Google News SEO Tips and Advice with Barry Adams

All right. Thanks for coming on to chat to the team today, Barry. We remember seeing you at Chiang Mai SEO do a fantastic presentation on Google News and all the bits and pieces that covered that. So that was very interesting. But do you want to give everyone a little rundown of who you are and what you're doing currently? I know you've been around the space. You're like the global expert on Google News.

Yeah, been around in SEO first as a hobby for my own website since 1998. So I'm a proper dinosaur. Professionally since about 2004, 2005. And I've started specializing in news websites since about 2010 when I spent a year working in-house at the Belfast Telegraph. And when I went out as a, basically as a freelancer on my own in 2014, I sort of gravitated towards news publishers and I also got lucky a bit with some clients. I got approached by The Sun newspaper here in London to work with them on their site migration project when they changed the website and dropped the paywall. That was in 2016. And off the back of that, that opened a lot of doors for me. And I suppose since about 2018 onwards, all my clients are news clients. There's a very small number of non-news websites. Generally very large enterprise-level technical SEO challenges, those sorts of websites. That's why they come to me. But nearly all new clients I get on board are news clients, and it's a variety of different services I do for them, primarily site audits with a special focus on aspects that impact on performance in Google News and Top Stories carousels as well as Google Discover. And I also do more lengthy consulting projects where it's about training editorial staff, building SEO into editorial workflows and sort of serving as a semi-in-house SEO person for any sort of question that pops up from the editorial side or the development side that a publisher might have. So yeah, that's it in a nutshell, really.

Very interesting. I mean, we can jump back and talk about that question I had before we started recording was how hard is it for affiliate sites to get into Google News now? I know back in the day, It was, uh, there was like some plugins that you could use and you could have a certain level of publishing and you could get in. But now I know Google's put up the walls and they made it very tricky for affiliate properties to get into Google News. I mean, is it, is it impossible? Can you still get into Google News if you're an affiliate, or are you basically—

I wouldn't say impossible. Yeah, um, the thing is, uh, up until the end of 2019, there was a manual approval process. There was a form you could fill in and submit your site for Google News inclusion. And there would be people, probably Google people in Mountain View, if not some outsourced company somewhere, that would review your site manually and see if you tick the boxes. And I used to have a service that said, guaranteed Google News inclusion, because I knew exactly what they were looking for. I knew pretty much what that checklist was and whether or not, you know, you'd get approved as a Google News source. And once you're in, you're in. I mean, it's very hard to get kicked out. You have to go really far down the spammy route to lose your Google News status. But at the end of 2019, Google changed that entirely, and it became an algorithmic process where they automatically determine whether or not you're a valid news source. Websites that were previously already approved through the manual process, they basically got a free ride into the new system. So they stayed approved. But new websites, so websites that were not approved before then, like they're newly launched or they just never applied before then, they have to go through the algorithmic process and that is a pain in the rear end of epic proportions. I know proper news publishing websites that do proper news and publish 20 to 50 articles a day, very news focused with all the right signals. It takes them at least 2 years to go through that process and start getting consistent traction and traffic in Google News and in Top Stories. If you have any sort of commercial basis for your website where news is not necessarily the main foundation of your website, it's practically impossible to get into Google News. I say practically because there's always some exceptions. But the main challenge we have at the moment is that we're not entirely sure what the algorithmic process is looking for. And it doesn't seem to be particularly consistent. Consistent either. With some websites, it approves it within 2 years. Other websites, like we were 3 years on now and they're still not getting anywhere. So it's very anecdotal evidence that we have at the moment about what works and what doesn't work. And it's just so inscrutable. It's such a total black box that we just don't know. Generally speaking, I tell clients, if you want to get into Google News now as a new publisher, You gotta strap in for the long haul and you have to go all in on being a news website.

Yeah.

You cannot have any sort of distractions there.

So you can't have any like commercial pages if you're like a publisher that you want to get in there. It has to be 100% news focused. Do you have any indication on the type of factors that they look for? Is it like site authority, publishing amount of content per day? Like, do you have any idea of the type of like levels or it's, you don't know, it's estimation at the moment, you know?

Yeah, I mean, it's all guesswork at this stage. From what I see with publishers who have gotten in, there's sort of a minimum of 10 to 20 articles a day, and it needs to be nearly all news-focused. Google looks at authority signals as well. I have a strong suspicion Google looks at whether or not other already approved news publishers pick up your stories and cite you as an original source and link back to you. I think that plays a role as well. So original news reporting, is part of that and getting quoted by other approved sources, things like author profiles and whether those authors are accepted as journalists in Google's Knowledge Graph. So you don't necessarily want to do this with an entirely new set of staff members. You probably want to poach journalists from established brands and get them to write for you as well. And yeah, those sorts of signals, you know, the quality content, of course, Google is getting very good at evaluating content on an algorithmic level. Now, don't use AI-written content because Google can detect it and probably will not see you as a valid news publisher if you use AI-generated content. So yeah, like I said, it's anecdotal at this stage, but those are the sort of things that we think the system is looking for.

