What we learned at NESS 2024 (pt. 2)

Talks on technical and local SEO, migrations, recovering from core updates and integrating audience into the newsroom are recapped this week.

Nov 11, 2024

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Hello, and welcome back. Jessie and Shelby here, back from very different weeks. Jessie is back from a week of work in New York City. Highlights include a Broadway play, comedy show and long visits to a handful of extremely nice bookstores. Plus of course, the reason for the trip: in-person election work. A 13-hour shift really flies by when the people you work with are some of the best in the biz. Shelby, meanwhile, had her university roommate’s wedding, filled with many tears and many glasses of wine. Sunday was rough.

This week: NESS — again! The conference was so stacked we broke our coverage into two issues. For this edition, we’re recapping talks on how audience teams work in the newsroom, technical SEO, recovering from core updates, local news SEO and 2025 marketing trends. Check out part one for the first day’s recap.

Imagine having a WFH setup this vibey? Photo by Radek Grzybowski on Unsplash

Let’s get it.

Technical news SEO: Demystifying website performance and page experience

Martin Splitt, a search relations engineer at Google, gave a very technical talk filled with useful insights for publishers. He explained how Google tries to understand website performance and user experience.

Web performance, Martin explained, attempts to quantify something that’s really hard to quantify (website performance and website experience). It means putting a number to something that is subjective.

But performance is not just a number, Martin said. Each metric has its own challenges. Some are too sensitive and may not accurately reflect real user experience. Lab data (a local version of the site on your computer) can also be very different from real user metrics. This creates moving targets for development teams.

Technical teams should focus on how people actually interact with the page and the content to understand performance better. Martin compared how quickly people expect a simple webpage to load versus a complex 3D rendering — readers have different expectations of these two pages, which influences how users view performance.

During the Q&A , Martin was asked what the one technical SEO task newsrooms should prioritize. He caveated by saying, “it’s tricky,” but recommended checking that the pages you care about are indexed. Google Search Console, specifically the Crawl Stats report, is useful for this.

When asked about AMP, Martin said that if the setup “works really well for you,” keep it. However, if you’re setting up a new site or considering adding AMP, you don’t need to. Barry Adams, who moderated the session, reiterated the importance of strong Core Web Vitals and ensuring that pages load and work well for readers.

Martin said it’s important to consider how CWV metrics overlap and interact. The biggest annoyance for users may be cumulative layout shift (CLS) — components moving around on a page can be very frustrating.

If your page is stable but takes a long time to load, it’s an issue; if it’s fast but unstable, that’s also not a good user experience. It’s about how the reader experiences it as much as the number.

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Local news SEO: Unlocking local SEO for growth

To build a loyal local audience, focus on attention. That’s what Ryan Kellett emphasized, as he explained how Axios developed its network of local coverage in 30 cities.

“Everyone thinks local SEO is just ‘___ near me,’” Ryan said. But it’s not. It’s far more complex. Highlighting what makes each city unique is important. Local search results pages (SERPs) provide valuable insights into what people are really looking for and how much coverage already exists. Covering breaking news helps develop topic authority, but evergreen showcases your expertise of the city.

Identify the audience you are trying to serve early in your strategic planning. Ideally, local outlets should cover local news for local readers. That coverage should be in depth, connecting with the people who experience the city daily.

Sometimes, local coverage — like a shooting or natural disaster — may be read by national audiences. However, something to avoid is national news for a local audience. This is already covered so much by major publications that it likely doesn't make sense for smaller local outlets, Ryan explained. It’s more effective to focus on local journalism, which fosters a loyal local readership.

Ryan’s takeaways for winning in local SEO:

Local SERPs are a thing because local news has eroded;
Mind the migration, but you can course correct (Ryan explained Axios initially had all their local sites on subdomains, but later changed to subfolders because that was better for SEO);
Determine if you really want local readers or not;
The real potential for long-term growth is the consistent local evergreen;
A network of local sites can be an ideal testing ground for SEO ideas at scale.

Google algorithms and updates: What it takes to recover from Google core updates

After the extreme volatility publishers have had with Google algorithm updates, Lily Ray provided a refreshing talk on how to react if your site has been affected.

