speaker-0: Hi everyone, this is ⁓ Beers and SEO with Barry and Steve and I'm Steve and today we are joined by Luke Halls who's the head of SEO at The Times and The Sunday Times. Luke. And let's get something off our chests immediately. We've got two out of three drinking beers today I believe. I hope you've got some, but you're still in the office aren't you Luke, I believe.
speaker-1: And I'm
speaker-2: Hello, thanks for having me guys, good to see you. I am in my office and I didn't even think to bring a glass of water so I'm down so big.
speaker-0: All right, well, ⁓ what we'll do is we will, ⁓ we're going to deep dive a little bit into the Times because it's a hugely successful publication and we're really impressed with many things of the Times, but the SEO performance has been particularly ⁓ strong in a very complicated market at the moment. So it'd be lovely to sort of like dig into that. But I thought we should try a little bit to talk about the beers that we consume on our podcast series. Barry, do you want to tell us a little about your little tipple that you've got today?
speaker-1: Yeah, I'm going to talk about the beer I drank in the previous three episodes first, is a Roarock Shore, which is an Irish lager, I think made by the Guinness brewery as well. Very nice light and refreshing 4 % alcohol. It's very easy to down a couple of dozen of those if you're having a party night out. For today, I bought a new one called Kinnagar, which is made in Donegal, also Ireland, a small brewery. They make a lot of different types of lagers and IPAs and pale ales. And this is called Wee Bunny. Wee Bunny. Don't know how they come up with their names. Called the Session IPA, also 4%. And ⁓ quite light, quite refreshing, quite sharp as well. I like bit of hoppy flavors. So I think I'm going to be enjoying this one today.
speaker-0: Excellent. Well, for me, I've actually, I just grabbed what I had in the fridge and I always have stacked with ⁓ anything from the St. Austell brewery. And yes, I've had those before in this podcast and I've delved into others, but it's a bit of a staple for me because ⁓ I actually, don't speak with a Cornish accent, but I was brought up in Cornwall down in St. Austell and ⁓ near the Polterre School, which is in the St. Austell Bay, if anyone's familiar with that. On the South Coast, there was the brewery next door to our school, which kind of sounds amazing. But when we used to go out in the summer and play football, you had the smell of the hops. It was extremely strong. So it was actually as an 11-year-old, it was a little bit off putting actually. But obviously, I think as you get older, you kind of like appreciate these things. ⁓ But yeah, that's my staple really. So it's interesting that the brewery itself is in pretty much every sort of pub of the UK. It's kind of a very successful beer ⁓ and it's also quite a sizable beer to have. So ⁓ we'll see how the rest of the podcast continues. But anyway, ⁓ I'm so sorry, Luke, that you're not armed with a beer or even a water. If you want to dash out at all, that's absolutely fine. ⁓ Let's find out a bit more about the times. Just some quick stats for those that may not know. The times and the Sunday times have 659,000 subscribers and the subscriber number is very, very healthy alone. But from a purely digital point of view, it has a reach of 14.7 million. digital and print monthly users, the digital one that is 12.7 million per month. And also in addition to just the digital ⁓ audience there, the actual app, it's got one of the highest ⁓ average engagement ⁓ scores, I believe. So it's very interesting because one of the reasons why, I mean, I'm a fan of the editorial that's run there anyway, but many years ago, I would notice these ⁓ articles that were ranking particularly high in search. ⁓ Obviously, what I discovered from there is that it wasn't just a search play, it's an app play as well, because you're creating these very targeted ⁓ articles, ⁓ which you're gathering those people in via search. ⁓ ⁓ but they're also extremely valuable in the app experience. So I'll give you an example of that. And I don't want to take your space in this at all, Luke, but I was looking a couple of years ago at ⁓ researching ski trips for my family, ⁓ which obviously we're looking at the February period and the times were there promoting and writing already in late summer in ⁓ September area. So It was just at that time where people were thinking, well, I may have missed the Christmas period, I want to, you know, but it's dropped at the right time for the right kind of audience. And those kinds of articles are so well targeted that obviously once you're in the app environment, ⁓ you're going to stay there because, you know, it's all ⁓ content, which is value adding all the time, which is something that we'll come to in the podcast. So, yeah, so ⁓ know, obviously a great fan, but before we kind of like go into specifically times and SEO strategy and how you might be dealing with our lovely AI overlords, it'd be good to know just how you got into journalism in the first place.
speaker-2: Yeah, of course. So I think as with most people on my team and possibly in the industry as well, my routine was quite twisty bendy windy. I've always been a music guy. I've been playing in bands for half my lifetime. ⁓ And when you're a teenager, I think anything editorial to do with music really captures the imagination. So yeah, when I was a teenager, I was very much into things like the NME, Q, Mojo. I'm a really big guitar guy. So Guitarist magazine was my... holy grail with print. So I guess that was my first real introduction to the world of journalism in a meaningful way. But it only really kickstarted when I was about 18. I managed to land a week's internship at the Telegraph, which was, yeah, gosh, this was 2013 now, so many moons ago. And I was on the SEO team, which is quite funny to see where I am today. But yeah, during my week there, I very much learned kind of the SEO fundamentals, so things like you know, internal linking, pitching content ideas, how taxonomies work, that kind of thing. So I did that week. I don't think I fully understood what it was at the time, but learned the basics. But then moved up to Liverpool's Goethe University where I studied English and communication studies. As part of that, I did a couple of modules on newspaper journalism and digital publishing. And on the side, I was writing kind of like music reviews and concert reviews for the student radio blog, which was great. It's a really good way to kind of test the waters. awful, awful copy. But it taught me so much just about the process of journalism, about what quality looks like and what good looks like. So yeah, that's kind of my door in really.
speaker-0: Did you ever have a, um, an SEO, everyone that sort of has a light bulb moment when they kind of like figure out actually, this is, this is for me. Did you have one of those?
speaker-2: I definitely have one of those. So that actually came after university. So I graduated. I started writing for a few other music websites on the side just to kind of keep that going. But meanwhile, I actually landed an internship at a magazine called Wallpaper Magazine, which is an art and design centric publication. So I moved in as the digital intern and I kind of wrangled with everything kind of digital. So kind of the production workflow, social, homepage management and actually SEO. Spent a lot of time kind of discovering all the different pockets of digital. And I think I noticed kind of a couple of years into that when I got given a permanent position that to me, I kind of had a better understanding and a better capacity of what search and SEO was. think given we were a non-paywall brand and search traffic was very much our kind of key referrer. I very quickly kind of brought myself up to speed on what, you know, meaningful traffic looked like about how to drive that appropriately. ⁓ it was back in the days of AMP. So that was all the rage back then. And we were driving good clicks from it, but I don't think, ⁓ yeah, obviously, ⁓ we don't talk about that so much anymore. but yeah, I think that was very much my kind of, my euphoric moment. so after that I moved over to Hello Magazine where I worked as an SEO executive. ⁓ so that was getting more into kind of the technical SEO sphere, but also, yeah, looking at things like content, ⁓ schedules and editorial calendars, that kind of thing. And then I moved into an audience editor role there. So that was like exclusively looking down the funnel of search as a referrer. And I could really kind of flex myself and I had the freedom to try new things, experiment with content and see what really made a difference in a meaningful way. And then I've been here for the last five years, almost five years, where I've worked exclusively in SEO roles. I came in as an SEO journalist. I then went into a tech SEO specific role as an analyst and then deputy head of SEO when I was of... I guess three weeks ago, head of SEO. So thank you. Thanks so much.
speaker-0: Congratulations. So yeah, just diving into that a bit more. Tell us a bit about the role of SEO at the Times. What are your objectives and how it's changed and where you're focused at the moment?
speaker-2: Yeah, sure. So I lead a team of seven, which is spanning editorial and technical SEO. And it's fundamentally my job to make sure we're meeting quality audiences via search with the views of converting them into subscribers. The SEO team is placed to fundamentally support the editorial output of the newsroom across all desks through a search lens. in practice, what that means is identifying trends, capitalizing on opportunity gaps, building up the newsroom's understanding of SEO. ⁓ And meanwhile, striving for really kind of squeaky clean technical SEO performance. basically staying 360 to all things search as possible.
speaker-0: Yeah. And it's interesting. The first thing that struck me in what you're saying is that it's very much of a part of the machine to drive loyalty to subscribers, right? So could you take us through how you might do that?