Yeah, that's very interesting. Here's a totally off-the-topic kind of thing, but do you think if you picked up an expired domain that was previously a Google News publisher and it and it had like the approved history, do you think you could rebuild like that site into be a publisher? Because would that be a way to get around the blocks?

Yes. In fact, I've seen that work. So if you buy a previously approved domain that was approved in Google News and start publishing on it, you're basically getting a free entry into the system. That is one of the few ways A publisher can actually get that shortcut into Google News nowadays.

Yeah, I noticed that recently with a website that I purchased, so that was very interesting. But I mean, on to the next topic, like, do you, do you have— like, I presume you have a lot of experience with like paywall content. You know, someone's decided to throw up the paywall, make people pay, news is not free anymore. You know, what are the best strategies in your experience to deal with paywall content? You know, how are you dealing with That I know, like there's different— like over the years we've had a few different projects that have involved paywall content. What's the, what's the latest on that? Like how are you dealing with paywall content for clients? Like what are they like? Can you show a small snippet still like and then make them pay? Or can you show like a cached version? Like what is, what is the strategy that's working right now for paywall stuff?

Yeah, Google actually makes a point of not penalizing websites that use paywalls, at least not directly in their news rankings, because they don't want to be seen to steal even more revenue from publishers than they're already being accused of.

Yeah.

The key is always to give Google the entire content of the article, either in the HTML source or as part of the news article structured data in the HTML source. So Google knows the entire article, and then you can just show a paywall. And again, in this news article structured data, you can set an attribute called is accessible for free with the value no. So Google knows it's paywalled. And you can also set which CSS selector the paywall starts. So whether or not you give an opening paragraph for free, for example, and then the login shows up and you can tell Google exactly, oh, this is where in that piece of, in that web page, that CSS selector, that paywall login will show up. Personally, I am a fan of metered paywalls where users get a certain amount of articles for free before you pop up the paywall. And I also see that that gets fairly decent engagement metrics because that is a signal that Google looks at, especially in the context of, for example, the Discover feed. You know, the feed you have on your smartphone if you're on Android, where Google just proactively recommends articles for you based on what they know that you like. And if you have a hard paywall that shows that login straight away, and people bounce back from that paywall quite often because it is that sort of a system, you tend to see less traction in Discover off the back of that. And Discover can be a huge source of traffic for publishers. I see some of my publishing clients actually get more traffic from Discover than they get from Google Search, and they're doing quite well in Google Search. So I like metered paywalls. I like softer paywalls. There's also new technologies out there they call dynamic paywalls, which is very smart software that basically only shows you the paywall when they're fairly confident they have a pretty good chance of converting you to a customer. So that's based on engagement metrics, based on previous visits, based on the type of articles that you read. These sort of do smart analysis on that before they show you a, hey, subscribe to our publication kind of pop-up message with strong calls to action. So those are becoming more and more popular. And again, because that is a sort of immediate paywall, they work really, really well with those engagement signals as well. The technical implementation of paywalls remains straightforward. All you really need is that is accessible for free attribute with the CSS selector in your news article structured data. And beyond that, you know, Google won't penalize you for having the paywall. It's more about how you fit it into your overarching business strategy and don't turn away prospects too soon. I personally would never subscribe to a publication if I can't at least sample what they have to offer. So, I think that's important for publishers to keep in mind, to not be too greedy there and throw the paywall up too soon.

Exactly. I mean, I see that in Australia, like some websites, they'll give you the first 5 or 10 articles a month for free, but then other sites will just blanket block everything, you know, like you have to pay right now. We can't even give you a little bit of a taster, you know. And I, yeah, I mean, even sometimes I've been in that mindset where I've been given 5 for free and then I'm like, well, this content's quite good. I might actually, might pay the $10 a month, you know, like if it's going to make like a, like a long-term impact, you know, or make— it could be financial-driven content that could make you money, you know, and it's good quality stuff. But, um, on that note, like, how do you— how are you advising clients to deal with like syndicated content and what are the best practices Because I know a lot of news sites in Australia love syndicated content. They'll pump it out on their 100-site network and the one site will then have the same article churned out 100 times. And then you see some link builders say, oh, I've built 100 links. But no, you've built one syndicated link on 100 sites. How are you advising clients to deal with syndicated content at scale? Yeah.