In her analysis of the March core update winners and losers, she found almost all of the sites affected were informational/affiliate publications. Lily explained how Google is getting much better at understanding when site sections are not related to the main site, including affiliate verticals.

Lily outlined why websites get hit by core updates and actions they can take to recover:

Intent switches: Core updates often refresh SERPs based on the intent of the query and what is most relevant at the time. This is not something you can control — this shift is often because of news or cultural events. Understanding this helps you adjust accordingly.
Website type: Google changes what types of sites rank for a query based on what it thinks is most helpful. For example, a query like “what game should I play” used to rank affiliate content from PC Gamer in the #1 spot. Now, top spots belong to Reddit and forum content, as Google emphasizes the human experience. Look for opportunities to get involved with forums in a non-commercial way.
Sitewide quality issues: This is the biggest factor for why a site sees declines. Issues like excessive thin, low-quality or AI content, too much “SEO content,” overly aggressive ads, poor UX, performance issues and broken technical SEO can heavily affect a site’s visibility. Everything works in tandem. Improve the whole site and ensure it’s as healthy as possible.

While it’s not always clear where a site has been hit, Lily recommends doing a delta analysis by exporting all GSC keywords over a period pre and post-update and analyzing the areas affected. But improve everything. Double down on fixing technical issues and poor experience. This puts you in the best position.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see immediate results, Lily says. Recovery is a lot of hard work and patience.

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How to incorporate SEO throughout a newsroom with audience teams

How an audience team is integrated in a newsroom can have a huge impact on how effective those groups are in their work. Claudio Cabrera shared valuable insights from working at The New York Times and building out The Athletic’s audience team.

Many organizations separate audience and editorial teams, which is ineffective. Audience staff are editors. Writing social copy, pitching (sometimes writing) explainers or breakouts is editorial work, and should be reflected in titles (for example, SEO editor over SEO strategist).

Audience staff should be included in key editorial meetings, starting with the daily news meeting. They should provide insights — not just traffic numbers. Editors should detail why a story found strong reach, had great engagement or converted readers to subscribers. They should also explain how the audience team contributed to that success. Pitching and competitor analysis is valuable here, too.

Audience members should set up weekly meetings with priority desks or sections to strengthen relationships and build an understanding of the vertical's focus and priorities. These meetings should be future-focused, with a content calendar as the foundation for tentpole planning. Claudio categorizes every event as mini, moderate or huge, which informs staffing levels and the time needed for planning.

Being proactive is key — audience editors should drive the planning. Editors should arrive at meetings with an outline of audience-informed plans and priorities, including a review of past performance and an audit of what other publishers are doing. Getting ahead of the desk’s plans and engaging with teams early makes it easier for them to integrate audience insights into their planning.

Claudio also encourages audience editors to make pitching a priority. Five to 10 pitches per day is the baseline for most newsrooms. Audience staff should speak to editors in their own language: lead with the story idea, not just data or a screenshot of Google Trends. Explain why the pitch is important, what it could include and when it should be published.

In-depth site migrations for news websites: how not to risk your news traffic

Barry Adams sharply outlined the best approaches and outcomes of site migrations. He defined the four types of migrations:

Redesign: Changing front-end design/code;
Restructure: Changes in site navigation and internal linking;
Replatform: Updating the CMS and platform of site;
Relaunch: Changing the domain or hostname

All migrations come with risk, so it’s important to plan, plan, plan. Barry suggests that every migration start with:

A spec document outlining existing SEO functionality. This should be a living document and updated regularly;
Crawling the existing website as deeply as possible, gathering all relevant information;
Exporting the top performing 1,000 URLs from GSC;
Downloading all existing XML sitemaps;
Using a secure, non-ranking staging environment to test the site.

Barry also reviewed several publishers who underwent migrations, looking at how their visibility changed — both positively and negatively. Some sites even reversed their migration due to the resulting effects on traffic.

