However, Jacob is a smart guy and he knows most publishers won’t get a sniff of a licensing deal (and don’t have the cash to fight a suit). He writes, “and so, as publishers, we must focus on what we can control: serving our audiences.” He’s not wrong.

I’ve started a swipe file of articles about how come print is so great. Often published by ‘magazine media’ brands that seem slightly embarrassed by their legacy print offerings, I just love the ‘pivot to print’ narrative that’s replacing the ‘print is dead’ BS we’ve endured for decades. But publishers need to properly re-engage with the format for print to truly make a comeback, and I’ll be sharing my thoughts at the FIPP World Congress in Portugal on June 6th. Come and heckle me if you’re there.

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