I always get that question, you know, do we get penalized for duplicate content? I don't believe there is such a thing as a duplicate content penalty as far as Google is concerned. Duplicate content for news publishers is generally only a problem if it occurs on your own website. If you have multiple identical articles on your own website, then you may need to do a bit of consolidation there. Because of the popularity of syndicated content, Google generally just picks the best possible publisher when it sees the same article pop up multiple times. And even then, Google isn't particularly good at it. You quite regularly see the same article from different websites show up multiple times in a top stories box or in a Google News feed on the news tab on Google. The concern that you have as a publisher is if syndicated content is most of your output, that is a worry because then you're not building up any of your own authority. You know, Google doesn't really recognize it as your content because it's not your content. It's not associated with a specific author on your website. It comes from a third-party source like AP or Reuters or, you know, another feed provider. So you gotta use it sparingly. You gotta use it smart. Some of the publishers I work with have very successful strategies with syndicated content in that they take the feed and they don't just blanket publish it on the website. They see, right, can we craft this into a unique article using the feed article as a source? In which case, yes, they go and do that. And only if they lack the resources, or it's not a particularly important subject for them, but they still want the feed article, only then do they just publish it as is. Which means that probably more than half of the feed articles that they publish are actually unique articles because they give it their own twist. They expand on it, they rewrite it a bit, they give it some more background information, and then they publish it on their website. And I think that if you have the resources to do that as a publisher, that is a very good tactic because it makes it unique and you skirt the entire issue of duplicate content and you can still give credit. You know, you can still say like, oh, AP or Reuters provided the base for this article, but you also associate it with the journalist on your end who then crafted that into a proper unique article for your own website. So that's a win-win scenario really. But you have to be careful with the amount of syndicated articles that you publish, especially looking at how many unique articles you publish. I mean, I don't really know if there is a number or percentage that Google looks at, but I tend to advise clients that your syndicated articles should never be more than 1/3 of your total output. And 2/3 of your output should be unique and your own output. And that's probably quite a generous level that I'm giving them in terms of feed articles. You probably want it to be a lot less than that and have more unique articles as an amount of your total output. So it's always an interesting dynamic because it is an easy and relatively cheap way for news websites to publish a lot of content. But you have to keep in mind that content isn't yours and Doesn't contribute to your website's authority and topical expertise in Google's eyes.

Exactly. No, I agree with you there. But what about like, on a side note, like what about removal of old news content? What's your advice around like, you see some sites that have been online for 15 years and then they have 1,000 news articles or 20,000 news articles that haven't had a click in 16 months. Like what's your advice around that? Do you just advise Like, how do you advise on, like, removal of content, or what's your cadence on that area?

I generally tell clients, don't remove it. There's no real point in removing it. It only becomes an issue if, you know, you see it doing things it shouldn't be doing. But generally speaking, that content has played a role. If it's your own unique content, it has played a role and still plays a role in your website's authority and trust signals. Google derives signals like topical expertise from that old content. If Google sees a very long history of you writing about a specific topic, then that means you have topical authority on that topic. And then, you know, that translates into better rankings for new articles on that same topic. If you then suddenly start removing all those old articles, you're basically killing off your own authority in the long run. I do sometimes get this question like, okay, we're gonna migrate to a new technology stack or whatever, and we cannot migrate all 150,000 old articles or whatever it is. So what's the best approach? And some, you know, the instinctive way is, oh, let's just look at clicks. And I'm not sure that's the right metric. I say, right, can we actually get server log files? Can we look at how often Googlebot is crawling these old articles?

Hmm.

And if there is any recent crawl activity on these articles, we want to keep them because Google obviously still sees them as part of your entire presence on the web. And only if we have older articles that A, don't get any clicks, and B, don't get Googlebot visits, then I feel pretty confident, like, yeah, okay, we can probably delete those and not take them across in the migration or whatever. But if Googlebot is still spending effort on them, we probably want to keep them because they still play a part in Google's ecosystem.

Yeah. I mean, have you dealt with many projects— like, this is completely different, something that I remember hearing a while ago. Have you dealt with any projects where someone's come to you and they've bought a news site and it has a lot of fake news kind of content or fake themes? I remember someone had some shenanigans with something like that a while ago and they wanted to fix it up. They wanted to make the content Less fake. Like, what's your advice around that? Like, just updating old content, or you don't advise to update old news content? What's your cadence there with kind of fixing up a news asset too? Have you dealt with some stuff around that?