speaker-2: 100%. Yeah. I think we're very mindful of using data. We use it religiously in this newsroom. And I think for us, obviously, you can look at it through two different lenses, one being audience and one being subscribers. But I think what we understand being particularly fundamental to our success, where it's a number of different things, I suppose on a purely practical level, it's thinking about how can we appropriately add our voice to a conversation. in a meaningful way that people want to read and want to subscribe to read. I also think given we have such a strong history as kind of the paper record, if you like, we're very much hot on leveraging that expertise, that long winding history and really kind of elevating that perception of us as a brand that can be trusted. So yeah, we're very mindful of where we can basically add ourselves to the conversation in a way that makes sense for our association to be best placed.
speaker-0: So without putting you on the spot here, which I am, ⁓ are there examples where you wouldn't sort of cover a story or is there a scenario where you would say, actually, we're not going to cover that story in that way. We're actually going to wait a bit or approach, take that story from these kinds of angles because there's more of a correlation with description or loyalty on the back of that.
speaker-2: Yeah, great question. think one thing that my team is always doing is we're being very mindful of the trends that we're raising as potential avenues to drive search traffic. As I've said, we've got heaps and heaps of data points, which really inform where our core readership, our subscribers, showing their interest and where something might be quite fleeting or maybe not so interesting. I'm trying to think of a really good tangible example of that. Come back to me later, later in the podcast, I'll be able to raise something. But yeah, think, I think essentially what we were always thinking of is, you know, we place subscribers at the heart of what we do editorially and we don't want to do anything to compromise that core reach ship. So we're very mindful to target trends that kind of cater to both sides if you like.
speaker-0: based on the audience information you have. have you found, obviously with the introduction of AI has kind of disrupted the market, particularly with AI mode, AI overviews, there's a lot of revision happening in ⁓ news organizations. Have you found that you're asking more questions or doing more audience focus work or things like that to find out the audience?
speaker-2: Yeah. So I think we understand that AI summaries, particularly AI overviews, very much corner particular areas of output. So we're very mindful about how we are packaging content with this in mind. And we're mindful to not necessarily commission or pitch stories that we think are going to be swallowed up in the immediacy upon publication. So yeah, I think we're mindful of identifying the gaps where we can tangibly make a difference. And we know that AI summaries are very much grabbing your attention top of the fold. So we're being very strict and we challenge ourselves to identify what those areas are and think about what is the best way to place ourselves ⁓ as a team trying to drive search traffic. What does that look like? What are the keywords we are trying to identify and trying to chase and what is going to move the needle in the most meaningful way?
speaker-0: One of the, ⁓ it was no quite relevant that I mentioned the booking ski holidays example is because obviously I was doing my research and the times popped up there as a useful resource to explore more. I guess the times, that's one topic where the times has always performed particularly well, but I'm sure that there are others. And are you mindful of that in your weekly or monthly? planning that you'll need to super-serve those topics that have done well for you to continue that.
speaker-2: Yeah, I think that's exactly it. think we're very mindful to be continuously scrutinizing our data. And we can understand the keyword intent, think is kind of the main thing we're thinking about. So it's all about, yeah, analyzing the data on a URL by URL level, you know, monitoring search to see, you know, has this been kind of capitalized by something which is summarized and can take that attention away. But also, yeah, if something has worked, how can we... reiterate upon that and build upon that as an area of expertise.
speaker-0: ⁓ I guess that leads into the current landscape of where we are today with particularly AI. I presume that is a challenge or how are you adjusting to the new search landscape that we find ourselves in?
speaker-2: Yeah, it's a question. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I think we're very aware of the particular avenues of our website, which are being most tangibly hit. I think lifestyle content is kind of that which is being more kind of swallowed up. And I think the rise of zero click search is obviously something that we're continuing to talk about internally. So again, it's more thinking about, if we've commissioned a piece of content, how can we best serve it in the right way? Where is it going to drive? most traffic or the most meaningful traffic. So obviously Google Discover has been a, I suppose we've always viewed it as secondary to organic search because it's not as active as the intention of going out of your way to Google something. So we know that it's maybe not going to be the best avenue to drive a meaningful subscription. However, if we do believe it is the best way to give a story the visibility it needs and meet an audience that wants to meet it, we are Yeah, not for going that entirely. But organic is very much our bread and butter.
speaker-0: I'm going to hand over to you in a minute, Barry, if you've got questions for Luke. Speaking to what you've just said, Luke, there is a discussion with how do publishers respond to AI chatbots and introduction of AI overviews, cetera. There's two schools of thought. There's like, how do we in the world of GEO or A EO, I always have to remind myself of the various acronyms, to get hyper focused on sentence by sentence. And there's a whole school of fault developing around that. So if you follow that, you would really looking at every single word that's on that page. there's various tools that you can use. And that's side quest that we won't go into now because me and Barry have spoken about that many times before. But the other kind of like school of thought is around how do you create AI resilient content? So content that could be summarized by AI, but you're not getting the kind of complete picture from that content. So these things could be, you know, could be something graphical, it could be videos, it could be first person stories, et cetera. you could call it original journalism as opposed to commodified news. But is that a of like approach or is that kind of like a school of thought that you're kind of exploring there at the times where you know you've got the summarization, people are staying longer in that chatbot experience, although the percentage of audiences is low. We need to be mindful of that. We need to be aware of that new UX experience and how people are exploring information. But are you doing anything around that kind of like original journalism piece or AI resilient approach?
speaker-2: Yeah, great questions. Excuse me. think realistically, what readers associate us with is our really kind of premium original journalism. I don't want to take our own trumpet, but I think that our exclusives are kind of really agenda setting and particularly kind of long term projects, which will continue to be iterated upon year after year, like our good university guide, our best schools guides. They very much remain trusted sources. And that's very visible in the citations we get from other publishers, which are covering our big reveals. It's very evident in the kind of branded search we drive for those particular queries.
speaker-0: You've created your own digital events there haven't you?
speaker-2: I think so. Yeah. And obviously that's no credit of mine whatsoever. That's a very long, long arching story narrative. But I think it is, yeah, just reinforcing your brand as the, the location to come to for trusted journalism is something that we see really resonate with readers and it's very much resonated in kind of conversion rates. That's not to say that, you know, AI summaries aren't necessarily not affecting that. just reminding mindful of the fact that those who kind of dig deeper and really want that high intent experience are going to go out of their way to skip past the AR summary. the high intent audience that we're hoping to capture and resonate with as an audience primarily. But to be fair, that's not to say that original journalism is kind of the be all end all. think breaking news and trending news, it's always going to be a news publisher's bread and butter. But yeah, I think in the world of zero click search, particularly with like live coverage, for example, we are firm believers that audiences want, you know, human led voices when it comes to live reporting or kind of breaking news reporting. I don't know if you've discussed this previously, but we're very big believers in house of the kind of content tree approach whereby you've got a singular story that could be a live blog or a rolling news article or a breaking news article, which kind of acts as your tree trunk. And then the branches add. Actors kind of related pieces of content that supplement the story, fill in the gaps and meet audiences in different ways that maybe a live blog won't necessarily find them. Yeah, exactly. Same kind of concept. So yeah, I think it all comes back to the fact that we're very mindful about how we can add to the conversation in a way that is going to resonate with the correct audience in the right place. yeah, two sides of the same coin really. think original journalism is very much
speaker-0: like a pillar, like pillar content or.
speaker-2: the association that we pride ourselves with having. But we do need to stay competitive in a breaking news and live news environment too.
speaker-0: know, brilliant answer. know, you know, even this week, I mean, it's very confusing for publishers at the moment, because if you just spent all your time looking at LinkedIn, there's so many different sort of schools and thoughts that, you know, you would be moving into many different directions at once. But even over the last five days, I think Barry and I, and maybe others have seen reports, Chalpe, about Well, that news ⁓ has, ⁓ that people's interest in news has decreased. yeah, it's a bit of a misleading ⁓ report because it kind of suggests that hard news or breaking news is not an area of growth. Whereas we know that that can't be, is not at the moment, simulated by ⁓ AI. So it's definitely an area for publishers to, news publishers to focus on. Barry, do you have any questions there for Luke?
