Tips and warnings about search engine optimization for newspapers

Although most online journalists have heard about search engine optimization (SEO), there is still a lot for them to learn in that area. While watching out for the dark sides of SEO.

“Print headlines are often written to be clever or pithy or cute,” said new media journalist and blogger Patrick Thornton.

But on the Web, headlines need substance - style isn’t very important, said Thornton. Substance typically comes from strong keywords that users will look for, and not necessarily from well-thought wording.

For example, Thornton’s “NY Times and CNN show how an election should be covered” blog headline drew in significantly more traffic that his previous one, “How an election should be covered.”

For many reasons, traditional print subeditors may regret the online headline, which rids itself of many puns and clever editorial spins (See: Does online kill the headline?). “Save the artful headlines for print, and put the sweet science on the Web,” said Thornton. Some paper websites, such as Times Online, have gone as far as creating a “search editor” position within their newsroom.

However, exaggerated emphasis on SEO also has its downsides, as humorously exemplified by this list of CNN.com headlines, drawn up by Gawker (including: “New York readies for its Katrina” or “Police: Teen raped his mother”).

As noted by Thornton, “all of those headlines and stories are meant to drive traffic, at the expense of quality journalism.” So newspapers must teach journalists how to write online headlines, but not at the expense of their editorial standards.

Source: The Journalism Iconoclast