Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR

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    Become a Brand Partner

    Publisher SEO Course

    Learn tried and tested technical and content SEO strategies to maximize traffic to your digital media and content property.

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    Access Free Module
    • Course outline
    • Results
    • What's included
    • About Vahe
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    The course is the best holistic product I’ve ever seen for SEOs that work with publishers: it covers deeply all aspects from strategy to tactics, going through key technical drivers. Vahe’s ability to explain complex things in a way that anyone can learn about SEO for publishers is an aggregated value. All the examples that are quoted in the chapters are crystal clear.
    Nicolás Billia
    Nicolás BilliaNews Head of SEO Strategy, nomadic

    What you will learn

    • How to optimize page experience
    • How to design your Google News sitemap and implement timestamps
    • How to optimize crawl budget
    • Pitfalls to avoid when including sponsored and UGC attributes
    • How to set up Google Publisher Center and its importance
    • Ads and popups best practices
    • Topic and keyword research methodologies for priortizing opportunities
    • Examples of E-E-A-T done well
    • How to define and optimize your taxonimization
    • Why original reporting is important and best practices
    • How to define and utilize better layouts for different site structures
    • How to keep content updated
    • How to realize topical relevance and authority
    • Measuring and assassing content performance
    • How to leverage video content
    • Image optimization best practices
    • How to develop an internal linking strategy
    • How to develop and implement a content cluster strategy
    • How to use Google Trends
    • When to use multilingual SEO
    • How to optimize content for Google Discover
    • How to audit content and identify gaps
    • + more
    Access Free Module

    Course outline

    1Introduction
    2Technical SEO
    3Content SEO
    4Tactics
    5Practical Implementation
    6Reporting and Analytics
    7Content Distribution
    1Introduction

    You will familiarize yourself with the landscape and vocabulary of the course:

    • Introduction Into Publisher SEO
    • Glossary of Terms
    2Technical SEO

    You will learn essential technical requirements for content publishing:

    • Design and Layout
    • Site Architecture
    • Page experience
    • News Sitemap
    • Schema
    • Crawl Speed and Frequency
    • Links to Sponsored and User-Generated Content
    • Google Publisher Center
    • Bing News PubHub
    • Ads, Popups and Best Practices
    3Content SEO

    You will learn essential elements (images, metas, linking guidelines, etc) of news & evergreen content that helps drive traffic and authority:

    • Keyword Research
    • Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust (E-E-A-T)
    • Title and Headlines
    • Develop Original Reporting
    • Content Freshness
    • Topicality and Relevance
    • Dates
    • Video Content in Google News
    • Image Optimization
    • Backlink Profile
    • Internal Linking
    • Location
    4Tactics

    You will learn growth tactics that are important for the continual improvement of your site:

    • Publisher Velocity
    • Content Clusters
    • Top Stories
    • Google Trends
    • Live Blogs
    • International SEO
    • Web Stories
    • Google Discover
    5Practical Implementation

    You will put your learnings into use: from research to developing your content pillar and cluster strategy and then measuring and incrementally improving your performance once content has gone live:

    • Topic & Keyword Research
    • Content Audit & Content Gap
    • Technical Audit
    • Content pillar and strategy development
    • SEO Strategy
    • Editorial Tracker
    6Reporting and Analytics

    You will learn the tools and tips that will help you extract insights and make sense of the data:

    • Google Search Console
    • Google Analytics
    • Google Real Time Content Insights
    • Looker Studio
    7Content Distribution

    You will learn what you can do after the content is published:

    • CTA analysis and optimizations
    • CTR analysis and optimizations
    • Evergreen content & content reoptimization techniques
    • Content syndication SEO 
    • Flipboard

    Publishers that achieved real results using the methodology of the course

    When we started working with the SODP team, we had only 60k monthly visitors and were struggling to grow our website. The SODP team quickly analyzed our website and provided us some valuable insights, which helped us achieve 300k monthly visitors in just 4 months, which is a remarkable achievement! We continued with the membership and grew our website to ~800k visitors with the help of the online training and educational materials available. I highly recommend SODP to anyone looking to grow their web property. I want to thank Vahe and the SODP team for helping us achieve our goal.
    Mohit Pathria
    Mohit PathriaFounder, Gizmo Story
    Small business trends
    Stockhead
    Gizmo story
    De zaak
    Phone Arena
    MMA News
    NBC Universal
    Bosshunting
    RFER
    we are explorers
    Text
    Premier guitar
    hnhh
    Group Expansion
    Monaco Tribune
    Results achieved by digital publishers who followed the methodology because their traffic stalled
    case study 1
    Case study 3
    Results achieved by digital publishers who followed the methodology because their traffic dropped
    Case study 2
    Case study 4
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    What's included

