Like pretty much every large magazine publisher, Hearst has been heavily focused on refining its online strategy for the past year. After a good deal of experimentation, the company has hit on a basic formula that will guide it for at least the next year: closer ties with portals. While working with portals is nothing new, and Hearst has been working exclusively with MSN for the past two years, Hearst is trying to find ways to approach all of the major portals differently. The company is one of the first to sign on with Yahoo Buzz, a social media tracker, which debuted this week. And a few days ago, it signed a deal with AOL (NYSE: TWX) to provide Good Housekeeping content to that portal’s Home channel. I spoke with Chris Johnson, VP, content and business development for Hearst Magazines Digital Media, about the company’s plans as he was preparing to chair the Magazine Publishers Association’s 24/7 Digital Media conference in New York:

-- Portal power: Johnson: “We are very aware that you can’t just create a magazine website and expect people to simply show up. You have to have search engine optimization, search engine marketing, you want to find the right strategic partners who can help you distribute your content and drive traffic back to your site. MSN has been our sole portal partner for about two years and recently renewed that deal for another two years. But we also recognize that we have to find ways to distribute Hearst content on other portals, but in ways that are unique; it doesn’t pay to dish out the same thing to everybody at the same time.”

-- Building Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Buzz: The relationship with Yahoo Buzz came out of months of talks as both it and Hearst floated a number of ideas for possible collaboration, which began with a partnership on Yahoo Answers. Johnson: “Our Good Housekeeping site is a featured contributor to that Yahoo site. They’ve also been testing some homepage, traffic-direction initiatives, where they tested the receptivity of Yahoo audiences to content from Hearst titles, including Marie Claire, Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Popular Mechanics. We will evaluate a roll-out of the Yahoo Buzz widget on our sites. As to whether and how we incorporate Yahoo content on our sites, I’d say we’re in the crawl stage now.”

-- More syndication moves: While working with portals satisfies Hearst’s need for mass, it is also exploring relationships with more niche-oriented sites that will help it target users better. Johnson said the publisher wants to build on a model it has with WebMD (NSDQ: WBMD). “We syndicate our lifestyle content to WebMD, mainly articles and features dealing with relationships and food. Things that they might not have core competency in. Meanwhile, they share some of WebMD content on Good Housekeeping and some of our other sites. Also, Spleak Media is handling our teen sites, where users write “short tattles” – little gossip items, which are posted within Spleak widgets on our sites like CosmoGirl!, Seventeen and Teen Mag, and theirs.”

-- Website revamp: Last year at this time, Hearst began moving its websites off iVillage, after that tie-up was deemed a failure. That process was completed by Memorial Day. That effort helped spur Hearst to revamp its entire line of websites. It now plans to launch or revise about three new sites this year. For example, its women’s advice site QuickAndSimple will move off of another third party site by early summer and become more integrated into Hearst’s online framework. That site will be redesigned with more videos and other features. Johnson said the company’s still not sure if the other two sites will be standalone or if they’ll be launched under existing brands.

-- Video strategy: In the past month, Hearst has launched a branded YouTube channel to showcase its magazines’ expanded push into video. But that’s just a small part of its broadband plans this year. Hearst has a deal to create branded video channels on Next.tv’s video player, which is on every HP-produced laptop. So far, Hearst has about 2,400 videos live on its sites and are on pace to produce another 150 programs across its network. The programs will range from how-to, to episodic shows to user-generated reporting, man-on-the-street. Also under its Latina-centric teen site, MisQuinceMag, Hearst is creating 15-20 videos for quinceaneras, which is akin to Sweet 16s in Hispanic countries. That’s with Si TV.