Common SEO mistakes publishers make (and how to fix them)

For most businesses, SEO is built primarily on evergreen content optimized for specific search phrases. The goal is to attract potential buyers from search and convert them into leads and sales. Most experts, training and tools are focused on this kind of SEO.

Publications, however, are different. We have a wealth of content and continually create new content. We aim to keep our readers informed and our goal with SEO is content visibility, traffic and audience growth.

Many publishers don’t account for these differences in their SEO strategy and lose out on valuable traffic as a result. Here are the biggest mistakes I see publishers make, and how to fix them.

Focusing only on new content

Most publishers focus only on new content and ignore past articles. But search engines often reward content that is updated and maintained regularly. Businesses rely on this kind of “evergreen” content, but publishers must make a conscience choice to update older articles when appropriate.

• Refresh high-performing articles with new data, expert insights, and internal links. Change the publish date when you do.
• Republish evergreen content (e.g., “Best of 2024” lists can become “Best of 2025”) without changing the URL. Update the content and change the publish date.
• Don’t abuse the publish date. You should only change the publish date if an article has had a significant overhaul, major addition, or complete rewrite.

Overlooking E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authority, trust)

E-E-A-T is a set of principles that Google uses to help qualify the kind of content it wants to show to its users across Google Search, News and Discover. It takes into account the quality of the content, it’s authorship, and the overall reputation of your publication / site. According to Google, content with the highest page quality has the following characteristics:

• A beneficial purpose to the reader.
• Not expected to cause harm to readers.
• The topic of the content matches the topic of the site.
• A page title that quickly and accurately summarizes the content.
• Ads and other elements on the page do not block or significantly interfere with the main content.
• Adequate information is easily found about the company behind the website and the author of the content.
• The main content of the page shows a high level of effort, originality, talent or skill.
• The website has a very positive, established reputation aligned with the topic of the content.
• The author has a very positive, established reputation, experience or expertise aligned with the topic of the content.

Ignoring Google News and Google Discover

For some publishers, Google News and Google Discover can drive more traffic than Google Search. Google News focuses on timely, authoritative, and news-related content. Google Discover prioritizes user interests and personalized content. Both differ from Google Search which is driven by user queries.

• Create helpful, reliable, people-first content.
• For news content, adhere to Google News policies.
• Use NewsArticle schema and news sitemaps where appropriate.
• Write clear, factual headlines that avoid clickbait.
• Have clear transparency about your website and the author.

Not optimizing headlines & meta descriptions to improve click through

The headline is THE most important element of any article and meta description is a close second. Not only do they help Google determine if your content matches a searcher’s intent, but they can also entice someone to click on your article when they see it in a list of search results. Publishers can see significantly more clicks just by improving their headlines and meta descriptions.

• Great headlines tell readers clearly and concisely what the content is about.
• Meta descriptions are a quick overview of the article and should entice people to click through.
• Include the most important search terms (keywords) in both headline and meta description.
• Add intrigue to your headlines and meta description to improve click through.
• Don’t “give away the farm” in your headlines and descriptions or people won’t bother to click through.

Not fixing a slow website and bad core web vitals

Here’s some of the technical SEO stuff that applies to all sites. The difference is that publishers tend to have VERY “heavy” pages loaded with ads, 3rd party scripts, embedded video / social media, etc. Most other businesses online do not have to deal with these elements.

• Optimize images for use online. For some sites, you’ll need to do this before uploading the image. Other sites / themes have built in optimization.
• Enable lazy loading for images and other media elements on pages.
• Use site caching, object caching and a content delivery network (CDN) to improve speed.

Neglecting Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the key to understanding how Google sees your website and how to get more traffic from search. However, it’s amazing how many publishers don’t have Google Search Console set up, don’t know how to use it, or don’t use it regularly.

• Track your site’s performance not only in Google Search, but Google News and Google Discover.
• Submit search engine sitemaps for both normal articles and news.
• Analyze click-through rates (CTR) to see which headline attract the most clicks.
• Identify and fix speed, web vitals, and mobile usability issues.
• Identify and fix Google’s ability to crawl and index your content.

Final thoughts on SEO for publishers

While there are technical similarities in search engine optimization for publishers and for other businesses, remember that publisher are unique. Our goals with SEO are different and the tactics that we use are different.

You can use tactics your see online and SEO tools like Yoast and RankMath, but you need to take those recommendations with a grain of salt and adapt them to the unique needs of content publishers.

Finally, our editors have huge impact on SEO and site traffic. In fact, editors are so important to search optimization that I created a complete course called “SEO for Editors”.

Avoid the mistakes listed above and focus on magazine / news publishing specific SEO strategies, and you’ll be able to increase your visibility in search engines, get more people to click on your content, and drive more traffic to your website.