By Hannah Williams
Nov. 19, 2008
Search engine optimization suggests adding key words to standard print headlines, transforming the Chicago Daily Tribune's incorrect report of the 1948 president-elect to “Dewey defeats Truman in presidential election.”
Multimedia reporting spurs journalists to write to multiplatform audiences, manufacturing headlines that gain the approval of editors, catch the attention of readers and crack the algorithms of search engines.
“Journalists over the years have assumed they were writing their headlines and articles for two audiences — fickle readers and nitpicking editors,” Steve Lohr of the New York Times writes.
“Today, there is a third important arbiter of their work: the software programs that scour the Web, analyzing and ranking online news articles on behalf of Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.”
SearchEngineWatch.com explains how search engines work, “crawling” the web and spitting back keyword matches, and offers rankings of the “Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories” among other news, info and tips for optimizing your Web site to increase traffic.
Lohr credits search engine optimization with the decline of catchy headlines in “This Boring Headline Is Written For Google.”
“[S]oftware bots are not your ordinary readers: They are blazingly fast yet numbingly literal-minded,” writes Lohr. “There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or stylish writing. The software is a logical, sequential, left-brain reader, while humans are often right brain.”
Increased traffic often means increased revenue, a big incentive for those in the newspaper industry with ever-declining readership.
“Some news sites offer two headlines. One headline, often on the first Web page, is clever, meant to attract human readers. Then, one click to a second Web page, a more quotidian, factual headline appears with the article itself,” explains Lohr.
The BBC is known for its dual headlines, especially on extended stories. Today, The BBC’s top story headline reads “A social danger;” click through and you’ll wind up at “How dangerous are networking sites.” In BBC business news, a click on “Motor city misery” leads you to “Detroit hit as car firms beg for bail-out.”
This linking compromise caters to the various audiences of online journalism: editors, readers and search engines.
Writing for the Internet has turned the news media upside down. Traditional print tactics don’t always translate into online success.
New Media Bytes, a site helping journalists better understand how to utilize the online medium most efficiently and effectively for news, offers tips for headline writing. The best headlines will be clear and concise and will contain names, datelines and searchable keywords.
Furthermore, the site capitalizes on the opportunities to increase readership via allowing readers to share the article using web tools: email, del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Mixx and Sphinn.
CNET News advises journalists to think in reverse when titling stories. What terms would a reader search if they were looking for the story content?
CNET writer Elinor Mills tackles search engine optimizing some of the most memorable headlines in history and suggests avoiding abbreviations (“Wall Street lays an egg, stock market crashes” in Variety on Black Monday) and adding key words (“Dewey Defeats Truman in Presidential Election” in The Chicago Tribune’s incorrect report of the 1948 election results).
The Internet is a new challenge for reporters, and in order to succeed in this new frontier, journalists must master their new medium and utilize it to its full advantage.
Relinquishing creative control of the headline to search engine optimization does not have to mean sacrificing witty, poignant, pithy journalistic writing. It merely means making it easier for a worldwide audience to find and enjoy your journalistic eloquence.
3 responses so far ↓
seopositions // November 22, 2008 at 9:43 pm |
“The Internet is a new challenge for reporters, and in order to succeed in this new frontier, journalists must master their new medium and utilize it to its full advantage.”
I love this, this post was very well written and hits on several key problems with writing! Great post!
Janna // December 8, 2008 at 9:10 pm |
You did a really nice job on this quick piece. It was a good exercise for you on many levels – nice to see you optimize on the opportunity to learn something tied to your career goals while also fulfilling a class assignment!
Mark // January 4, 2009 at 1:01 am |
Nice article, and appropriate conclusion. While as a creative writer I enjoy reading (and writing) creative headlines, I find many headlines to be downright misleading. Sometimes this is unintentional on the author’s part (who is just trying to be clever), other times it illustrates how biased our press can be. Search engine bots force writers to be clear and accurate if they want to rank in search engines. Misleading headlines are buried, as they should be. As contextual search improves and becomes more commonplace, there will be greater opportunity for creativity in headlines while protecting us, the readers, from misrepresentation.