Yeah, I mean, I see some websites who have engaged in those older tactics before get really hammered by algorithm updates, and they then ask me, well, what do we need to do? You know, and I say, well, you probably got to reinvent yourself entirely to a certain extent because Google obviously put you in the naughty step. With what you've done before. And in those situations, then we have a very different conversation. Then I'm more like, right, maybe we should delete that old content because you don't want to be associated with that old content, you know, and we want to build a new profile for Google based on very different signals. And, you know, then we can really put the axe to some of that old content and say, right, you know, we don't want the website to be associated with that. So just hard delete it and serve 404 messages on them. And build a new site structure and start putting out new quality content that you can actually stand behind and do feel proud of. So that becomes a very different conversation then. It's just that quite often when an algorithm hits, the opposite happens at the publisher and that they really double down. They sort of turn inwards and get into a siege mentality and double down on what they've been doing before, hoping that somehow miraculously Google is going to change their mind, which very rarely, if ever, happens. So those can be tough conversations to You know, and yeah, especially if you've gone down the route of fake news or, you know, spam content or AI content or whatever it is that may have caused the algorithm to come down negatively on your website and you really have to rethink it and whether or not you want to get back into Google's graces or where you want to just diversify traffic sources and look at other channels. But if you want to go back to getting good traffic from Google, you have to earn it. You have to just, you know, do the hard work and change course and You know, drastically change your editorial output. Otherwise, why are you going to get back into Google's good graces? Google's just going to hammer you again and again and again. You know, it's not going to suddenly change its mind about all that crap content you've been publishing on your website.

Yeah, I agree. I think quality definitely can overbeat anything like AI. You know, I had a call today with some other SEOs and people were talking about how a lot of AI test sites that they had had been smashed in recent updates. And, and someone else was saying that all the, all the AI content tools are all using like the same technology and they're all spitting out the same stuff. So it's, it's, yeah, it's definitely creating some, some problems online. But, but on that note, like, what are your tips around like indexation of content for like Google News or websites in general? Like, what are your best practices that you always go to to get content indexed at scale?

Yeah, first of all, this is a pet peeve of mine. The word isn't indexation because that's a financial services term. It's indexing. You'll very rarely, if ever, find a Googler use indexation except with the French because in French it is the proper word, but in English it's indexing. But that's just a pet peeve of mine, one of my many, many annoyances and my personal flaw.

I think my question is indexing. Sometimes I say things incorrectly, you know, like, but yeah, I think the question is—

No, that's just me being a bit of a dick about words. Second, there is such a thing called the Google News XML sitemap, which a lot of publishers think, oh, that's the best way to get Google to index your content very quickly. And I am a fan of providing that. It's a very different kind of sitemap. I mean, it uses the same core technology, of course, as standard XML sitemaps, but There's a lot of extra attributes you put into a Google News XML sitemap, and Google only wants you to put articles in there that were published in the last 48 hours. It was a constantly changing XML sitemap with older articles dropping off, new articles coming in. However, I used to think that it was very important to have it for indexing of new articles and getting content indexed very quickly. However, a very big American news client of mine inadvertently deleted their Google News XML sitemap. And we didn't notice until we manually checked it in Search Console 3 months later. Because the articles were still getting indexed very quickly and ranking fine, and traffic was on the up because we were on a long-term SEO project with them. And that sort of changed my thinking on all of it. And I started looking into it a bit more. And I realized, and this again, anecdotal evidence here and there based on several clients where we just experimented. Google doesn't actually use the Google News XML sitemap to find new articles. In fact, what Google actually does, and you see them hint strongly at this in their documentation when it comes to news publishers, is they crawl your homepage and they crawl your main category pages, and they crawl it very, very often. I mean, for some of my publishing clients, every 5 seconds Google comes knocking on the homepage just to see if you've got a new article published there. And in the documentation about news publishers, Google also says once you have category pages, section pages, basically don't change their URLs because Google wants to crawl them very often. And if you change their section page URLs, Google has to relearn the structure of your website, and it generally leads to slower indexing of newly published articles because Google can't find them as quickly. So the key, and I see this again and again, you know, I get asked this by clients, oh, we have published a very important news article and Google hasn't indexed it. And then I go to the homepage and I don't see the article anywhere. They said, oh no, we published it, you know, 2 layers deep. Yeah, that's the wrong bloody place. Put it on your homepage. The moment it's on your homepage, within a couple of minutes, Google will find it and index it. I can guarantee you that. If it's important, put it on the homepage. That is the primary discovery mechanism for Google, not just for news, but for all websites. Put it on your homepage. The next time Google crawls the homepage, it'll see that new link. And it'll crawl that link and it'll crawl that article or that product page or whatever it is. That is the best way to get content indexed quickly. Link to it directly from your homepage prominently as well, not just with a footer link or anything like that. Put it on a prominent, visually appealing part of your homepage where your users, your audience will also look at, and then it'll get picked up very, very quickly. And do that consistently and your articles are always going to get indexed very quickly and are always going to rank pretty well. Off the back of that. That's just the easiest way to get content indexed.

