Search traffic declines and what to do
Search traffic declines and what to do
We’re answering some lingering questions about search traffic declines, how to communicate changes to executives, and new avenues to connect with audiences.
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Hello, and welcome back. Jessie and Shelby with a rare Tuesday send. Thanks for your patience — as you might imagine, Sunday was a bit of a wild day! Jessie is back from a weekend of — you guessed it! — softball. It’s summer, I only want softball, parks and vegan ice cream cones. Shelby spent time in her hometown with her puppy showing him why the country is infinitely better than the city. One day, my dear friend, we’ll have land.
This week: After our very successful community call last week, we’re answering some lingering questions about search traffic declines, how to communicate changes to executives and new avenues to connect with audiences.
Join our community of almost 2,000 news SEOs on Slack to chat any time!
Let’s get it.
In this issue:
What to do about falling traffic
How to communicate with the C-suite
What other avenues exist?
QUESTIONS, CONSIDERED
Traffic is down for many publishers in 2024, and frustratingly, the cause is largely external. Google algorithm updates and the shift away from news by platforms like Meta and X has hurt audience reach. News outlets are scrambling to figure out how to combat these declines, as well as how to communicate the new reality. What should publishers do?
What opportunities exist to combat declines in traffic from search?
There are many approaches publishers can take to combat declines in search traffic. First, consider that being impacted by an algorithm update can be a sign of site-wide issues, something that’s best addressed with a “kitchen sink” approach to remediation. Don’t cherry-pick technical things to fix; focus on making a significant improvement in overall content and site quality.
Then, look at what has changed. Pull data from Google Search Console for a period before and after the algorithm update into a Google Spreadsheet. (You can also use the GSC Guardian Chrome Extension in Search Console to see major updates on top of your site’s performance.)
In a Google Spreadsheet, use your data analysis skills to identify and compare topic areas where you ranked well before versus now. (Try ChatGPT for Sheets to help categorize headlines into a set number of topics, as we outline in more detail here.) Where have the arrows gone up? Where are you losing footing?
For declines: Review your coverage of those topics to see if you’re producing content that is high-quality, sends quality E.E.A.T signals and has a great user experience. Did you miss key news stories? Did you link the stories together, and from the homepage or navigation? Were the on-page optimization efforts too similar?
For improvements: Review coverage to identify any opportunities to double down on what’s working, perhaps experimenting with new story formats (lists, guides, explainers, etc.). For example, if content on books or movies is improving, could you supplement it with lists and guides? Consider experimenting with the volume of stories written — does more content equal bigger audience? Or diminishing returns?
Investigate the stated purpose of the algorithm update. Review reporting around the algorithm update to understand what kind of content/sites are being impacted. Compare that against the changes you’re seeing on site.
Look at evergreen and recirculation. We're team less effort, high impact — and that’s why we’ve written so much about evergreen or evergreen-ish content. This is content on a topic that is relevant to readers over a significant period of time, and as such, can be recirculated at any time.
Use our spreadsheet template to identify and track evergreen content.
Promote those stories on homepages, social and newsletters. Consider updates that bring in new questions sourced from Google Trends, Glimpse or Reddit.
Consider analysis that looks at evergreen stories performing well in search against on-site performance, specifically among loyal readers (people who visit your site frequently). Stories in the middle of that Venn diagram — doing well in organic search and among loyal readers — are winners.
Think about mega durable content and its breakouts. “Mega durable content” might include:
The New York Times: Best books of the century;.
The Globe and Mail: Canada’s most livable cities;
Rolling Stone: Taylor Swift’s songs ranked;
Traveller: The most beautiful places.
These splashy guides elicit — often intentionally — lots of commentary, audience engagement and can generate backlinks.
This level of reporting requires significant editorial investment. It takes time — and resources — to rank 274 songs or cull a library's worth of books into 100 picks. But the payoff can be equally huge. It demonstrates your topic authority, expertise and unique value proposition as a publisher.
The Globe's best cities ranking, for example, highlights what the publication is already good at: personal finance, data journalism and coverage of Canada’s housing market. It makes use of the in-house expertise, while creating a very, very useful resource.
Meanwhile, this content is a great way to link back to a lot of existing content, or inform further reporting. For example, the ESPN list includes links to features for all named athletes, while the data powering The Globe’s list can be used as research for future reporting.
Writing off other publishers: This journalism can also create opportunities for other publishers, with backlink opportunities to your site. Local publications in Vancouver and Winnipeg wrote off The Globe’s list with their own niche or local focus.
CBC’s Books section, meanwhile, found a unique angle on NYT’s 100 books list by compiling a list of Canadian titles included. This gave the CBC a fresh story, and a chance to link back to their reviews for all five books.
This is similar to writing off controversial or splashy comments made by an interview subject when speaking to another outlet. It’s a way into the story — and as long as it’s authentic to your brand and something readers care about, it’s worth experimenting with.
Elsewhere, some publishers have daily articles on high interest topics like games. For example, Mashable runs a daily clue file for NYT Games like Connections and Wordle. This format — hints and clues for something provided by another publisher — is quick, low effort and can be surprisingly high reward.