    Training videos 7 chapters – 50 modules spanning 20+ hours
    • You will learn how to run and manage your own SEO and editorial strategy
    • Ongoing updates and access – the course is constantly updated
    Graphics, Templates, Quizzes
    • News SEO success factors graphic 
    • Pillar and cluster growth strategy graphic
    • Playbooks
    • SOPs
    • Content format templates
    Office Hours & 1-2-1 support

    You will get access to past recorded topics, including:

        • Short-form video and web stories
        • Leveraging Google Trends using KeyTrends
        • AI content
        • Developing and managing editorial workflows
        • Running content audits
        • How to cover live events
        • Developing reader relationships
        • Site speed optimization
        • Website migrations and redesigns
        • Optimizing paywall strategy
        • Paywall SEO
        • What happens once your content goes live
        • Content monetization strategies
        • International SEO strategy
        • Understanding reader loyalty and retention
        • Uncovering social analytics

    Slack #publisher-seo-support channel and #intro-chat access

    View Plans

    Course features

    • Educational videos​
    • Monthly coaching
    • Office hours collaboration sessions
    • Interactive quizzes
    • Ready-to-use templates
    • Case studies
    View Plans

    Monthly coaching and office hours

    coaching - Publisher SEO course

    To make sure you successfully design and implement winning content and SEO strategies based on your learnings, you will have the option of scheduling a monthly call with Vahe and the SODP team to monitor your progress and ask any daily burning questions you have.

    Ready-to-use templates shared in the course

    No need to develop internal templates and processes. Access the many templates shared in the course, make a copy, plug in your own data and you are set to go!

    SEO/Content Strategy + Project Plan

    Content gap template

    Content pillar strategy template

    Content pillar strategy template

    editorial tracker

    Editorial tracker template

    Table

    Organic CTR test management template

    Technical audit

    Technical SEO audit template

    topic_research

    Topic research template

    +10 OTHER TEMPLATES WITH MORE ADDED REGULARLY

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    Meet the course leader

    Vahe Arabian

    I’m Vahe, the founder of State of Digital Publishing. Like other publishers I work in the trenches to build and grow content and media properties. I also create insigts, resources and a community that fosters knowledge sharing and industry collaboration.

    I’m a 15 year veteran SEO and content strategist for publishers and explorer of digital media and technology trends.

    My vast experience of working with digital publishing companies, I have helped publishers of all sizes exponentially increase their reach through concise SEO strategies and effective content workflows that reflects your business & monetization model.

    My journey

    One of my first internships upon ‘stumbling into SEO’ was for Credit Card Finder (now Finder), one of Australia’s leading fintech and publishing companies. Being involved in helping launch their Savings Account Finder property through defining their site architecture, wireframing calculators and outreach focusing on top finance bloggers list helped evoked a passion in digital publishing and audience development.

    Fast forward to 2016 to 2017, the advent of Facebook changing their algorithm and seeing publishers scramble to diversify their monetization channels and many closing shop due to their over-reliance on one platform.

    In addition, smaller and medium publishers were approaching agencies that were not equipped to help with the unique content performance and daily operations challenges publishers faced.

    Despite there being a selected few US professionals specializing in this space, it, as always, was geared towards larger publishers, whom had a connection as a result of prior working in-house. 

    This was when I realized that:

    1) There is a gap in serving many types of content and media publishers’ unique challenges and

    2) Like many other industry bodies, State of Digital Publishing can contribute towards making research and information on new media strategies/monetization and digital publishing technology.

