Introduction
In 2019 our agency helped Macpecri Media with its transition from a traditional media to a digital media. This publishing media company has been writing, publishing and printing several magazines during the last 11 years, and now they are going to be a digital media company, publishing all their magazines and other contents in their new website, and stopping printing the magazines.
During several months we gave Macpecri staff several consulting, strategies, conferences and workshops about how to take their magazines to the digital media, and how to be a profitable digital media company. We prepared several manuals and other documents with all the knowledge and information we gave to them during the training sessions.
Following some ideas for traditional media and traditional newspapers to make a transition to a profitable digital media company, and apply these ideas to their customers also. These ideas will help digital media and their customers to position their brands, products, and services on the first page of Google search results, internet websites, social and professional networks, mobiles apps, and email marketing platforms.
Monetization Strategy
Digital media and newspapers should test several monetization strategies during a reasonable time in order to learn which ones are the more effective, efficient and satisfactory for readers, brands and the media.
Digital media and newspapers can monetize from readers by selling subscriptions, transactions and affiliated marketing to readers; and they can monetize from brands by selling branded content to brands. Digital media and newspapers can also sell Google Display Ads to their customers and make a commission every time a user click on the ad, as long as the ad is in the media or newspaper website, thorough Google AdSense program. Digital media and newspapers can also run Google Display Ads for their customers in other websites, and monetize through the campaign management.
Large traditional media and newspapers have created their own digital agencies to serve their customers with branded content campaigns. Wall Street Journal created WSJ Custom Studios – The Trust in 2013; Financial Times acquired Alpha Grid digital agency in 2015; The Guardian created Guardian Labs in 2014; New York Times founded T Brand Studio in 2014; CNN opened Courageous Studio in 2015; Washington Post created BrandStudio in 2014. All these digital agencies are producing branded content for their customers, and all of them are growing steadily over the years. Guardian Labs invoiced $ 140 million in 2018; T Brand Studio invoiced $ 700 million in 2018.
Small and mid-size digital media and newspapers should follow this pattern in the coming years.
Branded content production seems to be the future for digital media and digital newspapers. Digital advertising is already monopolized by Google with the Google Display Ads platform. Subscriptions, transactions, and affiliated marketing have not been the main income source for large digital media and newspapers. They should not be for small and mid-size digital media and newspapers. However, as we mentioned above, digital media and newspapers should test all monetization strategies, from both readers and brands.
Website and Blog
Digital media website and blog should be developed with WordPress technology. As Matt Cutts, former anti-spam team chief at Google, use to say: “WordPress takes care of 80% of search engine optimization technicalities”. In addition, WordPress is the second to none global leader in website technology for small and midsize companies, with 35% of market share approximately, and his second competitor with no more than 6% of market share.
Website and blog must be developed with responsive web design (RWD) technology in order to adapt the website to any screen size at desktops, laptops, tablets, mobiles, and smart TV´s.
Digital media website should have a landing page to be used in the content and ads campaigns, with a call to action and conversion strategy to be able to measure conversions with Google Conversion product.
Other call to action buttons should be placed at a ubiquitous place.
Website header and footer should be ubiquitous.
Subscription to newsletter should be installed also at a ubiquitous place.
A website search engine should be also installed at a ubiquitous place at the website and at the blog, so reader can search for website and blog content any time they want to.
Website should have installed and setup the following WordPress plugins for more efficient content management: Yoast SEO, Google Site Kit, Table of content plus, Tag Manager, SiteMap, Schema Markup, AMP, Social Network plugin, Auto optimized, Fast velocity minify, Smush, Disqus, Favicon, Reading Progess Bar, Redirection, Broken Link Checker, Shortpixel, A3 Lazy Load, WP Super Cache, Really Simple SSL, Anti-spam.
Small and midsize digital media website should be hosted at global leaders hosting companies such as Network Solutions, and must be hosted with security protocol https://
Domain name should be registered under digital media owners or managers to have authority in front of Google and readers.
Please read the following article about how to manage a domain name:
Please read the following article for more information about website specifications for B2B small businesses:
Own media channels
Digital media should design and developed all their own media channels in order to distribute their contents in these own media, to generate communities and to generate incoming links to the website. The distribution of content in the own media channels increases reach and engagement with readers.
Please read the following article about the own media channels a digital media should have:
Google Marketing Products
Digital media should setup, install and maintain all the Google marketing products which will help the digital media to conquer the first page of Google.
Please read the following article about the Google marketing products every digital media should have:
12 Google marketing products that every business should have
Google Website Performance Tests
Digital media should comply with all the Google website performance tests, for both SEO and speed.
Google has several website speed performance tests and the most relevant are the mobile friendly test, the pagespeed test, and the test my site test.
Mobile friendly test measures if the website is optimized for mobiles.
PageSpeed test measures the speed performance at desktops and mobiles.
Test My Site test measures the website loading speed at mobiles, which should be equal or less than 2.5 seconds to avoid high abandon rates.
Please read the following article about the Google website performance tests:
Does your website comply with Google tests and why it is important for local search?