No, that's a good tip. What's your thoughts on like affiliate content getting hosted, like sponsored posts and things like that? I see a lot of publishing sites just open the floodgates to affiliate content. You know, if you search for best cryptocurrency exchange, you know, there'll be 10 news sites that are all accepting paid like long-form content, and then you check that site, like you'll do like a site search into the— onto that like subfolder, and you see that they've accepted 400 different, uh, sponsored pieces of content, you know. And I guess they've got to make money, and affiliates have found that as a quick way to generate revenue. But like, what's your thoughts on that like long term? Do you think that raises a risk profile for these publishers? Like, do you think like, uh, like long-term, I know this is something that a lot of people talk about in the SEO world, like parasite SEO content and people are using authority sites to rank. And I see so many publishers just open the floodgates to this now, whether it be for a third party or whether they'd be offering, they're trying to get the affiliate revenue for themselves. What are you seeing and how are you advising clients on that? Because I guess that's something that's really come up in the last few years.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I see a lot with sports gambling in the US now as well because the US has opened the sports gambling markets in several states and there's a lot of gambling companies who are now wanting to basically hitch a ride on local news publishers' established authority when it comes to like betting odds for local sports teams and things like that. I think if a publisher looking at it purely from the publisher's perspective, if a publisher does this, with moderation and doesn't go massively overboard and keeps a bit of a tight rein on that, then it's absolutely fine and no risk there at all. In fact, you can easily make it newsworthy if it taps into existing news stories and news trends, you know, talking about crypto as an example. If you have a financial news section, you can have an evergreen article there about top crypto websites. The problem is this, that publishers do get greedy and go overboard with it and see it as a really easy, cheap way to make a lot of money. So in your example, they'll accept guest posts from hundreds of different affiliate companies or whatever. And that's risky because then you're lowering the quality standards of your own website and you don't want that to go too far. You know, you have to keep it within certain boundaries of acceptability and just not really go massively overboard there. But for sports gambling, for example, it works really well because it is actually news content as well. You know, people do search for this and it is an upcoming sports game. And if you write about the sports team regularly and then you start publishing sports betting odds on that same team, that's fine. That's, that's, it actually helps your readers because they want to know as well. It's newsworthy because it applies to the upcoming game. It applies to your topical authority because you write about the sports team. Great, go for it. Don't be afraid as a publisher to take those commercial pieces of content and publish them, especially if you may, if you have an actual journalist or editor cast their eyes over it and maybe tweak it a bit and put it in your own tone of voice or even put your own authorship on it. The problem, like I said, is only if you start publishing hundreds or thousands of these and it drowns out your own content. But even then, You can probably get away with it if you slap a noindex meta tag on there and just don't let Google see it or put nofollow on the links pointing to the article itself. But then of course, you know, the affiliates get angry and it's less commercially interesting for them to do it, but they still tap into your audience. So there's probably some value in it for them. But you keep it out of Google's knowledge graph, you keep it out of Google's index, and then you probably broaden the scope a bit of what you can get away with. But you know, you're still exposing it to your readers and your readers might think, well, this is pretty shit content, I'm not gonna go back to this website. So you have to be careful with your own established brand as a publisher and not go for the quick money grab. It's definitely a good source of revenue if you do it smart as a publisher, but you have to, you know, rein in your own greed a bit, I think.

Yeah, I think I agree 100%. I think if you do that type of stuff in moderation and it's done tastefully, you know, like You match it with news and I can see the benefit of it. But you definitely see some publishers that just sort of open the floodgates. It's like anything goes. And then people are hitting their site with tier 2 links and all sorts of shenanigans are happening. Yeah, it is quite a laugh. But I mean, on a different topic, how do you get into Google Discover now? What's your tips for getting into Google Discover? I know, like you said earlier, there's heaps of traffic from Google Discover. I've seen websites that get traffic and you see massive spikes, like a million clicks in a day and you're like, whoa, wow, this is insane. But what are your tips to get into Google Discover? There's not a lot of great information on some of these subjects online.

