this is an interesting article on the difficulties of running anything as SEO makes everything worse, AI proliferates, and things generally get worse for journalism. probably best summarized by this paragraph:

The long answer is that, through our own reporting, we are realizing that in order to combat the fracturing of social media platforms, a Google discoverability crisis fueled by AI generated spam and AI-fueled SEO, and a media business environment that is in utter freefall, we need to be able to reach our readers directly using a platform that we own and control. To do that, we need your email address.

but it’s a very good read in general, and i’d encourage you to read the whole thing.