speaker-1: I do actually. I'm going to get a bit of background on this one because I admire the times a lot because of the way it has never chased after clicks, at least not as far as I can recall in a meaningful way. It has always done what it's good at, know, confident in its brand, confident in its output, and then applied SEO on top of that to earn the biggest audience it possibly could. Which is something that I think too few publishers have done. Too many publishers have been chasing after clicks. putting SEO front and center of the editorial strategy to try and get as many people visiting the website as possible to monetize in that way. And that is a tactic or a strategy, should say, that has massively backfired from most of those publishers because Google can just take that away. And I think that's what I really admire about the times they haven't fallen into that trap. They've always started with the journalism, started with the value add, and then applied SEO on top of that. And my question to you is, is that something that is openly stated in the newsroom or is it sort of like an implied mission as part of the Times newsroom culture? Because I find it very hard when I have these conversations with publishers who have chased after clicks, how to tell them to change their internal newsroom culture to not chase after clicks, but to chase after delivering value for the audience first and foremost and only apply SEO on top of that as an extra layer. So how does the Times handle that?
speaker-2: Yeah, very good question. Yeah, I suppose the best way to think of it is that we obviously, again, I don't want to sound like a stuck record, but I think really leveraging our internal analytics to understand what is important for our core readership is kind of the guiding star, if you like. And I think we're very aware about how we can tackle a story in terms of the kind of supplementary content around that. Yeah, when it comes to the of the SEO involvement, We are very mindful as a team to be chasing, know, obviously looking at trends, but being very critical about how we're doing that, what kind of keywords and queries are actually valuable, actually provide utility that provide a human led voice to give you ⁓ a trusted answer. So we very much operate on the basis of when looking and researching particular trends is thinking about where is the value that we can add to that. I think that's very much been our kind of... maybe unwritten rule perhaps in this newsroom for a very long time. But I think it is very much of the view that if we are looking to commission something, it's got to meet the demands of a readership that is paying for it. And it's got to provide value to those that are going to go out of their way to want to pay to read it basically. So we're very lucky in that we've got so many fantastic writers and editors that are kind of top of their game, experts in their fields, that are well placed to answer the questions that people have to ask. So yeah, leveraging the work that they can do and amplifying it with the use of search tactics.
speaker-1: Do you think the fact that the times is behind a hard pay will actually help you in that regard?
speaker-2: Very, very good question. think obviously we're very aware of how things like, know, nav-boost signals, et cetera, can affect, ⁓ you know, long reaching or long lasting visibility in search engines. When it comes to dealing with high bounce rates, I think it's something that we acknowledge and we understand. So our view is that, yeah, while our paywall is particularly hard, this is an expected behavior and the way that we kind of tackle that. It's more through the lens of the of the technical implementation. it's thinking about, you know, how can we make sure our page speed load times are as fast as possible? How can we avoid any kind of clunky CLS inhibitors? Are we using the appropriate schema markup? It's all about just making sure that we are providing, you know, the most accessible paywall, if that makes sense, possible. But I think again, a lot of it is the brand resilience we have. We know that people want to page read our content. We know that we are trusted in the kind of accolades that we receive annually. as a source of strong, high quality information and we believe that people are happy to pay for it.
speaker-0: that Barry did you want to explore a bit more about paywall at all?
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, I love talking about paywalls. I have to admit I'm a paywall convert. If you asked me this question probably about six, seven years ago, I would have said paywalls. I'm not sure about them. Now I'm totally in the opposite camp. think most publishers should have paywalls of some description, either freemium or hard paywalls like the Times. Discover and paywalls is always a really interesting one because it's a bit of a different ecosystem, especially if it's on a separate app and not necessarily in a logged in browser. I wondered back in the days of AMP, you know, The paywall generally was very disconnected from the AMP version and you couldn't really provide a logged in experience on AMP in any easy way, or form. Unfortunately, we're seeing the back of AMP. But how do you manage that on this disparate platform? We also had tech first, kick free. Google was still supporting that. Half the time is experimented with those sorts of different... So they maybe give one article away for free as a landing page. If it comes from a Google search, then the payload kicks in. It's been a very conscious decision to always make it as hard as possible and not give anything away for free.
speaker-2: I think it's always been very conscious that our journalism is again, kind of really worth paying for. We have run a couple of open paywall weekends in the last couple of years to see and measure what is the interaction with that, which was just a really good kind of reach exercise. But yeah, again, I think we are fundamentally very, very self-assured in the quality of our content. And we do think that across referrers, if you do find us, then you know that we are. reaching you in the right way. But yeah, our content is high quality. It's very expert driven. And we believe it is worth the paywall ⁓ to have that.
speaker-1: Do you experiment with things like gift links, like the New York Times and the Financial Times do? Paid subscriber again, gift an article for free to a limited X amount of readers.
speaker-2: That is a very good question. I do not have the answer to that. That would be something for our marketing team. Sorry, I wish I could give you more.
speaker-1: I think you should pick that as your idea, because I do think it helps with subscription rates. So you can give an article away to say the first thousand readers who open it on a specific link. Yeah, some publishers really see good uplift off the back of that.
speaker-0: ⁓ Sorry, you do actually, because I've just subscribed for one pound on the Times and I did get an alert that I could share that to up to two to three people. It was like under a friends and family approach. there was a...
speaker-2: Well done.
speaker-0: It's an interesting one about paywalls because some publishers have paywalls, some don't obviously. And in this talk around AI resilient content or original journalism, it suddenly struck me that there's a lot of language, lots of models, lots of exercises that you can do with editorial teams who may not have paywalls to invest more time in original research. Obviously that needs to be facilitated higher up so that they are allowed the space and the metrics to allow them the freedom to experiment. But maybe it just boils down to teams sort of imagining if they had a paywall, what kind of content would they produce? Right? So sometimes it can be just simple experiments like that can elicit some great ideas. I know that with teams that I've managed in the past when... traffic has been ⁓ challenged, I've said, what would you write if there wasn't any targets? And you'd be surprised at how many great original ideas come forward because sometimes ⁓ having social targets, ⁓ know, businesses can have targets or they can't have targets, depends what they want. And obviously in many businesses there are targets because you want to track performance. But sometimes being wedded so hard to a target can lead to certain kind of practices like, for instance, okay, what's trending in Google discover over the last couple of days? Okay. It seems to be again, another article about closures of shops on the high street, which seems to be a big trend that has been around there for a year. Right. Let's do more articles on that. Right. So you're playing to the algorithm. don't know if you've got any sort of response to that, Luke.
speaker-2: Yeah, no, that's a really, really good question. I think Discover again, as it's kind of sat secondary to our kind of core strategy, it's something that I spent more time trying to understand and make sense of, particularly given the kind of changes to it as a platform and a referrer in the last few months. I'd say that, yeah, I think we are forever skeptic of Discover. We know that it's very volatile as a referrer. So we always take any traffic, you know, spikes or troughs with a pinch of salt. We have seen a really significant uptick year on year, both for impressions, clicks and CTR, which is really encouraging. We are very mindful about how we designate a story as kind of like a discover opportunity, if you like. Again, I think it comes back to what I was saying earlier about how we identify the correct audience for a piece of content. I'd say for us, we're not necessarily monitoring trends in discover explicitly. But I suppose what anchors our decision to determine a story discover friendly is whether or not it's kind of, you know, very tangibly anchored to a trend. If there is clearly a kind of keyword intent behind that, that very much shapes our perception of, how can we package the story in a way that's going to resonate with that, that readership that we really want to meet. So yeah, and again, think similarly with things like, know, AI summaries and search, we know that discover, although it is including AI elements to a degree, it's largely a bit more, let's say fair game in the way that we can optimize, if you want to say, a story for discover. I think for us, what is the most important thing to see success in discover? Realistically, it's just the fundamentals that have remained unchanged for quite a long time. Again, we're not proactively trying to chase a trend. are thinking, okay, how can we best resonate with an audience in that referrer? So for us, obviously, it's all about the headline and the lead image, selling that in the most enticing without being too sensationalist way possible. We've seen really great reward to give you few examples from headlines that are kind of very kind of first person led or expert driven or tease curiosity without straying too far into the risks of kind of click bait or sensationalist headlines. So, yeah, we've got very strict standards when it comes to what headlines look like. And again, because we want the subscriber experience to say very front and foremost, particularly when it comes to on-page headlines. ⁓ We are very strict in how we request we shape a story or a headline, I should say, in an image to reflect that. But yeah, think just being very conscious that content is very people-led, people that use Discover, based on what we see, it is very kind of like personable storytelling. We leverage whether or not someone is an expert in headlines and we really speak to that and we think that really does resonate in click-through rate ⁓ as well as visibility.
