Kern Media® turns content creators into (more effective) traffic creators. Whether you run a magazine website, digital publication, industry-leading blog or a company content team, how well your content is optimized for Google and AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity can make all the difference in the growth of your traffic, readership and revenue.
AI Overviews answer more questions right on the results page, and AI tools favor fresh, specific content. Editorial teams that know how to optimize keep earning clicks and citations.
Research figures come from the Kern Media AI Search Citation Study (2026), an analysis of 1,044 AI answers, mostly from ChatGPT, with a head-to-head test of Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. Client results are anonymized; see our case studies.
How We Train Editorial Teams
Kern Media uses the following framework to train editors on SEO and AI search, help online publishers grow traffic for the long term, and build a healthy revenue stream.
Traffic & Revenue Growth Starts with Goals
Increased traffic is great. Increased revenue is better. With online publishers, knowing your traffic growth goals (and how to reach them) is an important place to start with any SEO and GEO efforts. As AI Overviews and AI tools change how people click, we also help you track clicks, AI referrals and citations, so your goals reflect how readers find you. We also find true content gaps for Google keywords and AI search prompts, so new and updated content drives new growth.
Know Your Reader, Target Your Reader
Your readers want answers. They are continuously searching for answers to timeless questions within your industry, and they’re asking AI tools more of those questions every day. They also want to keep up with your industry. It’s your job to know who they are, what they’re looking for, and how they want it delivered. Developing detailed “audience personas” will make sure the content your team is creating is in line with your target readers.
Educate Readers & Earn Their Trust
You want readers who come back, time and again, whether through search engines, AI tools, social media, email marketing, other industry websites or any other form of content consumption. To do that, your content team needs to know what readers are searching for and interested in, and focus on capturing their attention (and email addresses) for ongoing content marketing. This is done through thorough keyword research, in-depth original content with expert insight that AI can’t replicate, and compelling calls-to-action.
Train Editors, Optimize Content, Grow Traffic
Every editorial team can use a refresher on their on-page optimization skills. When editors know how to optimize titles, metadata, H1s and body content, write clear answers that AI tools and Google’s AI Overviews can quote (answer engine optimization, or AEO), and build a healthy internal linking structure, your traffic grows. Kern Media has the SEO training experience to teach editorial teams how to research keywords and questions, use AI writing tools without losing their voice and expertise, and optimize content in a way that gets the most out of your site’s ranking and citation potential.
On a free 30-minute call, we’ll talk through your site and goals.
Technical Optimization & SEO Maintenance
Online publishers need technical SEO just like any other website. With so much content being published on a regular basis, search engines and AI crawlers need to be able to crawl, index and understand your content. Your robots.txt rules (including which AI bots you allow), sitemaps, indexation rules, article schema, JavaScript rendering and internal linking structure all play an important role in maximizing traffic and revenue.
Results for Publishers
One publisher grew its organic traffic 7x in six months after editorial SEO training and technical fixes. See more in our case studies.
Dan pioneered SEO training at our company, from communicating the basics in companywide training sessions, to providing full, in-depth bootcamps (complete with how-to documents, videos and hands-on training) to specific areas of the business. With his guidance, we were able to fix our SEO-problem areas and have since seen tremendous growth in our organic traffic year over year! He transformed not only this business, but provided a proven model with best practices we continue to employ today.
Former digital leader, national book and magazine publisher
Request a Free Consultation
Working with online publishers is one of Kern Media’s specialties. Dan previously led SEO for a national publisher with 200+ websites and has consulted for major book publishing groups. We also help publishers and content teams adapt to AI search, so your content keeps earning traffic and citations.
On a free 30-minute call, we’ll look at where your traffic comes from and how training would help your team.
