It works, until it doesn’t.
The hunt
Imagine that you are a newspaper publisher. Your journalism is good, you write original stories, and your website is relatively popular within your editorial niche.
Revenue comes mainly from advertising. Google Search is your biggest source of visitors.
Leadership demands growth and elevates traffic at the throne of all key performance indicators. Engagement, loyalty, subscriptions, these are now secondary objectives. Getting the click is the main goal.
You look at your channels to determine where growth is most likely to come from. Search seems the most viable channel. Thus, you make SEO a key focus area.
As part of your SEO efforts, you encounter specific tactics that help your stories generate more clicks. These tactics are very effective. Applying them to your stories generates much more traffic than before.
You smelled it. The hunt for clicks is on.
These tactics require your stories to focus on clicks first and foremost. In the context of these SEO-first tactics, every story is a traffic opportunity.
At first, you get to apply these tactics as part of your existing journalism. Your stories are always good and unique, and you apply SEO as best you can to ensure that each one has the best chance of generating traffic. It works and your traffic increases.
But management pressures demand more. More growth. More income. No more ad impressions. More traffic.
The editorial team submits. Stories are only ordered if they have sufficient traffic potential. Journalists simply learn to write articles that get clicks. Headlines are designed to maximize click-through rates, not to inform readers. You write multiple stories on the exact same news, each with a slightly different angle. The articles bury the lede.
Everything is subject to prosecution.
Your scope of action expands. You’re not just writing stories within your established specialty, you’re branching out. Different topics. New sections. Product reviews and recommendations. Listicles.
Everything is fair, as long as it generates clicks.
And it works. Oh my god, does this work.
The steering wheel is gaining momentum. You learn exactly what people click on, how to create the perfect headline, select the ideal image, find the precise angle that will make people stop scrolling and tap on your article.
Traffic continues to grow.
But somehow you don’t feel entirely comfortable. Because you know that when you look at your content objectively, something has been lost. Your site was once about journalism, informing readers, increasing knowledge and awareness, and facilitating policy and decisions. It was once GOOD.
Now none of that really matters. Your site is all about clicks. Everything else is secondary.
But management is happy. Incomes are increasing. Profits explode. So it’s okay, right?
Isn’t it?
Google deploys a core algorithm update. You lose 20% of your search traffic overnight. It’s a shot across the arc. A warning. But you don’t know it. You focus even more on the chase. A stricter focus on content. No more variations of the same stories. Better SEO.
Traffic is stabilizing. More growth, but you’re making good progress. Maybe you change a few things, try to get back on a growth curve. Nothing helps, but you don’t lose either. Things seem stable. You can live with that.
Then the Google’s next major update is coming. You lose 50% of your current search traffic. It’s code red in the editorial office. All hands on deck.
How can we recover? How to recover this traffic? It’s our traffic, Google owes it to us!
You do what you have become very good at. You do SEO on your site. Everything is optimized and maximized. Your technical SEO goes from “this will do” to a state of perfection that could make a web nerd cry. Your content production focuses even more on areas with the greatest traffic potential.
In the quest for revenue, you try alternative monetization. Affiliate content. Gambling promotions. Advertorials. More lists. More product recommendations. More of everything.
Then the next update comes. You lose again.
And the next one.
And the next one.
You lose almost every time.
It worked. Until it doesn’t.
And now your site is on Google’s shit list. Your relentless focus on growth at the expense of quality has accumulated so many negative signals that Google won’t allow you to return to your previous highs.
You know that nothing you try will work. These traffic graphs will not go up. Every major Google update brings a new wave of existential dread: How much will we lose this time?
And yet you still continue. You lost the smell a long time ago. But the chase still reigns. Because you know that to stop the chase, something has to change. Something big and deep. And making this change will be painful. Extremely painful.
But do you have a choice?
Hindsight
I would have liked this scenario to be unique, with a singular publisher making the mistake of focusing on traffic at the expense of quality. But it’s a tragically common theme, recurring in digital newsrooms hundreds of times over the past decade.
In any case, at some point the seductive lure of traffic began to outweigh the journalistic principles of the organization. Compromises were made to allow for growth.
And because these compromises had the desired result – at first – nothing stopped the publisher from going further down this path.
Well, none other than Google shouting at every opportunity that you should focus on quality and not clicks.
Not to mention, every SEO professional has ever faced a bad algorithm update saying you need to focus on quality and not clicks.
Not to mention your best journalists abandoning ship in favor of a quality-focused media outlet or their own Substack.
Plus your own loyal readers who abandon your site because you stopped focusing on quality and went after clicks.
The writing has been on the wall, in huge capital letters, for almost a decade. Arguably since 2018, when Google started rolling out algorithm updates to penalize low-effort content. If you had been paying attention, none of this would have been a surprise.
Hey, maybe you did I see it coming. But you couldn’t make the required changes because the clicks were still there. You’re never going to deliberately abandon growth in favor of a vague promise of sustainable traffic and audience retention.
If only you had known that once Google’s hammer fell, the damage would be permanent. Maybe you wouldn’t have started the chase in the first place.
If only you had known.
Recovery
When a site is so heavily affected by Google’s back-to-back core updates, is there any hope of recovery? Can a website climb back up to these vaulted traffic heights?
We must be realistic and accept that those halcyon days of near-unlimited traffic growth will not return. The ecosystem has changed. Growth is more difficult to achieve, and online information operates under a lower ceiling than ever.
But recovery is possible, to a certain extent. You’ll never hit the same traffic peaks as your prime time, but you can recapture a significant portion of it. Provided you’re willing to do what it takes.
The recipe is simple, on paper: everything you do must be at the service of the reader.
Every story should be designed to provide maximum value to your readers. Every design element on your site should be optimized for the best user experience. Each title must above all be informative. Every article should deliver on the promise of its title in spades. Every piece of content should serve to inform, educate and delight your audience.
In short, your entire production should revolve around audience loyalty.
No growth. Not the traffic.
Loyalty.
Build a news platform so good that your readers never think about going anywhere else.
Of course, you still need traffic, but that should be a secondary concern. Start with your audience, then layer on top of your stories to improve their traffic potential.
Your output should be focused on original journalism – not repeating the same stories others are reporting. If you’re just taking someone else’s story and writing about it from different angles, you’re not doing journalism.
Deliver breaking news, expert commentary, in-depth analysis and an in-depth focus on your editorial specialties.
And accept that your audience is not a single entity, but consumes information across multiple platforms and in multiple formats. Video, podcasts, newsletters, social networks, etc. Shoot all channels as best you can.
It seems simple. But very few editors I’ve spoken with have the courage to face such drastic cultural changes in their online editorial. Most of the publishers I consult with who have been affected by major updates just want a list of quick wins, simple fixes they can implement and get their traffic back.
They want busy work. They are not interested in significant change. Because meaningful change is difficult and painful.
But also absolutely necessary.
That’s all for another edition. As always, thanks for reading and subscribing, and see you next time!
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This article was originally published on SEO for Google News.
Featured image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