speaker-0: And on your mention there about headlines, it's an interesting one. I've recently done a piece of work advising on content management systems and we went through the, in every content management system build or optimization process, there is always the question of how many headline fields should we have? Do you, and the kind of like five, yes, yes Barry, I know you're in an article on that, which you should check out and we'll put it in the notes on the podcast. but there are some school of thoughts that, obviously in Barry's article there, ⁓ it talks about where those headlines are displayed to make sure that they're in place. ⁓ because they may not be visible, ⁓ in the, and the kind of like boxes that you fill out on content in the content management system. There's other places that Google needs to see the headlines, but there's some schools of thought where, okay, take about five years ago. You may have had an an article, sorry, a headline for the article that appears on the website, an article which, sorry, a headline which appears, you know, an SEO title or a page title or in the OG title for social, right? So the editors were being challenged by, please create multiple headlines for this article. Now in some recent reviews with some publishers, I've And then, and now you've got Google discover to the, added to the equation, right? So in some content management systems, some publishers have decided just to go with the one headline, um, which obviously fills the OG title, et cetera. Um, what's your thoughts on that? Are you, I mean, obviously it's convenient for the editor, right? To do the one article as long as they are mindful of where that headline is going to be appearing.
speaker-2: Yeah, really good question. And that's very topical is this is something we're continuing to discuss internally at the moment. So I think the times has been maybe a little bit late to the party with multiple headlines. We currently have two. We have the homepage headline and then the article headline, which is what you see in search and across social. We have been scoping out the idea of SEO only titles for organic search. Just because we know that obviously again, coming back to the kind of subscriber experience, we are very strict when it comes to determining what a fast changing headline should look like. So live blogs, for example, might be anchored on a particular point, whereas you might see that other publishers are ranking in search with slightly different topical points. So we're looking to develop that out to give us the flexibility. And we're very excited by the opportunity of that. But for us, think coming back to social again, I think we're just so ⁓ confident in our headline constructions and our production staff are wizards at their craft. They are the geniuses that can construct a headline or take a keyword and turn it into something really reader friendly and accurate and interesting, eye-catching, cetera. So we fully respect the... the of our production staff and the ways that they can tell a story in such a meaningful way. yeah, think historically, yeah, the article headline has been the kind of audience headline, if you like.
speaker-0: Barry, on the question of headlines, there's been a bit of talk in the press with Google rewriting headlines, which we've seen before, but do you have a comment on that at all?
speaker-1: Yeah, there was an article on The Verge that said, hey, Google is rewriting our headlines using AI. And I read the article and I saw the screenshots and I'm like, yeah, that's what Google has been doing for the last five years to a certain extent. The only difference is now they're using AI to do it. I have not seen an example of Google rewriting a top stories headline, which I think is really the context where news is front and center in the Google search results and where we should actually care if Google... decides to rewrite our headlines. The 10 Blue Links headlines haven't been fixed for a very long time. Google has always ⁓ tweaked those to a certain extent. Sometimes in very simple ways, for example, if a headline has a homepage headline, homepage title, for example, has ⁓ the brand name first and then the description afterwards. Google often reverses that for brand searches, where it puts the brand at the start of the title and then the description afterwards, because it realizes that people want that brand page and therefore it'll rewrite the headline for that page in its search results. In top stories though, there's a different interesting context where Google doesn't always pick the headline we think they should pick. ⁓ Google generally falls back on the visible headline of the article, the H1, or the ⁓ structured data headline attribute. I have seen some examples of Google using the OG headline in top stories or even the SEO title in top stories. So we have to be bit mindful of that, that Google will pick one of the five headlines that we tend to provide, but it will always pick one of them. It'll never just invent a headline. out of thin air, at not that I can see. So I thought that Verge article was in typical Verge fashion, let's be honest here, lacking the nuance and the context and just being a bit hyperbolic and Google is just worrying search kind of thing, which is a mantra that the Verge has been having for several years. Unsurprisingly, because the Google traffic has been falling since 2023. Actually, by the way, don't think that is a Google problem. I think it's a Verge problem. because all of the Verge channels have been drying up since 2023. So I think it's more that the Verges may be fucking things up for themselves, rather than they can point to blame it Google saying, Google is destroying a website. No, actually, you're probably doing it yourself. But that's a side point. Like I said, I haven't seen any evidence of Google rewriting top stories headlines with AI or any other way shape or fashion, but they are rewriting the 10 Blue Link headlines increasingly so. Generally, from what I can tell... When Google does this, it actually helps the website because it leads to more clicks on the website. So I wouldn't actually be objecting to this at all. Let Google craft it because nobody understands user behavior on Google better than Google. So if they want to rewrite your headline, if they want to rewrite your meta description, let them and learn from them and see what they show so that you can maybe craft better headlines yourself for your own content.
speaker-0: I guess that's an interesting one, right? Because I think people, what we don't want is just the communication via news articles like The Verge, which might lead to people not investing the time in optimizing for headlines, right? It's a key. mean, they always say headlines ⁓ are the windows of your shop. I'm sure Luke, you've heard that one many times. ⁓ Okay. ⁓ Luke, are there any ⁓ key things that you'd be looking ahead in the future? I finish with some thoughts about where you might be heading in the future or things that you're sort of mindful now.
speaker-2: Yeah, great question. think again, I think just understanding what makes our subscribers tick and kind of leveraging that a bit more is something we're very mindful of. And I think obviously SERPs are just changing so much. So I think something that I'm really keen to understand more at a personal level, but also at a kind of a professional level is the way that both discover and organic is changing in the sense of things like Reddit and social kind of bleeding over. as something I personally don't know too much about just yet. And I'm very excited by the idea of kind of more cross collaboration between different areas or audience teams internally. So yeah, I think there's so much to go about and so much to get into. think similarly, YouTube is something that I'd like to spend a bit more time learning about because again, yeah, looking at different subs that we spend our time on on a weekly basis, we do see so much YouTube carrying through. So for me, it is very much a real opportunity. And I think there is again, it's a search engine in its own right. So it's silly not to leverage the expertise of a team that works exclusively on search engines to benefit performance.
speaker-0: Well, let's try and get this podcast, YouTube version of this podcast ranking up for some classic keywords for you, I already hope so. Brilliant. But it's great to have you on. know that, you know, obviously we're great fans, so we'll have to check in with you, you know, six to eight months time. I think that's the usual time that people say significant ⁓ SEO ⁓ work might appear. ⁓ But I believe Barry, you have an announcement regarding an event that might be happening towards the end of 2026.
speaker-1: Yes, we ⁓ launched the 2026 News and Editorial SEO Summit, the sixth edition already. First batch of speakers announced, we got most of the agenda nailed down. I'm very excited about the speaker lineup. Also, we've expanded the event a little bit. There used to be a two-day online virtual event. Now it's three days, which each day having a specific theme. Day one will be ⁓ SEO in the context of news. Day two will be broader SEO and AI. And day three, we're actually looking at audience growth beyond. Search and discover, we're looking at podcasts, we're looking at video, newsletters, that sort of stuff. So I'm really excited about this edition of the News and Editorial SEO Summit. Tickets now on sale. Super early bird prices, 209 US dollars for limited time and then it goes up. So grab your ticket while you can. And yeah, I think this is going to be one of the best editions we've ever put together. Details, by the way, on the website newsseo.io. or just google news and editorial SEO summit, because we're not shit at SEO, so we should rank first for that, I hope.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's great event, really opens those that are interested in this space to a wide range of ⁓ specialists. I think it's really caters for the whole range of people that are at the start of their journey in audience growth, because it's not just exclusive to SEO, right? Obviously you've got video optimization in there and obviously... ⁓ that is now moved into a search everywhere approach. it's how do you optimize for multiple platforms as well, which I'm sure Luke will be doing at the times. Yeah. So, and lastly, for me, I have my own search and AI fundamentals visibility course, which ⁓ has moved in London into May the 19th. So that is ⁓ aimed for people that trying to make sense of how you should move forward as a journalist. and a newsroom manager ⁓ in that space. very much building on the conversations that we've been having today and trying to ⁓ see the trees. it wood for the trees or trees of the wood? Wood for the trees, right. I think this beer is beginning to take effect. But okay, let's leave it there. Thanks so much, Luke, for coming in and we'll get you on a future pod.
