🎟️ Giveaway! | Ask a News SEO with Barry Adams and John Shehata of NESS

We're giving away four tickets to this year's News and Editorial SEO Summit!

Oct 07, 2024

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Hello, and welcome back. Jessie and Shelby here, back from a lovely fall weekend. Jessie went to see the soundtrack for the iconic Canadian film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World performed live at Lee’s Palace (an iconic Toronto venue). Plus: broccoli sushi, brunch and a surprise bonus softball game. Meanwhile, Shelby went on an emotional roller coaster watching The Substance, a (very strange) horror film, followed shortly by The Wild Robot. I will not disclose how many tissues I went through.

This week: We’re delighted to be joined by NESS co-founders Barry Adams and John Shehata for a special edition of Ask a News SEO. We chat about the most in-demand skill for news SEO and what publishers should be most excited for at this year’s conference.

ALSO! In partnership with NESS, we're thrilled to be giving away four tickets to this year's News and Editorial SEO Summit! Thanks Barry and John for making this contest possible! Scroll to the end of this email for details about the giveaway.

Let’s get it.

THE INTERVIEW

WTF is SEO?: What would you say is the most in-demand skill for news SEO today?

John Shehata: There are countless skills in SEO — content creation, technical optimization and many more. But if I had to choose the most critical one right now, it’s adaptability.

In the past year or two, Google has accelerated the pace of change with more frequent algorithm updates and new technical requirements. And it’s a rapidly evolving landscape of information, misinformation and disinformation. Everything is moving faster than ever before.

People have been frustrated by the rapid changes. But this is the nature of SEO. Whether you’re focused on news or any other niche, the key is to be adaptable, flexible and leverage both short- and long-term opportunities.

It’s about asking yourself: “What can I do to succeed today, and how do I build for long-term success?” You have to be quick to identify and seize opportunities. Google even hinted that core updates will now be ongoing and integrated, occurring every three months. So, for me, adaptability is the most essential skill right now.

Barry Adams: If I could insert a sarcasm emoji here, I'd say "prompt engineering," but I fully agree with John — it’s adaptability.

When you sent through the questions, I had to think about it. It’s hard to pin down just one thing. You have to move with the trends and the directions of search. AI Overviews — not a major impact. Algorithm updates — you live and die by those. And they’re hard to predict.

I don’t envy people who work in-house for news publications. You can do almost everything right and still lose in Google's ecosystem, and that’s intensely frustrating. So, in addition to adaptability, I would say resilience is equally important.

It’s funny, because we’re not talking about actual SEO skills, but complementary people skills. You need to be adaptable, you need to be resilient, and you need to be a good communicator. You need to talk to editorial teams and to technical teams, and explain what's going on, as well as try to understand things yourself. Listen to people discussing SEO day-in and day-out, listen to Googlers, and read between the lines. Communication skills definitely play a role.

John Shehata: SEOs often don’t consider that you need to shift your mindset from an audience function to a business function. If your focus is just on driving traffic for the sake of traffic, it won't work anymore, especially for news organizations.

You have to understand your organization’s business goals, and your role is to help with those. If you're working within a subscription-based newsroom, you need to understand what type of content works for that. It's not about optimizing every piece of content out there.

You need to change your mindset to become a business-function SEO, not just an audience-function SEO.

WTF is SEO?: With Google being so up and down, what do you two feel news SEOs should prioritize right now? And the second part—what are some tips for navigating all these changes?

Barry Adams: I’m saying this as a pure SEO: you need to build a brand. You need to get people loyal to your brand. SEO plays a role in that by capturing your audience at the top of the funnel and building loyalty. Become that outlet that people cannot do without. Nobody can take that audience away from you but yourself, but nobody can build it but you either.

I see a common thread, especially among small and medium-sized publishers, which have been very badly affected by Google algorithm updates, that they lack a brand and are fairly generic. If you don’t have a brand, you’re interchangeable with any other website, and you should be worried.