Regarding SEO performance, digital media should comply with the Google Lighthouse SEO test.
Google Lighthouse test measure website performance for SEO. Test value should be 100 or a near value.
Google Webmaster and Raters Guidelines
Digital media should comply with the Google Webmaster Guidelines and with the Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines.
The Google Webmaster Guidelines help digital media to avoid spam and publish quality content for their readers.
The Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines help digital media to produce and publish high quality content written for a subject matter expert with high quality E-A-T, where E stands for author Expertise, A stands for author Authoritativeness, and T stands for author Trustworthiness.
Please read the following articles about the Google Webmaster Guidelines, the Google Search Quality Raters Guidelines, and the author EAT information:
Do your website and content comply with the Google webmaster guidelines?
How to write the author E-A-T information in the digital era?
Technical SEO
Digital media must specialize in few topics and be author and subject matter expert in these few topics. This is a way to differentiate from other digital media and a manner to position the media in front of the readers and in front of Google. Topic focus is the key. Topic specialization is the key to differentiate from others.
Digital media should categorize and sub-categorize as much as possible all topics in their website and place links to all those topic categories and sub-categories pages from the website home page. All category and sub-category pages should have a search engine for readers to search within the whole topic database. This type of information and knowledge organization is similar to a traditional library organization, which makes it easier for readers and Google algorithm to find the information or knowledge they are searching for.
Digital media should create a website sitemap and send it to the Google Search Console to help Google index all the webpages at the website.
Digital media should also publish all authors Bio at the website to help readers and Google raters qualify the website content.
Organic SEO – Article marketing
Digital media must produce, publish and distribute quality articles, stories and other texts for their customer brands and for their own agency in order to position the media and the brands on the first page of Google search results, Internet, social media, mobile phones and email marketing. We call this article marketing.
Articles, stories and other texts should be produced to satisfy reader’s needs.
Readers needs can be known using any of the key phrases analysis tools available in the market. Google has its own tool for this task known as Google Key Phrase Analysis Tool, which is freely available to digital media for their article marketing strategies.
Please read the following articles about article marketing and evergreen articles:
How to write articles and other texts in the digital era
Articles, stories and other texts should be written by humans for humans, in a natural manner, with a natural non sophisticated language so every reader can understand the article and the stories ideas.
Ideas and stories should be as original as possible, innovative, polemic and disruptive if adequate, and supported by the author expertise and research capabilities.
The articles, stories and other texts should have the following structure:
• Title
• Subtitles
• Summary or abstract
• Content
• Content Hypertexts and Anchor Texts
• Relevant and informative image
• Article date
• Links to previous articles related to the article topic, written by the same author, or other subject matter expert authors that write for the same business.
• Author Bio and Contact Information
• Media Bio and Contact Information
• Article publication and distribution methodology
• Key words and key phrases to position at Google search engines (SEO)
• Texts Meta Tags: Title and Description
• Image Meta Tags: Title, Caption, Alt text, Description
• Topic Category. Topic to position at Google search engines.
Please read the following article about how to write articles and other texts in the digital era:
The main variables of an article and other texts in the digital era
Please read the following article about how to write the author EAT in the digital era:
How to write the author E-A-T information in the digital era?
Google Display Ads
Digital media can manage Google Display Ads for their customer brands and for their own agency.
Google Display Ads is the most effective, efficient, and satisfactory display ads platform available in the market today for b2c businesses, and even for b2b businesses. Other display ads platforms available in the market today are less effective, less efficient, and less satisfactory. One exception to this remark is LinkedIn Sponsored Content Ads, which is a very effective, efficient, and satisfactory display ads platform for b2b businesses because they target industry type, company name, job title, company functional departments, geographic locations.
Digital media can publish their customer brands display ads in their own media website and in another websites depending upon the campaign audience segmentation and targeting strategy.
Google Display Ads campaigns can be segmented by geographic location, age, gender, interest, market audiences, websites, topics, and key words.
Digital media should have their own digital agency in house, just like large media have done, in order to manage their own content and ads campaigns, and in order to manage their customer brands content and ads campaigns.
Digital media should setup Google Remarketing and Google Conversion features in every Google Display Ads campaign that they manage for their customers and for their own agency. Google Conversion allows digital media to measure the quality and the ROI of the campaign.
Google Display Ads campaigns can be used to distribute ads and can be also used to distribute quality content for brands and media. This is a manner to increase quality content reach and engagement, since organic quality content distribution has low reach and engagement, and this can be increased using Google Display Ads platform.
Please read the following articles about Google Ads Display:
Google beat Facebook in Display advertising. Small Business Case Study
How often should a Google AdWords Display campaign be adjusted?
Please read the following articles about LinkedIn Sponsored Content Ads:
You can read our previous article in the following link:
How to hire a search engine optimization company? Case Study
This article, and all our previous articles, are originally published at our business WordPress Blog at https://www.msalesleads.com/blog/, and then they are distributed in the Google search console; in all our business social network pages and groups; in all our business third party blogs; and in our business email marketing platform.