speaker-1: I think it's the wood for the tree.
speaker-2: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me guys. Great to chat.
speaker-0: Take care
speaker-1: And I'm
speaker-2: Hello, thanks for having me guys, good to see you. I am in my office and I didn't even think to bring a glass of water so I'm down so big.
speaker-0: All right, well, ⁓ what we'll do is we will, ⁓ we're going to deep dive a little bit into the Times because it's a hugely successful publication and we're really impressed with many things of the Times, but the SEO performance has been particularly ⁓ strong in a very complicated market at the moment. So it'd be lovely to sort of like dig into that. But I thought we should try a little bit to talk about the beers that we consume on our podcast series. Barry, do you want to tell us a little about your little tipple that you've got today?
speaker-1: Yeah, I'm going to talk about the beer I drank in the previous three episodes first, is a Roarock Shore, which is an Irish lager, I think made by the Guinness brewery as well. Very nice light and refreshing 4 % alcohol. It's very easy to down a couple of dozen of those if you're having a party night out. For today, I bought a new one called Kinnagar, which is made in Donegal, also Ireland, a small brewery. They make a lot of different types of lagers and IPAs and pale ales. And this is called Wee Bunny. Wee Bunny. Don't know how they come up with their names. Called the Session IPA, also 4%. And ⁓ quite light, quite refreshing, quite sharp as well. I like bit of hoppy flavors. So I think I'm going to be enjoying this one today.
speaker-0: Excellent. Well, for me, I've actually, I just grabbed what I had in the fridge and I always have stacked with ⁓ anything from the St. Austell brewery. And yes, I've had those before in this podcast and I've delved into others, but it's a bit of a staple for me because ⁓ I actually, don't speak with a Cornish accent, but I was brought up in Cornwall down in St. Austell and ⁓ near the Polterre School, which is in the St. Austell Bay, if anyone's familiar with that. On the South Coast, there was the brewery next door to our school, which kind of sounds amazing. But when we used to go out in the summer and play football, you had the smell of the hops. It was extremely strong. So it was actually as an 11-year-old, it was a little bit off putting actually. But obviously, I think as you get older, you kind of like appreciate these things. ⁓ But yeah, that's my staple really. So it's interesting that the brewery itself is in pretty much every sort of pub of the UK. It's kind of a very successful beer ⁓ and it's also quite a sizable beer to have. So ⁓ we'll see how the rest of the podcast continues. But anyway, ⁓ I'm so sorry, Luke, that you're not armed with a beer or even a water. If you want to dash out at all, that's absolutely fine. ⁓ Let's find out a bit more about the times. Just some quick stats for those that may not know. The times and the Sunday times have 659,000 subscribers and the subscriber number is very, very healthy alone. But from a purely digital point of view, it has a reach of 14.7 million. digital and print monthly users, the digital one that is 12.7 million per month. And also in addition to just the digital ⁓ audience there, the actual app, it's got one of the highest ⁓ average engagement ⁓ scores, I believe. So it's very interesting because one of the reasons why, I mean, I'm a fan of the editorial that's run there anyway, but many years ago, I would notice these ⁓ articles that were ranking particularly high in search. ⁓ Obviously, what I discovered from there is that it wasn't just a search play, it's an app play as well, because you're creating these very targeted ⁓ articles, ⁓ which you're gathering those people in via search. ⁓ ⁓ but they're also extremely valuable in the app experience. So I'll give you an example of that. And I don't want to take your space in this at all, Luke, but I was looking a couple of years ago at ⁓ researching ski trips for my family, ⁓ which obviously we're looking at the February period and the times were there promoting and writing already in late summer in ⁓ September area. So It was just at that time where people were thinking, well, I may have missed the Christmas period, I want to, you know, but it's dropped at the right time for the right kind of audience. And those kinds of articles are so well targeted that obviously once you're in the app environment, ⁓ you're going to stay there because, you know, it's all ⁓ content, which is value adding all the time, which is something that we'll come to in the podcast. So, yeah, so ⁓ know, obviously a great fan, but before we kind of like go into specifically times and SEO strategy and how you might be dealing with our lovely AI overlords, it'd be good to know just how you got into journalism in the first place.
speaker-2: Yeah, of course. So I think as with most people on my team and possibly in the industry as well, my routine was quite twisty bendy windy. I've always been a music guy. I've been playing in bands for half my lifetime. ⁓ And when you're a teenager, I think anything editorial to do with music really captures the imagination. So yeah, when I was a teenager, I was very much into things like the NME, Q, Mojo. I'm a really big guitar guy. So Guitarist magazine was my... holy grail with print. So I guess that was my first real introduction to the world of journalism in a meaningful way. But it only really kickstarted when I was about 18. I managed to land a week's internship at the Telegraph, which was, yeah, gosh, this was 2013 now, so many moons ago. And I was on the SEO team, which is quite funny to see where I am today. But yeah, during my week there, I very much learned kind of the SEO fundamentals, so things like you know, internal linking, pitching content ideas, how taxonomies work, that kind of thing. So I did that week. I don't think I fully understood what it was at the time, but learned the basics. But then moved up to Liverpool's Goethe University where I studied English and communication studies. As part of that, I did a couple of modules on newspaper journalism and digital publishing. And on the side, I was writing kind of like music reviews and concert reviews for the student radio blog, which was great. It's a really good way to kind of test the waters. awful, awful copy. But it taught me so much just about the process of journalism, about what quality looks like and what good looks like. So yeah, that's kind of my door in really.
speaker-0: Did you ever have a, um, an SEO, everyone that sort of has a light bulb moment when they kind of like figure out actually, this is, this is for me. Did you have one of those?
speaker-2: I definitely have one of those. So that actually came after university. So I graduated. I started writing for a few other music websites on the side just to kind of keep that going. But meanwhile, I actually landed an internship at a magazine called Wallpaper Magazine, which is an art and design centric publication. So I moved in as the digital intern and I kind of wrangled with everything kind of digital. So kind of the production workflow, social, homepage management and actually SEO. Spent a lot of time kind of discovering all the different pockets of digital. And I think I noticed kind of a couple of years into that when I got given a permanent position that to me, I kind of had a better understanding and a better capacity of what search and SEO was. think given we were a non-paywall brand and search traffic was very much our kind of key referrer. I very quickly kind of brought myself up to speed on what, you know, meaningful traffic looked like about how to drive that appropriately. ⁓ it was back in the days of AMP. So that was all the rage back then. And we were driving good clicks from it, but I don't think, ⁓ yeah, obviously, ⁓ we don't talk about that so much anymore. but yeah, I think that was very much my kind of, my euphoric moment. so after that I moved over to Hello Magazine where I worked as an SEO executive. ⁓ so that was getting more into kind of the technical SEO sphere, but also, yeah, looking at things like content, ⁓ schedules and editorial calendars, that kind of thing. And then I moved into an audience editor role there. So that was like exclusively looking down the funnel of search as a referrer. And I could really kind of flex myself and I had the freedom to try new things, experiment with content and see what really made a difference in a meaningful way. And then I've been here for the last five years, almost five years, where I've worked exclusively in SEO roles. I came in as an SEO journalist. I then went into a tech SEO specific role as an analyst and then deputy head of SEO when I was of... I guess three weeks ago, head of SEO. So thank you. Thanks so much.
speaker-0: Congratulations. So yeah, just diving into that a bit more. Tell us a bit about the role of SEO at the Times. What are your objectives and how it's changed and where you're focused at the moment?
speaker-2: Yeah, sure. So I lead a team of seven, which is spanning editorial and technical SEO. And it's fundamentally my job to make sure we're meeting quality audiences via search with the views of converting them into subscribers. The SEO team is placed to fundamentally support the editorial output of the newsroom across all desks through a search lens. in practice, what that means is identifying trends, capitalizing on opportunity gaps, building up the newsroom's understanding of SEO. ⁓ And meanwhile, striving for really kind of squeaky clean technical SEO performance. basically staying 360 to all things search as possible.
speaker-0: Yeah. And it's interesting. The first thing that struck me in what you're saying is that it's very much of a part of the machine to drive loyalty to subscribers, right? So could you take us through how you might do that?