    Specializing in your own niche has its sets of challenges, especially since it requires demonstration of experience and results. And so I did it all: 

    • Learned the ins-and-outs of creating dedicated editorial operations and workflows
    • Re-engineered, challenged and educated publishers on how to execute their content pillars and cluster
    • Created systems and approaches for reformatting and refreshing content to make it a more predictable and sustainable method of growth
    • Discovered how to tweak efficiencies in uncovering trending opportunities
    • Learned how to improve content performance quickly and in an increasing velocity overtime
    • Learned about sales enablement to be the face of the content that was published on SODP
    • And more

    Every single person that provided me and the SODP team the opportunity to work with them, allowed us in this long road to accumulate the experience and tools to invest into, to replicate this for other publishers and content creators who don’t know what their next step is, or looking to update their best practices or skills.

    We all know the amount of grunt work needed to get things moving, and it is not for everyone. I enjoy and thrive in helping publishers 1-2-1 with making a positive difference to their audiences. Now let’s get started together on your journey to take you to the next level.

    As featured in

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    ijnet
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    como council
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    pubtech radar
    PR Newswire
    The Landon school of economics
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    The publisher show
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    Pick your plan

    Pay upfront, split the payments into quarterly installments – it is completely up to you!

    Most Popular

    Upfront
    (1 payment)

    $1000
    • 7 chapters
    • 53 modules
    • 20+ hours of educational videos
    • Monthly 1-on-1 coaching
    • Ready-to-use templates
    Subscribe
    Fixed Price Guarantee
    Best Value

    Course Only
    (1 Payment)

    $300
    • 7 chapters
    • 53 modules
    • 20+ hours of educational videos
    • Monthly 1-on-1 coaching
    • Ready-to-use templates
    Subscribe
    Fixed Price Guarantee
    Recommended

    4 Quarterly Payments Of

    $250
    • 7 chapters
    • 53 modules
    • 20+ hours of educational videos
    • Monthly 1-on-1 coaching
    • Ready-to-use templates
    Subscribe
    Fixed Price Guarantee

    Ongoing access guaranteed

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    SEO is a dynamic field. Updates are rolled out by search engines on a regular basis. SODP ensures that the materials presented in the course are always up to date and reflect the latest changes and best practices. 

    There are no hidden costs. Once you enroll, the pricing won’t change. If you decide to renew your access after 12 months, your access fee will be exactly the same.

    Our publisher SEO approach

    At SODP, Publisher SEO is defined as the audience development efforts of content and technical SEO utilizing evergreen content and news for publishers.  This includes the disciplines of:

    • Google News SEO
    • Information Architecture & Taxonimization (with technical SEO)
    • Editorial Strategy & Workflows
    • Capabilities Building

    This is delivered through the content pillar and cluster development approach. 

    However, what other sites fail to explain is how to effectively execute multiple groups of topic clusters. By visualizing it in the form of turning cogs (broken down by informational, promotional and tactical content types), you can plan and influence content publishing velocity and upkeep the content to improve performance overtime more effectively.

    Ultimately, it’s a team effort to improve results, so document and develop the capabilities to focus on your strengths and what matters. With this course, we provide the principles and blueprints to help you take it to the next level.

    Who will benefit from this course

    • Niche and regional digital publishing companies
    • Established digital publishers looking to revise their content strategy​
    • Leaders of new digital publishing companies​
    • Audience development specialists, including SEO and monetization professionals​
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    Testimonials from the community

    Being a part of the SODP Community has made a real impact on my problem-solving at work. From bouncing off paywalls solution ideas to thinking about an SEO strategy for my paywall, it’s the most value-adding professional community I’m a part of.
    Yvette DimiriHead of Audience Engagement, StearsBusiness
    Yvette Dimiri
    SODP has helped me connect with like minded colleagues in the digital publishing space. From their Slack channel to having demos with potential partners, it’s been great!
    Pete EricsonFounder, Zeen101
    Peterricson
    I was able to get valuable insights on my project within minutes from people who had real experience. Better yet, I was able to cite the data and insights they shared many times to company leadership over the course of the project.
    Amanda SaeliProduct Marketing Manager, MIT Review
    Amanda Saeli
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    State of Digital Publishing is creating a new publication and community for digital media and publishing professionals, in new media and technology.

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    STATE OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING – COPYRIGHT 2025

    2nd Annual

    Monetization Week

    The Convergence of Innovation and Strategy: Publisher Monetization in 2025.

    A 5-day online event exploring the future of publisher revenue models.

    May 19 – 23, 2025

    Online Event

    Learn More