It's easier to get into Discover than in News, which is good. What I see work well with Discover is a fairly consistent level of output. It doesn't have to be like 10 articles a day. It can just be 1 article a day or 1 article every 2 or 3 days. 2 articles 2 or 3 articles a week, all more or less around the same topic. Google Discover is very much based on interests about topics that Google knows the reader is interested in coming from websites that Google knows the reader interacts with, because the Discover feed is based on everything Google knows about you in terms of the websites you read, the topics you like to engage with, the searches you perform as well. So that feed is very highly personalized and customized for every single reader. So you have to tap into what your audience wants and be known as a website on a specific topic. You know, if you consistently write articles on SEO, then people who are interested in SEO are going to see your articles pop up in their feed. You gotta have news article or article structured data so Google knows it's an article. The featured image in your article in the structured data needs to be pretty high resolution, like minimum 1200 pixels wide, ideally in a 16:9 aspect ratio, because then you get a nice little banner image in the Discover feed. Headlines need to be very clearly indicated that they are about the topic, because Google is still a machine. You know, you don't want to use wordplay or clever jokes in your headlines. Just make them quite explicit. Mention the topic of the article directly in the headline. The subheading actually plays a role in there as well, because again, this is interest-based, entity-based. It helps if you mention the entities, the topics of your article in the subheading, if you can't put them in the headline, in that subheading or introduction paragraph that you have, because Google will index the whole article before it shows it in Discover. Recency also plays a role, and it doesn't have to be a new, new article. Google Discover has a bit of a longer shelf life. Articles that are several days or even several weeks old, have a chance to pop up in Discover. So you have a bit more to play with, but they do tend to drop out of Discover after a while. Google doesn't like showing old, old content in Discover. But it really is establishing you as a topical expert on whatever it is you write about. And keep that content wheel going and make sure it's unique as well. Contrary to news, where clickbait just does not work, in Discover, you can have slightly clickbaity headlines with a bit of sensationalism, That actually does work well as long as you don't go overboard, you know, with the old-fashioned clickbait headlines because they don't work. But, you know, having a bit of sensationalism, a bit of catch and release in your headlines actually works well in Discover because it's also based on engagement signals. Once you show up in Discover once and a lot of readers interact with you, then you're more likely to show up again and again for them with other articles. So it's about basically playing the game a little bit and tapping into people's interests. and keeping them engaged with your website. And beyond that, yeah, it is a bit of a luck of the draw as well. It is a roll of the dice whether or not any single one article will do well in Discover. But I can guarantee you, if you play by those rules and you keep your output going, you'll see a steady flow of traffic from Discover in one form or another.

Yeah, no, that's very interesting. Some good tips there. But on another note, how important is like website speed for news publishers? You know, you see some publishers and they have like 100 tracking tags. They've got a million ads above the fold. You click on their website and it's like you've been to Tokyo or somewhere with flashing lights everywhere. How important do you think is website speed for publishers and things like that? Do you think that's something you need to prioritize? Because I do see some publishers that rank quite well in news for certain queries and the sites load in like 16, 20 seconds. it's like overkill with ads, you know, you go to the site, there's videos coming up everywhere, pop-ups, like what's your advice around that? Like, yeah, I think that's a factor or not really?

Yes, it's probably actually a bigger factor for news publishers than it is for regular websites because, you know, Google has the page experience ranking factor where they look at multiple things like mobile friendliness, security, and Core Web Vitals. I do see websites publishing websites that have very poor Core Web Vitals that are entirely in the red, they do occasionally show up in Top Stories boxes, but not as often as websites whose Core Web Vitals are entirely green. And it is a ranking factor with a bit of weight to it when it comes to those Top Stories carousels on regular search results. It's less important in the news.google.com vertical. It's less important in the News tab, but it is important on Top Stories boxes, especially on mobile search results. And my recommendation to my publishers is try to get as close to green or entirely green in your Core Web Vitals if you can, because it does play a role and it does help your content perform better in news. Outside of news, performance is less of a ranking factor, but in news, in the top stories boxes especially, which is where, you know, publishers get a huge chunk of their Google traffic from, you want green Core Web Vitals scores. And you've got to work at it, you know, and it's hard with advertising-funded websites because one of the main issues with ads is plugging your website into an ad network. You don't necessarily know the exact size of the ad before it actually loads. So, you know, CLS, cumulative layout shift, can be an issue for your website. And my advice there is make sure you reserve sufficient space. And if the ad is a bit smaller, great, you have some gray space or white space around it. But if the ad is bigger, only then will the CLS actually kick in. So make sure you reserve enough space for ads before the ads load so that the website layout doesn't necessarily shift entirely when the ad actually loads. And that still allows you to have decent Core Web Vitals scores because the content can load in its entirety before the ad network really kicks in. So, you know, your LCP can be fairly decent as well. And you have to be a little bit careful about which ad networks you plug into so that, you know, they don't start loading all kinds of hierarchical scripts where there's an entire tree of scripts, one loading the other, and calling new third-party sources. And before you know it, you have 168 JavaScript files being loaded from like 150 different domains. So be a little bit careful about which ad networks you use and make sure you do a bit of due diligence there. But yeah, you can work with, you know, ad networks to get fast load speeds despite ads being shown on the website. So, you know, it's definitely worth striving for green Core Web Vitals if you're a news publisher, because I do see it helping your rankings in Like on that note of tracking scripts and things like that, what's your thoughts on people trying to sell like pixel data?

Like say for example, a big cryptocurrency news website sells their pixel data to an exchange, you know, like what's your consensus on that? Because that's something that comes up from time to time and it's like not really an SEO area, but sometimes people think, oh, you're the SEO team, like you know the answer.

Yeah.

answer to this too. But like, have you come across that question? Because it's definitely something I've seen.

I have. Yeah, if you get any traffic from Europe, you're probably breaking the law by doing that.