After you publish this kind of content, consider what breakouts or secondary files can be produced. NYT, for example, compiled a list of reader suggestions for the books list — an easy way to keep traffic to a page after the initial wave of interest. "From the comments" is another similar format, which curates some of the best reader comments left on stories.
Regaining lost traffic doesn't always require a radical rethink of your editorial strategy. Small experiments, like writing off another outlet's coverage, or finding new formats for topics that bring in readers, can produce incremental success. A small improvement is still an improvement.
Leadership is questioning whether search traffic and traffic metrics in general are as important as they once were. How would you approach this?
Leadership is concerned with what metrics affect a business’ revenue. Answering whether these metrics are important comes down to your publication’s business goals. Search is still a significant driver of traffic for many outlets, and a large share of overall traffic. If search traffic is a major driver for any form of revenue (subscriptions, donations, affiliate, e-commerce, etc.), it’s still important — even if the number is going down. This can be indicative that change is needed.
The C-suite is focused on performance — specifically, driving performance in the most efficient way possible. Jim Yu wrote a great explainer on communicating the enterprise business of SEO to C-suite executives, which can be really useful in challenging times like this.
In SEO, it’s often difficult to attribute traffic spikes or declines to a single cause. But it’s important to communicate when something happens that could impact traffic. This not only helps C-suite decide how to address challenges, but also positions you as a proactive member of the team seeking out opportunities.
Dan Taylor explains how to communicate major Google changes to executive leadership, highlighting how to liaise impact and risk. He says effective communication is all about “building confidence and support for strategic decisions related to emerging technologies, ensuring stakeholders are well-informed and aligned with the business’s strategic direction.”
As the landscape continues to be volatile, constant, honest communication with your leadership teams is vital. Highlight the many changes — and challenges — with Google over the last six months. Keep a tracker on how it affects your publication and ensure regular discussions with those you report to about these developments.
You are the expert on your audience. You’re working with these metrics daily and look at the landscape the most often of almost anyone in your organization. The main thing your leadership team wants to hear is the truth: What’s happening with search? What metrics are important to track? How can we be better with the situation we have?
What other avenues are publishers looking at?
A lot of publications — and a lot of our community members, as mentioned on the call! — are exploring newsletters more as an engagement play, including experimenting with short-run newsletters, mini courses and pop-ups for certain events. Newsletters bring the community into a more intimate setting — the inbox — where most people spend the majority of their day. If they are opting to read a newsletter, there’s a reason. Even LinkedIn rolled out its own version of “newsletters” to try to keep people onsite.
Reddit is an interesting platform. It has experienced a 39 per cent increase in traffic in the past year. On Google, the platform is ranking higher and more often than ever. Reddit has seen increased visibility on Google search results, and Gen Z users are ditching Google for Reddit altogether.
A report from Business Insider said that more people are finding Reddit through Google than directly visiting the site itself. The site’s visibility seems pretty consistent at this point — and let’s not forget that Google made a $60-million deal with Reddit to have access to Reddit’s data to train Google’s AI systems.
Experimenting with Reddit could be a good way to maximize your brand’s impact as Google favours the site’s discussion forums. Community engagement is a major focus right now, and subreddits are good vessels to foster niche communities. Be sure to check guidelines and policies around promotional content.
Other channels publishers are looking at include WhatsApp, is a way for readers to engage with a publication and its writers off-site, and adds a level of exclusivity.
WhatsApp Channels is a way for publications to broadcast articles to readers who subscribe to their feed via a section of the app, where followers can react to posts using emojis. As of November 2023, over 13 major news publications were experimenting with WhatsApp Channels to varying degrees of success. Adding a link to a latest article, or having a high-profile writer drop tidbits of exclusive information can be an effective way to drive traffic and engagement from somewhere outside Google.
As with everything in the digital world, change is inevitable. Experiment and adapt to different avenues as they come up, but always remember to focus on your audience.
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RECOMMENDED READING
Google news and updates
🤖 Danny Sullivan: The next core updates are coming soon, Danny Sullivan predicts.
🤖 Daniel Waisberg: How to use Google Trends, from a Google employee.
🤖 Matt Southern: Unlike News, there’s no way to block content only from Discover.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: How worried should you be about massive link disavow lists? “Zero,” says John Mueller.
🤖 Roger Montti: Country code domain names do better in search because of Google’s preference for local sites, says Gary Illyes.
Even more recommended reading
📰 Lily Ray: Interesting to see how much results are impacted by news events.
🔥 Barry Adams: U.S. publishers are lagging behind the rest of the world and need to stop blaming Google.
💔 The Guardian: ‘Google says I’m a dead physicist’: Is the world’s biggest search engine broken?
0️⃣ Aleyda Solis: Seven questions to assess your site’s drop in rankings.
⚽ The Information: Reddit has struck deals with major sports leagues to get videos and other content for its platform.
📢 AFR: Google has renewed deals with Australian publishers — with an added clause allowing it to cancel them after each year.
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Catch up: Last week’s newsletter
Have something you’d like us to discuss? Send us a note on Twitter (Jessie or Shelby) or to our email: seoforjournalism@gmail.com.
Written by Jessie Willms and Shelby Blackley