speaker-2: 100%. Yeah. I think we're very mindful of using data. We use it religiously in this newsroom. And I think for us, obviously, you can look at it through two different lenses, one being audience and one being subscribers. But I think what we understand being particularly fundamental to our success, where it's a number of different things, I suppose on a purely practical level, it's thinking about how can we appropriately add our voice to a conversation. in a meaningful way that people want to read and want to subscribe to read. I also think given we have such a strong history as kind of the paper record, if you like, we're very much hot on leveraging that expertise, that long winding history and really kind of elevating that perception of us as a brand that can be trusted. So yeah, we're very mindful of where we can basically add ourselves to the conversation in a way that makes sense for our association to be best placed.
speaker-0: So without putting you on the spot here, which I am, ⁓ are there examples where you wouldn't sort of cover a story or is there a scenario where you would say, actually, we're not going to cover that story in that way. We're actually going to wait a bit or approach, take that story from these kinds of angles because there's more of a correlation with description or loyalty on the back of that.
speaker-2: Yeah, great question. think one thing that my team is always doing is we're being very mindful of the trends that we're raising as potential avenues to drive search traffic. As I've said, we've got heaps and heaps of data points, which really inform where our core readership, our subscribers, showing their interest and where something might be quite fleeting or maybe not so interesting. I'm trying to think of a really good tangible example of that. Come back to me later, later in the podcast, I'll be able to raise something. But yeah, think, I think essentially what we were always thinking of is, you know, we place subscribers at the heart of what we do editorially and we don't want to do anything to compromise that core reach ship. So we're very mindful to target trends that kind of cater to both sides if you like.
speaker-0: based on the audience information you have. have you found, obviously with the introduction of AI has kind of disrupted the market, particularly with AI mode, AI overviews, there's a lot of revision happening in ⁓ news organizations. Have you found that you're asking more questions or doing more audience focus work or things like that to find out the audience?
speaker-2: Yeah. So I think we understand that AI summaries, particularly AI overviews, very much corner particular areas of output. So we're very mindful about how we are packaging content with this in mind. And we're mindful to not necessarily commission or pitch stories that we think are going to be swallowed up in the immediacy upon publication. So yeah, I think we're mindful of identifying the gaps where we can tangibly make a difference. And we know that AI summaries are very much grabbing your attention top of the fold. So we're being very strict and we challenge ourselves to identify what those areas are and think about what is the best way to place ourselves ⁓ as a team trying to drive search traffic. What does that look like? What are the keywords we are trying to identify and trying to chase and what is going to move the needle in the most meaningful way?
speaker-0: One of the, ⁓ it was no quite relevant that I mentioned the booking ski holidays example is because obviously I was doing my research and the times popped up there as a useful resource to explore more. I guess the times, that's one topic where the times has always performed particularly well, but I'm sure that there are others. And are you mindful of that in your weekly or monthly? planning that you'll need to super-serve those topics that have done well for you to continue that.
speaker-2: Yeah, I think that's exactly it. think we're very mindful to be continuously scrutinizing our data. And we can understand the keyword intent, think is kind of the main thing we're thinking about. So it's all about, yeah, analyzing the data on a URL by URL level, you know, monitoring search to see, you know, has this been kind of capitalized by something which is summarized and can take that attention away. But also, yeah, if something has worked, how can we... reiterate upon that and build upon that as an area of expertise.
speaker-0: ⁓ I guess that leads into the current landscape of where we are today with particularly AI. I presume that is a challenge or how are you adjusting to the new search landscape that we find ourselves in?
speaker-2: Yeah, it's a question. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I think we're very aware of the particular avenues of our website, which are being most tangibly hit. I think lifestyle content is kind of that which is being more kind of swallowed up. And I think the rise of zero click search is obviously something that we're continuing to talk about internally. So again, it's more thinking about, if we've commissioned a piece of content, how can we best serve it in the right way? Where is it going to drive? most traffic or the most meaningful traffic. So obviously Google Discover has been a, I suppose we've always viewed it as secondary to organic search because it's not as active as the intention of going out of your way to Google something. So we know that it's maybe not going to be the best avenue to drive a meaningful subscription. However, if we do believe it is the best way to give a story the visibility it needs and meet an audience that wants to meet it, we are Yeah, not for going that entirely. But organic is very much our bread and butter.
speaker-0: I'm going to hand over to you in a minute, Barry, if you've got questions for Luke. Speaking to what you've just said, Luke, there is a discussion with how do publishers respond to AI chatbots and introduction of AI overviews, cetera. There's two schools of thought. There's like, how do we in the world of GEO or A EO, I always have to remind myself of the various acronyms, to get hyper focused on sentence by sentence. And there's a whole school of fault developing around that. So if you follow that, you would really looking at every single word that's on that page. there's various tools that you can use. And that's side quest that we won't go into now because me and Barry have spoken about that many times before. But the other kind of like school of thought is around how do you create AI resilient content? So content that could be summarized by AI, but you're not getting the kind of complete picture from that content. So these things could be, you know, could be something graphical, it could be videos, it could be first person stories, et cetera. you could call it original journalism as opposed to commodified news. But is that a of like approach or is that kind of like a school of thought that you're kind of exploring there at the times where you know you've got the summarization, people are staying longer in that chatbot experience, although the percentage of audiences is low. We need to be mindful of that. We need to be aware of that new UX experience and how people are exploring information. But are you doing anything around that kind of like original journalism piece or AI resilient approach?
speaker-2: Yeah, great questions. Excuse me. think realistically, what readers associate us with is our really kind of premium original journalism. I don't want to take our own trumpet, but I think that our exclusives are kind of really agenda setting and particularly kind of long term projects, which will continue to be iterated upon year after year, like our good university guide, our best schools guides. They very much remain trusted sources. And that's very visible in the citations we get from other publishers, which are covering our big reveals. It's very evident in the kind of branded search we drive for those particular queries.
speaker-0: You've created your own digital events there haven't you?
speaker-2: I think so. Yeah. And obviously that's no credit of mine whatsoever. That's a very long, long arching story narrative. But I think it is, yeah, just reinforcing your brand as the, the location to come to for trusted journalism is something that we see really resonate with readers and it's very much resonated in kind of conversion rates. That's not to say that, you know, AI summaries aren't necessarily not affecting that. just reminding mindful of the fact that those who kind of dig deeper and really want that high intent experience are going to go out of their way to skip past the AR summary. the high intent audience that we're hoping to capture and resonate with as an audience primarily. But to be fair, that's not to say that original journalism is kind of the be all end all. think breaking news and trending news, it's always going to be a news publisher's bread and butter. But yeah, I think in the world of zero click search, particularly with like live coverage, for example, we are firm believers that audiences want, you know, human led voices when it comes to live reporting or kind of breaking news reporting. I don't know if you've discussed this previously, but we're very big believers in house of the kind of content tree approach whereby you've got a singular story that could be a live blog or a rolling news article or a breaking news article, which kind of acts as your tree trunk. And then the branches add. Actors kind of related pieces of content that supplement the story, fill in the gaps and meet audiences in different ways that maybe a live blog won't necessarily find them. Yeah, exactly. Same kind of concept. So yeah, I think it all comes back to the fact that we're very mindful about how we can add to the conversation in a way that is going to resonate with the correct audience in the right place. yeah, two sides of the same coin really. think original journalism is very much
speaker-0: like a pillar, like pillar content or.
speaker-2: the association that we pride ourselves with having. But we do need to stay competitive in a breaking news and live news environment too.
speaker-0: know, brilliant answer. know, you know, even this week, I mean, it's very confusing for publishers at the moment, because if you just spent all your time looking at LinkedIn, there's so many different sort of schools and thoughts that, you know, you would be moving into many different directions at once. But even over the last five days, I think Barry and I, and maybe others have seen reports, Chalpe, about Well, that news ⁓ has, ⁓ that people's interest in news has decreased. yeah, it's a bit of a misleading ⁓ report because it kind of suggests that hard news or breaking news is not an area of growth. Whereas we know that that can't be, is not at the moment, simulated by ⁓ AI. So it's definitely an area for publishers to, news publishers to focus on. Barry, do you have any questions there for Luke?