Yeah, in Australia, I think people seem to be asking about that. I don't know why I've seen it popping up a few times, but I'm not familiar with the European laws. But—

In the EU, that stuff is, the data that harvested on EU residents needs to stay in the EU, which also, by the way, makes Google Analytics technically illegal in the EU at the moment, which is a hot topic. And and probably gonna, you know, lead to a lawsuit of some sort in the very near future. All I'm saying is on that topic, I have an ad blocker and a VPN and I don't visit even my own client websites without those active. I am, I'm not, you know, it's not like I have massively secret stuff to do or massively think a lot of stuff to hide, but the standard paradigm of, oh, you know, I have no secrets is bollocks because the stuff that those companies can harvest from you will help identity thieves steal your credit card details. And, you know, before you know it, you rack up massive amounts of debt that, you know, some credit card thief somewhere has stolen all your personal details, has impersonated you and started buying iPhones and all that crap. So you gotta be careful with that stuff.

And, you know, Yeah.

It's starting to become a bit more of an agenda item for the legislators as well, which is good. But, you know, at the same time, I'm massively depressed about it because we see millions of people sign up to apps that we know are spyware like TikTok. TikTok is Chinese government spyware. We know this. This is not a secret. All that data that TikTok harvests and they harvest a lot of data. They want everything on your phone. Even the memory, if you do a copy paste on your Android phone with TikTok installed, TikTok will harvest that data and send it to their home servers in China. We know this. This is not particularly well hidden. And people are like, yeah, whatever. I've got nothing to hide. I'll install TikTok and do that whole crap. And it depresses me to no end that even when we tell the public, oh, you know, you want to be careful with these apps, people are like, yeah, whatever. Nothing to hide. So we probably need a little bit of of nannying from the government to, you know, prevent us from going into catastrophic areas here because this stuff is actively dangerous. Donald Trump got elected off of Facebook campaigns. Brexit happened off of Facebook campaigns. And those Facebook campaigns were successful because companies harvested the details of millions and millions of people and crafted Facebook ads for them to tap into their fears, to tap into their concerns, no matter how irrational and wrong they were. We have this immense polarization in politics in almost all Western countries at the moment because these companies tap into our fears and make us irrationally afraid of stuff that isn't actually a particular big worry and make us forget about the stuff that is actually a big concern. So we have to be wary of this and we have to take some personal responsibility here and try not to expose ourselves to that sort of crap, you know, and I'm probably a bit, bit on the fringes here, but I'm not on Facebook. I don't have Instagram or WhatsApp. I'm out of Meta's entire ecosystem because I realized what they were trying to do. It's not that Mark Zuckerberg does this themselves directly. It's just that they've built this ecosystem where nefarious advertisers can do it and I just don't want to expose myself to that anymore. So you gotta be careful with this stuff.

I agree. It's a tricky area and that's what I always tell people when they ask that question, you know, you don't Piss off your customers, you know. Like you don't know who you're giving this data to. And and on that note, like quite a number of Australian companies have been hacked into recently, and there's been a lot of press in Australia. A big telco got hacked into, and a lot of people's personal information was easily accessible to like a like a lowly sophisticated hacker, and they basically got everyone's like passport info. And like driver's ID and like 100 points of ID. And, and the government has been a bit slow to act on that stuff with legislation. You're right. And they— these kind of companies do need some handholding. But yeah, that's a whole different podcast. You could talk about this type of stuff, you know. But on that note, I might open it up to questions from the team. You know, I think I've asked quite a few questions and we could definitely talk a lot more. But does anyone from the team have any Questions from Barry. I know I've been chatting away.

People are having their dinners and watching Neighbours on TV, probably.

I think Neighbours actually got cancelled.

Oh yeah, didn't they? Didn't that one stop?

Yeah, yeah, Neighbours stopped.

Is it just Home and Away now over there?

Yeah, I think Home and Away I think is the only one that's still running. I think Neighbours got cancelled. I know they had the last episode where they brought in all the random—

Yeah, they brought Kylie back, didn't they?

Yeah, no, Neighbours is definitely off. But yeah, we had Home and Away. I think that is still running, but that's been running for like bloody 30 years or something. I don't even know how long. It's never-ending, you know?

That's the thing about those soaps. They are never-ending.

Well, people still watch it, you know? That's the crazy thing.

Oh no, my wife, she follows it. Emmerdale here in the UK, this is a popular one here. It's just like this rural area kind of soap that she really likes. So although sometimes she gets fed up with the stories being too sensationalist, you know, and like buildings blowing up and gangsters and all that, and she doesn't like that. She likes the old-fashioned drama, you know.

