Host: Sean Barber - https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrbarber/ - He & Him

In this episode of Chat With Sean, I’m joined by Barry Adams, an award-winning SEO and audience growth consultant specialising in strategic, technical and editorial SEO, AI search and organic growth for news publishers. Barry has been building and ranking websites since 1998 and has worked with major media brands including The New York Times, The Guardian, Daily Mail and The Independent.

We look at how AI search is reshaping the publishing industry, why the days of chasing huge volumes of commodity traffic are coming to an end, and why publishers need to focus more heavily on original journalism, reader loyalty and genuine value.

Barry shares his thoughts on the future of publisher business models, subscriptions and paywalls, Google Discover, creator journalism and why publishers need to understand their audiences rather than simply broadcasting content at them.

We also discuss how publishers should measure success beyond traffic, the importance of becoming memorable rather than interchangeable, whether Google traffic is really disappearing, and why Barry believes AI search is simply another search vertical rather than an entirely new discipline.

Barry discusses:

- Why commodity content is becoming less valuable

- How AI Overviews are changing publisher traffic

- Why publishers need to return to original, quality journalism

- The shift from traffic towards loyalty and engagement

- Paywalls, subscriptions and sustainable news business models

- Why publishers need to understand their readers

- Google Discover and opportunities for niche and local publishers

- Creator journalism and building personalities around news brands

- Why unique journalism matters more than publishing volume

- Measuring publisher success beyond traffic

- Why abandoning Google would be a mistake

- AI search, GEO and the future of news SEO

Topics covered:

- AI Overviews and declining informational traffic

- Information gain and original reporting

- Rebuilding trust in news publishers

- Subscription bundles, freemium and dynamic paywalls

- LLM licensing deals with publishers

- Independent and niche journalism

- Google Discover and personalised news

- Building loyal, returning audiences

- Podcasts, video, Shorts and multi-format journalism

- Habit-forming content and user-generated content

- Traffic vs engagement, loyalty and brand sentiment

- Creating distinctive publisher brands

- Fewer articles, better journalism

- Google Zero and the future of organic traffic

- AI citations and their limited value for publishers

- Why Barry considers GEO a repackaging of SEO

Connect With Barry - https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryadams/

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