Opinion: All this talk of AI visibility is killing your news business

SEO mastermind Steven Wilson-Beales takes over Content Aware to make the case that focusing too much on questions around AI search visibility is masking the real issues publishers need to solve.

by Steven Wilson-Beales

Published: 15:07, 05 February 2026

In a special Content Aware takeover, digital growth wizard Steven Wilson-Beales takes time out of working with iconic media and publishing brands - and setting the SEO world to rights with fellow traffic hyperscaler Barry Adams - to caution that the frenzy around AI is making many publishers and brands lose sight of what actually matters to audiences. 

It’s no surprise. Every time you open LinkedIn there’s another heated discussion around how you should optimise for LLMs and if "SEO is dead".’ There are surveys, recommendations, action lists and guarantees. Blink, and the recommendations shift, again. It’s exhausting.

Still, this intense conversation is understandable. Even though the amount of focus we have given LLM optimisation is vastly disproportionate to the actual traffic gained, who can really blame the market when a shiny new toy hits the town? 

And to add to that, CTOs are demanding innovation and ROI from that expensive AI Visibility tracking tool you’ve just bought. It’s an environment ripe for sucking all the joy out of journalism and diverting our attention from the things that really matter.

Such as - what makes a good story and what makes a good user experience?

I’m not suggesting these questions are being ignored by newsrooms, but there are many teams which - even though they can see clicks declining - are still ploughing on with the same content strategy they had in 2021. This is usually a ‘spray and pray approach’ to news coverage, with little attention to the topics they should double down on.

Bring back the joy of text
When I work with teams - often initially about SEO - we soon start discussing editorial coverage and the actual value proposition. You can use several different techniques to facilitate this: sometimes a simple coffee (or something stronger) might do the trick, but for something more formal I may refer to a user needs model or a page out of the excellent Gamestorming book.

These interactive exercises are important because editorial teams need a safe space to think about what they do - day in, day out - from a different perspective. A bad version of this would be to grab a group of journalists and expect everything to be done within an hour. You need to lay the groundwork so teams are prepared and ‘in the zone’ for a mutually beneficial conversation that will help them in the long term. Otherwise, you’ll simply get a lot of agitated bodies itching to get back to their stories.

The irony of the internet is that although there is a vast amount of knowledge available, we humans are very bad at tapping into it as a collective. We need to have more safe spaces in businesses to discuss what we do so we can start experimenting. There’s no point in conducting, for example, a topic authority audit to see how your editorial proposition stacks up against your competitors, if the team is not on the same journey with you.

I wonder how many killer insights for your business are dying a terrible death right now, locked in spreadsheets no one will ever see?

Don’t forget UX
As a consultant I get approached by a range of businesses who would like assistance with their AI visibility and search rankings and their attention is very much focused on Google or ChatGPT, Perplexity et all. But when I work for a client I will naturally take a look at what happens after the click. Are users likely to convert once you’ve hooked them in via search?

If not, then what is the point?

User Experience is such a critical area but has been drowned out by the ongoing AI visibility debate. I often see homepage, navigation, onward journey and site performance issues that have slipped down the priority list because the attention is elsewhere. 

The irony is that, in many cases, fixing these issues will have a positive impact on your search and AI visibility performance. 

And I am always surprised when editorial teams are not part of the product conversations, when they feel their role is only to submit a story. We need to bring these teams together as it can only benefit the overall audience enjoyment (and engagement) of your platform.

Learn from other sectors
Lastly, I’d like to leave you with a thought around gaining audience trust - the hot topic which has dominated conference conversations for the last 20 years.

The issue I see here for news publishers is that signalling the value of your journalism (and journalism in general) is often lost in the general ‘busyness’ of covering the news. So how can we rectify this?

During my time at Global I was fortunate to work with a number of small charities, advising them on how to cut through the ‘digital noise’. In every session I ran we always looked at the homepages of the most successful charities online who were always very good at communicating:

• Who we are
• What we do
• Our impact

It’s a simple triptych but you’ll be surprised at how many news homepages just don’t signal this messaging.

Next time you’re planning coverage for the month, ask yourself if you’re demonstrating this mantra in everything you do BUT in a way that is not forcing the reader to work too hard to understand what it is you’re trying to tell them.

As someone quite clever once said  ‘Don’t Make Me Think.’

Steven Wilson-Beales is a digital growth specialist and editor with extensive experience managing digital content teams across a wide variety of different industries - defining content strategy, AI search visibility. News SEO, YouTube Optimisation and working with Product teams to improve editorial tools. He is also former Co-Chair of the Journalism Advisory Board with the Association of Publishers and a keen speaker at industry events.

You can read his free Publishing Strategies newsletter or watch his new SEO podcast with Barry Adams.