Here are Barry’s top tips for migrations:

Use a good SEO crawling tool to compare the old and new crawls, checking the health of the site’s technical SEO and compare internal linking;
Save pre-migration page templates to compare how they look in the HTML;
For a replatform or relaunch, decrease the domain’s time to live (TTL) value, which tells how long to cache a query before requesting a new one;
Use server logs to identify key pages Google crawls regularly to ensure they’re still being visited;
Submit XML sitemaps with redirected URLs and monitor this in GSC, but try to avoid chained redirects (site A points to site B which points to site C. Just point site A to site C).

Migrations are not always a good idea; it’s important to prepare, plan and double check everything. Don’t make assumptions about what will happen. Have SEO involved the entire time to ensure your site’s traffic is trending in the right direction.

How to stay ahead of marketing’s big trends

Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz and current CEO of Sparktoro, detailed strategies for staying ahead of current marketing trends in his keynote talk.

Most marketing tactics of the last 15 years — going viral on social, basic SEO, influencer marketing — no longer work or don't have the same returns.

Rand highlights five marketing trends he’s seen over the last decade:

Death of trackable ads and AdTech: Attribution is harder to track. Ads that rely on third-party cookies will see a massive shakeup and likely higher prices in the next year.
The rise of dark traffic: There are more sources than ever that provide referrals you can’t track — like podcasts, webinars and events. But these are key sources for brand awareness and engagement.
The big lie of “marketing attribution”: Attribution was always a lie, Rand says. Online and offline marketing can’t be perfectly measured, so it’s hard to get buy-in for investments.
The end of the rising tide: How much the web grows is correlated to the growth rate of the world’s population. Google and other companies are extracting more from their platforms to try to match earlier growth rates.
We are living in a zero-click world: Every platform wants to keep you on the platform. Google is doing everything it can to kill clicks, charge for the ones that remain and answer searches directly.

Referrals do not equal influence. People are influenced elsewhere.

To determine platform prioritization, research where your audience engages. And focus on email. Email is the last channel standing and should be optimized.

Where to invest? Rand says potentially Threads, and barnacle SEO, i.e., Reddit and YouTube.

But Rand said it’s important not to be first to market. Don’t over-invest in a platform too early. Provide guidance for writers and editors, but don’t focus too much on anything until you know its return.

Ask the SEOs panel

What is one action item to take back to the newsroom?

Lily said clean up underperforming content on your site, including legacy content. Claudio said reporting and analysis that evangelizes audience in the newsroom. Barry said building good relationships to get meaningful work prioritized. John Shehata recommended planning around the editorial calendar.

How do you best convince editorial to pursue an angle with high search potential they believe won’t work for their audience?

Claudio suggested connecting trending topics to the brand’s core focus areas and expertise instead of noting, “this is trending.” As you’re doing that, Claudio said to build relationships with other members of the audience team to set up the file for success. John said aligning with the publisher’s editorial guidelines and analyzing the competitor landscape.

Since news sites cover a single topic from many angles, how do you recognize keyword cannibalization and how do you avoid it?

Lily said look at how the articles are presented and differentiate them. For example, approach the story from an evergreen angle or consider an opinion piece. Barry said it’s actually an advantage to have multiple articles on the same topic because there are more opportunities to rank. Claudio suggested considering editorial judgment. Some events don’t need multiple articles. John said consider the popularity of the event to determine if you need more coverage. Offering distinct perspectives isn’t cannibalization if it provides a unique value.

What areas or skills should news SEO to focus on/develop if they are just starting out?

Ryan said to understand your "why" for doing this work. While learning the basics is valuable, and you can learn as you go, but knowing your purpose is essential. Claudio said immerse yourself in the site’s coverage and priorities. Develop similar brain thinking to editors and communicate like one. Rand added that an understanding of other marketing themes is advantageous. John said don’t be a traffic chaser and look at it with a business mindset.

Thoughts on AI in newsrooms:

Ryan said testing and experimenting generating AI content is important, if only to know what’s the effect and impact. Then find a balance. Claudio suggested using AI as a tool for tasks like headline generation or summarization, but emphasizes that editors need to be at the end of the process. Lily said to use AI to think about ideas and formats, but be transparent and use disclaimers. Rand was skeptical about AI in newsrooms and doesn’t recommend having it as part of the content creation process, but said using it to help with tasks is helpful.

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