Writing for The New York Times, David Carr set out to make a point about the effect search engine optimization (SEO) has had upon the newspaper industry using a provocative headline 'Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Headline.'

By incorporating 'Taylor Momsen,' a prominent figure in American pop culture, into his headline, Carr was able to ensure that his article made to the "top of Google rankings." Before the dawn of the Internet age, newspapers carefully crafted "discursive" and "descriptive" attention grabbing headlines.

The enormity of the data coming at users online has forced news outlets to change the way they present information to readers. Carr notes that the emergence of Twitter and Facebook as republishing sites has put even more strain on news outlets to create catchy headlines that will attract attention in order to attract readers.

Throughout the media industry The Huffington Post stands out as one of the news agencies focused on perfecting its SEO. A New York Times summary of the site states, HuffPo's "editors are especially adept at optimizing the site for search engine results." Carr reports that the Huffington Post sometimes goes so far as to create two headlines for the same article. By doing this, the news outlet can choose the best headline based on whichever has the highest click-through rates.

Carr laments that the result of news outlets catering to SEO has sapped the industry of creativity, leading to "sameness" amongst articles. Indeed, agencies are stuck in a difficult position between being creative and descriptive enough to attract the reader's attention. There doesn't seem to be any easy way to find a balance in the gap between these two points but news outlets that do will undoubtedly benefit.

Source: NYT