SODP Dispatch - 28 March 2024

Sponsored
Newsifier Review for 2024

By Kamalpreet Singh

We reviewed Newsifier – an AI-powered headless CMS designed especially for online news publishers.

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

Our editorial team decided to put the CMS to a test and see if it lives up to its promises.

💡 What you will learn:

• How Newsifier works

• What nifty features Newsifier offers to publishers

• What we loved about this CMS

• Improvement areas
  + more

By Vahe Arabian

📈 Local SEO Tips

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.

📊 Report: Digital Advertising Futures 2024 H1

Digital advertising investment is set to accelerate in 2024 as concerns over the global economy starts to ease, the latest instalment of the FIPP Global Advertising Futures report shows.
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🤖 AI Title Generator

Generate optimized titles for better search engine visibility with ahref’s free tool.
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Google SGE a top threat to brand and product terms, study finds | Search Engine Land

Among the findings: 91.4% of all search queries triggered SGE; Quora was a big winner; and paid search ads appeared 50% of the time.
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Bundling multiple products and services is enabling top news publishers to address more user needs, increase revenue per subscriber, reduce churn, and potentially attract new customers. This approach mirrors the evolution of print newspapers in the 20th century.
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Okay — so maybe, in retrospect, your newsroom didn’t really need a smart-refrigerator strategy. But it’s starting to look like — at least for a certain weight class of global news organization — your newsroom might really need a build-your-own-AI strategy.
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Google’s SearchLiaison offered advice on how to step back and think about what the problem could be and if there even is a problem to consider.
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Meta shuts down data tool widely used by journalists | Axios

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, the company's president of global affairs Nick Clegg told Axios in an interview.
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