SEO for Publishers: Google, Discover and AI Search

SEO for publishers is about making a large, fast-moving archive easy for Google and AI engines to trust: fewer, stronger pages, clear authors, clean indexing and content that gets cited rather than summarised away. I'm Lilach Bullock, and I don't just advise on this. I run a high-volume publishing site of my own, so the problems below are ones I deal with every week.

Want a quick read on where you stand first? Run the free AI Visibility Checker. Already know you want help? Tell me about your business.

The problems I see on publishing sites

Index bloat. Tag pages, thin archives, old stubs and parameter URLs pile up until Google spends its time on pages nobody needs. The fix: decide what deserves to be indexed and tidy the rest without deleting anything that earns links or traffic.
Cannibalisation. Several articles chasing the same question, so none of them wins. The fix: pick the strongest page for each question, point the others at it and stop publishing new versions of the same story.
Internal links that stop at the newest posts. Homepages and sidebars push the latest articles while the evergreen pages that earn traffic get starved. The fix: topic hubs and links from new articles back to the pages that matter.
Explainer traffic lost to AI Overviews. Simple "what is" pages lose clicks first. The fix: answer-first openings with something specific the AI can quote, and more first-hand detail than the pages around you.
Author pages that prove nothing. A name and a photo isn't expertise. The fix: author pages that show experience, a consistent byline and markup that ties the two together.
Migrations that leaked links. A platform move that broke old URLs can quietly throw away years of earned authority. The fix: map old URLs to new ones and redirect the ones that still have links pointing at them.
Sitemaps and feeds that fail quietly. News and article sitemaps that error out without anyone noticing. The fix: check them, fix them and keep checking.

What running my own publishing site taught me

Every lesson on this page I've learned the hard way on my own site, where I publish every day and test changes before I suggest them to anyone else.

Never retitle a page that already ranks near the top. I've seen a title change for "better click-through" knock a page out of the top three within days. Work on the description instead.
Google doesn't see your change until it recrawls. Important pages can go weeks between crawls, so "it didn't work" is often "it hasn't been seen yet". Measure after the recrawl, not after the edit.
One answer block per page is enough. Stacking summary boxes, key-facts lists and short versions on top of each other looks like a page built for machines, and it isn't rewarded.
A loose internal link is worse than none. Links teach Google what a page is about, so they have to be relevant.

The first 90 days

When	What happens	What you get
Weeks 1 to 2	Baseline and audit: Search Console, crawl, index coverage, top pages, AI visibility for your key topics	A ranked list of problems by the traffic each one is costing you
Weeks 3 to 6	Fixes on the pages that already earn: titles, answer-first openings, internal links, author trust	Your best pages protected and improved first
Weeks 7 to 12	Archive and template work: cannibal clean-up, hubs, redirects, sitemap health	A leaner site Google can crawl and trust, and a monthly report on Google and AI visibility

Getting cited by AI, not just clicked

For a publisher, being quoted by ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI is a new kind of reach. The pages that get cited open with a clear answer, carry something specific you can't find elsewhere and come from a named expert. I track the questions that matter to your audience across the main AI engines and work on the pages that should be the answer. If you want the wider picture, my AI citation service page explains how that side works.

Financial and specialist publishers

Finance, health and legal publishers are held to a higher trust standard, so authorship, sourcing and review lines matter even more. My financial services SEO page covers the extra checks for finance and market news sites.

Frequently asked questions

Is SEO still worth it for publishers in 2026?

Yes, but it's a different job. AI Overviews answer a lot of simple explainer queries without a click, so the traffic that's left rewards depth, first-hand reporting and clear expertise. Publishers that clean up their archives and build trusted authors still grow; the ones chasing volume with thin pages lose ground.

Can ChatGPT write SEO content for a publisher?

It can help with outlines, headlines and first drafts, but pages that only repeat what's already out there struggle to rank and rarely get cited. What wins is the part AI can't produce on its own: original reporting, data, named experts and a real point of view. Use AI to speed up the process, not to replace the substance.

What is the 80/20 rule in SEO for publishers?

On most publishing sites a small share of pages earns most of the search traffic. The 80/20 approach is to find that share, protect it and improve it first, then fix the template and archive problems that drag the rest of the site down, before publishing more.

Can I do publisher SEO on my own?

A lot of it, yes, if you have someone who can read Search Console and a developer who can fix templates. Where outside help pays off is the diagnosis: knowing which of the many problems a big site has is costing you the most, and in what order to fix them.

How do I stop AI Overviews taking my traffic?

You can't switch them off, but you can be the source they cite. Pages that open with a clear, specific answer, carry original detail and come from a named expert are the ones AI Overviews quote. Explainer pages that say what every other site says are the ones that lose their clicks.

Talk to me about your publication

If your traffic has stalled, dropped after an update or a migration, or you're watching AI Overviews take your explainer clicks, tell me about your site. I'll tell you plainly which problems are worth fixing first.