There is a smaller space to play with in this online ecosystem, and the only way you can immunize yourself against that is to become a brand destination. Some of the biggest news brands in the world get most of their search traffic from people Googling their brand directly. SEOs can take no direct credit for that, but that makes them somewhat immune to whatever technology changes or platforms emerge in the future.

You need to understand the risks of relying on third-party platforms for traffic. For example, when Facebook traffic evaporated, many sites faced catastrophic failures. The only way to safeguard against that is to have a loyal audience.

John Shehata: I completely agree. People read content for three main reasons: loyalty to the brand, affinity for the writer or interest in the topic. When you think about it, all of these factors build authority. You need to establish your authority as a brand, as a writer, and on the topics you cover. It’s a triangle of authority.

Think about it: if Barry writes something, I’ll read it because of my affinity for him as a writer. If it’s on WTF SEO?, I’ll read it because of my affinity for the brand. Or, if it’s about technical SEO, I’ll read it because I trust the authority on the topic.

The second area I would say is Google Discover. The sad reality is Google Discover is the number one traffic driver for a lot of news publishers right now. I shared a chart on Twitter recently analyzing 400 publishers, showing that Discover is driving up to 56 per cent of traffic for publishers. In some regions like Europe and Asia, it’s even as high as 90 per cent. So, you have to focus on Discover, you have to understand what content works, and increase your authority around your writers.

WTF is SEO?: Let’s shift gears to the conference. What should attendees be most excited about for this year’s event?

John Shehata: There’s a lot to be excited about. This year, for the first time, we have Martin Split from Google’s team talking about technical SEO. And we have 13 speakers this year — the most we’ve ever had. And we put out a speaker pitch form, so we have several new speakers who’ve never spoken before. It’s really exciting.

Barry Adams: 13 speakers, during the Halloween period? Not soliciting disaster at all…

But yeah, I look at the lineup and think, "Damn, that’s a good lineup!"

Every year I feel that way, and this year is no different. If I weren’t organizing the event, I’d pay really good money to attend. It’s fantastic for people working in publishing but also those outside of publishing. You’ll really learn things.

The Q&A sessions are always a highlight. There’s no script or presentation — just people asking their specific questions about specific challenges they’re facing, and getting real-time answers from experts with tons of experience. It’s incredibly valuable. I literally cannot wait for this event to happen.

WTF is SEO?: NESS is very accessible — affordable, virtual and open to a global audience. Can you talk a bit more about that?

John Shehata: We had two main principles when we started: One, we wanted to create a conference we’d want to attend, and two, we wanted it to be affordable so that entire newsrooms could participate, not just one person.

We wanted something an organization could send as many people as they want and have that knowledge sharing.

Barry Adams: The accessibility of the event started as a necessity but we quickly realized it was a strength. We have attendees from all over the world. Even Australians stay up until 4 a.m. to take part and ask questions and it’s mind blowing they’re willing to do that. So we’re committed to keeping it accessible.

This has always been a passion project for us. We're not here to make money, we're here to put on an event that people feel they get genuine value from.

WTF is SEO?: If a publication has recently lost traffic or is facing volatility, what should they prioritize? And who should they look forward to hearing from at NESS?

Barry Adams: Glen Gabe and Lily Ray, without a doubt. They’ll be digging into algorithm updates with case studies and examples. I can’t wait to hear from them both.

John Shehata: Absolutely. They’re going to touch on two sides of the coin: Glen will cover a lot of the changes, and Lily is going to talk about recoveries.

Barry Adams: Plus, we have Rand Fishkin, which is a real “pinch me” moment. I have a lot of respect for him, especially his forward-looking perspective on where things are going. He's very rarely wrong.

Here's how to enter our NESS giveaway 🎉

NESS '24 will run October 29 and 30, 2024. All event details can be found on their website.

Enter NESS giveawy!

Contest ends October 17, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Winners will be announced on the SEO is Journalism Slack and contacted via email.

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