Yeah, no, it's crazy. Like there's a lot of, there's a lot of those type of shows that go on forever. But on that, just something I just thought of, are you still doing those technical SEO trainings for teams? I know, is that Is that something you only do in person or is that something you do over—

Oh no, I mean, with COVID I had to do all of it online and in fact a lot of my clients now prefer it online. I've got one tomorrow actually I'm doing for an agency in New York, which is mainly technical SEO as well. And I've got another one scheduled for a Canadian publisher in a couple of weeks for the development team and it's all over Zoom, you know, it's all just online.

Yeah. Would you ever do something like that for Australia? I know the time zone's a bit All over the place.

But hey, dude, if you pay me, I'm there. No, it's fine. I've done it for Australian clients. Now, this is Western Australia in Perth, so that was a bit easier. We have a few hours overlap in their afternoon. But I've done training sessions for Sydney-based companies as well where it's like a 4 AM rise for me, but that's fine. You know, I just go back to bed after I've done the training.

Yeah, exactly.

Coffee wears No, exactly. But, um, and to be entirely honest, it's quite nice when I get up at 3 AM and go to the office and it's an empty building and, you know, I'm the only one in there. At the moment I'm at home, by the way, because I have another call after this and I have to walk the neighbor's dog. So I have to run around here for a bit. But yeah, that's being in the office at 4 AM on your own. There's something quite surreal about it, but not entirely unpleasant because you do have the place to yourselves.

Yeah, no, I know. Sometimes, like, if you're at the office really late, it can be quite interesting. But sometimes you can get some— where we are in Sydney, you get randoms that come into the building too, so you don't want that. But yeah, it sounds like no one really has any other questions. I think maybe I've asked all the questions. I think you're right. It's getting late. But no, really appreciate you Coming on today, Barry, to share your wisdom with the team. I think it's been good to chat and yeah, no, I really appreciate your time. Actually, someone—

No, no, thanks for having me.

Someone said, I have no further questions, but very insightful, Barry.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Also, I have an open email policy. If you ever have a question, especially about SEO for news publishers or tech SEO, those are my 2 real specialties. I have an open email policy for anybody to ask me anything because I learned this stuff by asking questions to other people who've been around the block, especially when in my early days of SEO, you know, I asked people like Bill Slawski and Alan Bleiwais and picked their brains all the time. And I want to pass that on as much as I can as well. So, you know, anytime you do have a question, especially specifically on my areas of expertise, just shoot me an email. Barry@polemicdigital.com. I'll probably pop it in the chat actually.

Yeah, I'll share it with the team. I appreciate that. And we might try to get you back sometime in the new year to do a technical SEO training. I don't know. I don't expect you to wake up at 4 AM, but yeah, maybe it can be like an after-hours type thing because—

Yeah, also with the trainings, I always tell my clients if it's an online one, you are free to record it and distribute it internally in the organization. When I deliver the training, it becomes IP, just keep it in the company is all that I ask. So I'm quite generous about stuff like that. So yeah, I'm not too pernickety about it.

No, I appreciate that. I'll have to see what we can get happening in the new year. But no, thank you for your time, Barry. I really appreciate you coming on and answering all of our questions today. I think everyone's already said that you've answered everything. So if they have anything else, then I'm sure that we can send that through. But like I said, in the new year, we'll try to get you on for some technical SEO training too, hopefully. All right.

Sounds brilliant. Thank you very much. Thanks everybody for tuning in and for the kind words. Really appreciate it. And well, have a great evening over there. Enjoy the nice Australian summer while it gets colder and wetter here in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

You'll have to come out one day, Barry, and catch some rugby.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Australia is here at the moment for the Automations Tour, and it's been interesting viewing, that's Well, maybe I'll see you at the World Cup next year, the Rugby World Cup. Oh, I'm there. We have tickets. We have tickets. This is probably a moment of divorce for me and my wife because she supports Ireland and I support South Africa. I have a lot of family in South Africa because I'm a Dutchman originally, so a lot of connections there. And we play each other in the group stages. So yeah, last weekend there was a very close victory for the Irish, but we face each other again in the group stages in France in 2023. So that'll be a fun game. Yeah, and we were actually there. We have tickets for that game. My wife and I are going to go there. So yeah, that'll be fun.

You'll have to dress up in different colors.

And, uh, I need to make a shirt which is half Irish, half South African, you know. I saw that actually at the last World Cup in Tokyo. We were there as well, and there was an Australian there who had a shirt which was half South Africa, half wallabies. He had it custom made. It was really, really well done. Like, oh, that's a fun one. I need to know your tailor for that one. That's brilliant.

Yeah, that's great. No, I think you should definitely get that happening. I think that'll keep your wife half happy then.

Exactly, exactly. And we can still go home together after that. Yeah.

All right, Barry, and I appreciate your time, and we'll speak soon. All right, thank you.

Sounds good. Thank you, everybody. Have a great one. Cheers, mate. Bye-bye.

Bye.