speaker-1: I do actually. I'm going to get a bit of background on this one because I admire the times a lot because of the way it has never chased after clicks, at least not as far as I can recall in a meaningful way. It has always done what it's good at, know, confident in its brand, confident in its output, and then applied SEO on top of that to earn the biggest audience it possibly could. Which is something that I think too few publishers have done. Too many publishers have been chasing after clicks. putting SEO front and center of the editorial strategy to try and get as many people visiting the website as possible to monetize in that way. And that is a tactic or a strategy, should say, that has massively backfired from most of those publishers because Google can just take that away. And I think that's what I really admire about the times they haven't fallen into that trap. They've always started with the journalism, started with the value add, and then applied SEO on top of that. And my question to you is, is that something that is openly stated in the newsroom or is it sort of like an implied mission as part of the Times newsroom culture? Because I find it very hard when I have these conversations with publishers who have chased after clicks, how to tell them to change their internal newsroom culture to not chase after clicks, but to chase after delivering value for the audience first and foremost and only apply SEO on top of that as an extra layer. So how does the Times handle that?
speaker-2: Yeah, very good question. Yeah, I suppose the best way to think of it is that we obviously, again, I don't want to sound like a stuck record, but I think really leveraging our internal analytics to understand what is important for our core readership is kind of the guiding star, if you like. And I think we're very aware about how we can tackle a story in terms of the kind of supplementary content around that. Yeah, when it comes to the of the SEO involvement, We are very mindful as a team to be chasing, know, obviously looking at trends, but being very critical about how we're doing that, what kind of keywords and queries are actually valuable, actually provide utility that provide a human led voice to give you ⁓ a trusted answer. So we very much operate on the basis of when looking and researching particular trends is thinking about where is the value that we can add to that. I think that's very much been our kind of... maybe unwritten rule perhaps in this newsroom for a very long time. But I think it is very much of the view that if we are looking to commission something, it's got to meet the demands of a readership that is paying for it. And it's got to provide value to those that are going to go out of their way to want to pay to read it basically. So we're very lucky in that we've got so many fantastic writers and editors that are kind of top of their game, experts in their fields, that are well placed to answer the questions that people have to ask. So yeah, leveraging the work that they can do and amplifying it with the use of search tactics.
speaker-1: Do you think the fact that the times is behind a hard pay will actually help you in that regard?
speaker-2: Very, very good question. think obviously we're very aware of how things like, know, nav-boost signals, et cetera, can affect, ⁓ you know, long reaching or long lasting visibility in search engines. When it comes to dealing with high bounce rates, I think it's something that we acknowledge and we understand. So our view is that, yeah, while our paywall is particularly hard, this is an expected behavior and the way that we kind of tackle that. It's more through the lens of the of the technical implementation. it's thinking about, you know, how can we make sure our page speed load times are as fast as possible? How can we avoid any kind of clunky CLS inhibitors? Are we using the appropriate schema markup? It's all about just making sure that we are providing, you know, the most accessible paywall, if that makes sense, possible. But I think again, a lot of it is the brand resilience we have. We know that people want to page read our content. We know that we are trusted in the kind of accolades that we receive annually. as a source of strong, high quality information and we believe that people are happy to pay for it.
speaker-0: that Barry did you want to explore a bit more about paywall at all?
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, I love talking about paywalls. I have to admit I'm a paywall convert. If you asked me this question probably about six, seven years ago, I would have said paywalls. I'm not sure about them. Now I'm totally in the opposite camp. think most publishers should have paywalls of some description, either freemium or hard paywalls like the Times. Discover and paywalls is always a really interesting one because it's a bit of a different ecosystem, especially if it's on a separate app and not necessarily in a logged in browser. I wondered back in the days of AMP, you know, The paywall generally was very disconnected from the AMP version and you couldn't really provide a logged in experience on AMP in any easy way, or form. Unfortunately, we're seeing the back of AMP. But how do you manage that on this disparate platform? We also had tech first, kick free. Google was still supporting that. Half the time is experimented with those sorts of different... So they maybe give one article away for free as a landing page. If it comes from a Google search, then the payload kicks in. It's been a very conscious decision to always make it as hard as possible and not give anything away for free.
speaker-2: I think it's always been very conscious that our journalism is again, kind of really worth paying for. We have run a couple of open paywall weekends in the last couple of years to see and measure what is the interaction with that, which was just a really good kind of reach exercise. But yeah, again, I think we are fundamentally very, very self-assured in the quality of our content. And we do think that across referrers, if you do find us, then you know that we are. reaching you in the right way. But yeah, our content is high quality. It's very expert driven. And we believe it is worth the paywall ⁓ to have that.
speaker-1: Do you experiment with things like gift links, like the New York Times and the Financial Times do? Paid subscriber again, gift an article for free to a limited X amount of readers.
speaker-2: That is a very good question. I do not have the answer to that. That would be something for our marketing team. Sorry, I wish I could give you more.
speaker-1: I think you should pick that as your idea, because I do think it helps with subscription rates. So you can give an article away to say the first thousand readers who open it on a specific link. Yeah, some publishers really see good uplift off the back of that.
speaker-0: ⁓ Sorry, you do actually, because I've just subscribed for one pound on the Times and I did get an alert that I could share that to up to two to three people. It was like under a friends and family approach. there was a...
speaker-2: Well done.
speaker-0: It's an interesting one about paywalls because some publishers have paywalls, some don't obviously. And in this talk around AI resilient content or original journalism, it suddenly struck me that there's a lot of language, lots of models, lots of exercises that you can do with editorial teams who may not have paywalls to invest more time in original research. Obviously that needs to be facilitated higher up so that they are allowed the space and the metrics to allow them the freedom to experiment. But maybe it just boils down to teams sort of imagining if they had a paywall, what kind of content would they produce? Right? So sometimes it can be just simple experiments like that can elicit some great ideas. I know that with teams that I've managed in the past when... traffic has been ⁓ challenged, I've said, what would you write if there wasn't any targets? And you'd be surprised at how many great original ideas come forward because sometimes ⁓ having social targets, ⁓ know, businesses can have targets or they can't have targets, depends what they want. And obviously in many businesses there are targets because you want to track performance. But sometimes being wedded so hard to a target can lead to certain kind of practices like, for instance, okay, what's trending in Google discover over the last couple of days? Okay. It seems to be again, another article about closures of shops on the high street, which seems to be a big trend that has been around there for a year. Right. Let's do more articles on that. Right. So you're playing to the algorithm. don't know if you've got any sort of response to that, Luke.
speaker-2: Yeah, no, that's a really, really good question. I think Discover again, as it's kind of sat secondary to our kind of core strategy, it's something that I spent more time trying to understand and make sense of, particularly given the kind of changes to it as a platform and a referrer in the last few months. I'd say that, yeah, I think we are forever skeptic of Discover. We know that it's very volatile as a referrer. So we always take any traffic, you know, spikes or troughs with a pinch of salt. We have seen a really significant uptick year on year, both for impressions, clicks and CTR, which is really encouraging. We are very mindful about how we designate a story as kind of like a discover opportunity, if you like. Again, I think it comes back to what I was saying earlier about how we identify the correct audience for a piece of content. I'd say for us, we're not necessarily monitoring trends in discover explicitly. But I suppose what anchors our decision to determine a story discover friendly is whether or not it's kind of, you know, very tangibly anchored to a trend. If there is clearly a kind of keyword intent behind that, that very much shapes our perception of, how can we package the story in a way that's going to resonate with that, that readership that we really want to meet. So yeah, and again, think similarly with things like, know, AI summaries and search, we know that discover, although it is including AI elements to a degree, it's largely a bit more, let's say fair game in the way that we can optimize, if you want to say, a story for discover. I think for us, what is the most important thing to see success in discover? Realistically, it's just the fundamentals that have remained unchanged for quite a long time. Again, we're not proactively trying to chase a trend. are thinking, okay, how can we best resonate with an audience in that referrer? So for us, obviously, it's all about the headline and the lead image, selling that in the most enticing without being too sensationalist way possible. We've seen really great reward to give you few examples from headlines that are kind of very kind of first person led or expert driven or tease curiosity without straying too far into the risks of kind of click bait or sensationalist headlines. So, yeah, we've got very strict standards when it comes to what headlines look like. And again, because we want the subscriber experience to say very front and foremost, particularly when it comes to on-page headlines. ⁓ We are very strict in how we request we shape a story or a headline, I should say, in an image to reflect that. But yeah, think just being very conscious that content is very people-led, people that use Discover, based on what we see, it is very kind of like personable storytelling. We leverage whether or not someone is an expert in headlines and we really speak to that and we think that really does resonate in click-through rate ⁓ as well as visibility.
