Our Hometown Blog

Our recent webinar focused on Search Engine Optimization for news publishers and highlighted various techniques for optimizing your website’s structure and content in order to improve visibility and ranking on popular search engines.

We also cover several new topics since last year’s webinar, including helpful content and spam updates from Google, as well as a look at AI-generated content and how it may effect search results.

Video Chapters

00:00:00 – Intro
00:01:13 – Agenda
00:01:53 – Google’s Helpful Content Updates
00:03:21 – Machine Learning (HCU)
00:05:42 – Clues in Google’s Announcement
00:08:51 – Our-Hometown’s Related Stories Feature
00:11:15 – Google’s Link Spam Updates
00:13:46 – E.E.A.T.
00:27:06 – Schema Markup
00:31:09 – AI-Generated Content
00:34:37 – AI in Search Results
00:37:35 – AI Wrong Answer
00:39:31 – ChatGPT4 & New Bing
00:42:01 – AI for News Content Generation
00:48:26 – Live ChatGPT Example
00:56:23 – Q&A Time

If you follow internet and technology trends, you’ve probably already heard of ChatGPT — the artificial intelligence “chatbot” developed by OpenAI that has been dominating headlines for a variety of reasons since its launch in November of 2022.

ChatGPT and similar services such as Jasper.AI, LaMDA and Apprentice Bard are changing the future of searching for information, prompting companies like Google and Microsoft to invest heavily in their technologies.

These AI chatbots mimic human conversation, but have the research and processing power of your favorite search engine behind every response. You can ask the AI essentially whatever you want, and you’ll receive a detailed and informative response that is generated by examining hundreds or thousands of known sources to collect and compile information that is relevant to your query.

It’s like a search engine on steroids.

On the flipside, these tools can also be used to produce brand new content simply by asking them to do so: “ChatGPT, can you write an article about the World Series winning Houston Astros team?”

Of course, as with any new technologies, there are a few limitations. For example, ChatGPT includes a disclaimer stating that it only looks at information through 2021 and that any more recent information will not be included.

There have also been instances of some of these AI tools simply reporting inaccurate information, which means it is still important to do your own fact-checking.

Still, some media companies have already begun publishing AI-generated news content, which raises questions on just how accurate their information is, whether search engines will be able to detect AI-generated content vs human-generated content, and how each piece of information will be ranked.

For newspaper publishers, practicing strong SEO techniques is essential for remaining competitive in the digital age. With so much content available online, it can be difficult to stand out and attract readers to your site. By implementing some of these techniques, you can ensure that your website is optimized to appear at the top of relevant search engine results, making it easier for potential readers to find your content.

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