speaker-0: And on your mention there about headlines, it's an interesting one. I've recently done a piece of work advising on content management systems and we went through the, in every content management system build or optimization process, there is always the question of how many headline fields should we have? Do you, and the kind of like five, yes, yes Barry, I know you're in an article on that, which you should check out and we'll put it in the notes on the podcast. but there are some school of thoughts that, obviously in Barry's article there, ⁓ it talks about where those headlines are displayed to make sure that they're in place. ⁓ because they may not be visible, ⁓ in the, and the kind of like boxes that you fill out on content in the content management system. There's other places that Google needs to see the headlines, but there's some schools of thought where, okay, take about five years ago. You may have had an an article, sorry, a headline for the article that appears on the website, an article which, sorry, a headline which appears, you know, an SEO title or a page title or in the OG title for social, right? So the editors were being challenged by, please create multiple headlines for this article. Now in some recent reviews with some publishers, I've And then, and now you've got Google discover to the, added to the equation, right? So in some content management systems, some publishers have decided just to go with the one headline, um, which obviously fills the OG title, et cetera. Um, what's your thoughts on that? Are you, I mean, obviously it's convenient for the editor, right? To do the one article as long as they are mindful of where that headline is going to be appearing.
speaker-2: Yeah, really good question. And that's very topical is this is something we're continuing to discuss internally at the moment. So I think the times has been maybe a little bit late to the party with multiple headlines. We currently have two. We have the homepage headline and then the article headline, which is what you see in search and across social. We have been scoping out the idea of SEO only titles for organic search. Just because we know that obviously again, coming back to the kind of subscriber experience, we are very strict when it comes to determining what a fast changing headline should look like. So live blogs, for example, might be anchored on a particular point, whereas you might see that other publishers are ranking in search with slightly different topical points. So we're looking to develop that out to give us the flexibility. And we're very excited by the opportunity of that. But for us, think coming back to social again, I think we're just so ⁓ confident in our headline constructions and our production staff are wizards at their craft. They are the geniuses that can construct a headline or take a keyword and turn it into something really reader friendly and accurate and interesting, eye-catching, cetera. So we fully respect the... the of our production staff and the ways that they can tell a story in such a meaningful way. yeah, think historically, yeah, the article headline has been the kind of audience headline, if you like.
speaker-0: Barry, on the question of headlines, there's been a bit of talk in the press with Google rewriting headlines, which we've seen before, but do you have a comment on that at all?
speaker-1: Yeah, there was an article on The Verge that said, hey, Google is rewriting our headlines using AI. And I read the article and I saw the screenshots and I'm like, yeah, that's what Google has been doing for the last five years to a certain extent. The only difference is now they're using AI to do it. I have not seen an example of Google rewriting a top stories headline, which I think is really the context where news is front and center in the Google search results and where we should actually care if Google... decides to rewrite our headlines. The 10 Blue Links headlines haven't been fixed for a very long time. Google has always ⁓ tweaked those to a certain extent. Sometimes in very simple ways, for example, if a headline has a homepage headline, homepage title, for example, has ⁓ the brand name first and then the description afterwards. Google often reverses that for brand searches, where it puts the brand at the start of the title and then the description afterwards, because it realizes that people want that brand page and therefore it'll rewrite the headline for that page in its search results. In top stories though, there's a different interesting context where Google doesn't always pick the headline we think they should pick. ⁓ Google generally falls back on the visible headline of the article, the H1, or the ⁓ structured data headline attribute. I have seen some examples of Google using the OG headline in top stories or even the SEO title in top stories. So we have to be bit mindful of that, that Google will pick one of the five headlines that we tend to provide, but it will always pick one of them. It'll never just invent a headline. out of thin air, at not that I can see. So I thought that Verge article was in typical Verge fashion, let's be honest here, lacking the nuance and the context and just being a bit hyperbolic and Google is just worrying search kind of thing, which is a mantra that the Verge has been having for several years. Unsurprisingly, because the Google traffic has been falling since 2023. Actually, by the way, don't think that is a Google problem. I think it's a Verge problem. because all of the Verge channels have been drying up since 2023. So I think it's more that the Verges may be fucking things up for themselves, rather than they can point to blame it Google saying, Google is destroying a website. No, actually, you're probably doing it yourself. But that's a side point. Like I said, I haven't seen any evidence of Google rewriting top stories headlines with AI or any other way shape or fashion, but they are rewriting the 10 Blue Link headlines increasingly so. Generally, from what I can tell... When Google does this, it actually helps the website because it leads to more clicks on the website. So I wouldn't actually be objecting to this at all. Let Google craft it because nobody understands user behavior on Google better than Google. So if they want to rewrite your headline, if they want to rewrite your meta description, let them and learn from them and see what they show so that you can maybe craft better headlines yourself for your own content.
speaker-0: I guess that's an interesting one, right? Because I think people, what we don't want is just the communication via news articles like The Verge, which might lead to people not investing the time in optimizing for headlines, right? It's a key. mean, they always say headlines ⁓ are the windows of your shop. I'm sure Luke, you've heard that one many times. ⁓ Okay. ⁓ Luke, are there any ⁓ key things that you'd be looking ahead in the future? I finish with some thoughts about where you might be heading in the future or things that you're sort of mindful now.
speaker-2: Yeah, great question. think again, I think just understanding what makes our subscribers tick and kind of leveraging that a bit more is something we're very mindful of. And I think obviously SERPs are just changing so much. So I think something that I'm really keen to understand more at a personal level, but also at a kind of a professional level is the way that both discover and organic is changing in the sense of things like Reddit and social kind of bleeding over. as something I personally don't know too much about just yet. And I'm very excited by the idea of kind of more cross collaboration between different areas or audience teams internally. So yeah, I think there's so much to go about and so much to get into. think similarly, YouTube is something that I'd like to spend a bit more time learning about because again, yeah, looking at different subs that we spend our time on on a weekly basis, we do see so much YouTube carrying through. So for me, it is very much a real opportunity. And I think there is again, it's a search engine in its own right. So it's silly not to leverage the expertise of a team that works exclusively on search engines to benefit performance.
speaker-0: Well, let's try and get this podcast, YouTube version of this podcast ranking up for some classic keywords for you, I already hope so. Brilliant. But it's great to have you on. know that, you know, obviously we're great fans, so we'll have to check in with you, you know, six to eight months time. I think that's the usual time that people say significant ⁓ SEO ⁓ work might appear. ⁓ But I believe Barry, you have an announcement regarding an event that might be happening towards the end of 2026.
speaker-1: Yes, we ⁓ launched the 2026 News and Editorial SEO Summit, the sixth edition already. First batch of speakers announced, we got most of the agenda nailed down. I'm very excited about the speaker lineup. Also, we've expanded the event a little bit. There used to be a two-day online virtual event. Now it's three days, which each day having a specific theme. Day one will be ⁓ SEO in the context of news. Day two will be broader SEO and AI. And day three, we're actually looking at audience growth beyond. Search and discover, we're looking at podcasts, we're looking at video, newsletters, that sort of stuff. So I'm really excited about this edition of the News and Editorial SEO Summit. Tickets now on sale. Super early bird prices, 209 US dollars for limited time and then it goes up. So grab your ticket while you can. And yeah, I think this is going to be one of the best editions we've ever put together. Details, by the way, on the website newsseo.io. or just google news and editorial SEO summit, because we're not shit at SEO, so we should rank first for that, I hope.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's great event, really opens those that are interested in this space to a wide range of ⁓ specialists. I think it's really caters for the whole range of people that are at the start of their journey in audience growth, because it's not just exclusive to SEO, right? Obviously you've got video optimization in there and obviously... ⁓ that is now moved into a search everywhere approach. it's how do you optimize for multiple platforms as well, which I'm sure Luke will be doing at the times. Yeah. So, and lastly, for me, I have my own search and AI fundamentals visibility course, which ⁓ has moved in London into May the 19th. So that is ⁓ aimed for people that trying to make sense of how you should move forward as a journalist. and a newsroom manager ⁓ in that space. very much building on the conversations that we've been having today and trying to ⁓ see the trees. it wood for the trees or trees of the wood? Wood for the trees, right. I think this beer is beginning to take effect. But okay, let's leave it there. Thanks so much, Luke, for coming in and we'll get you on a future pod.
speaker-1: I think it's the wood for the tree.
speaker-2: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me guys. Great to chat.
speaker-0: Take care
