Comments on: Headlines and SEO

By: JTownend

JTownend — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:08:25 +0000

Not always a fan of PG’s Grey Cardigan but I liked his thoughts on this one (not just because he gave Journalism.co.uk a plug, of sorts…)

“No wit or wordplay? What is an old hack, schooled in wit and wordplay to do? And whither one of the best newspaper headlines of recent times, penned by subs on The Sun after minnows Caledonian Thistle pulled off a shock win against the mighty Celtic? Go on, stick “Super Cally go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious” in your sodding search engine.”

http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/greycardigan/2009/03/grey-cardigan-march-issue/

By: Peter Moore

Peter Moore — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:31:01 +0000

Hi Martin – thanks for pointing that out, I’ve updated the post accordingly.

I suppose the bigger point is about SEO’s role in digital journalism. How much can it help? Where does it damage creativity? What do journalists need to know about SEO? All things for another day.

But lesson of the day: “Write the right headlines for each medium.” Thanks.

By: Martin Belam

Martin Belam — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:48:48 +0000

“I’m glad that The Sun have decided to swap Googleability for creativity. It’s two fingers up to the people that think SEO and page views count for everything”

I think they just write the right headlines for each medium. It is a fantastic front page splash headline in print. Online, the TITLE tag for the story, which is the SEO bit that Google indexes, is in fact plain old “Jordan’s horseman friend denies fling”

By: Peter Moore

Peter Moore — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:26:52 +0000

Thanks Lara – some really good points. I suppose this post just emerged out my annoyance with ugly SEO headlines. It’s pretty sad to see some newspaper websites debasing themselves in a desperate bid to please Google. I think of it as quite an achievement that The Sun have thought of a headline for which absolutely nobody in the UK would have searched.

I think Kevin McSpurren was right about brands moving towards consumer engagement in the future and I just hope that too many of them don’t cannibalise themselves whilst we are in this SEO and social media adoption stage. It’s always good to stick to what you do best.

And in The Sun’s case that is writing silly headlines, being a bit right wing and putting something scandalous on page three.

By: Lara King

Lara King — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:32:03 +0000

Excellent post, Peter, and I couldn’t agree more. Headlines are one of the things that give a newspaper its brand identity and ‘personality’, and I think it takes a lot more skill to come up with some of The Sun’s catchy epithets than to craft a Google-worthy search string.

However, there seems to be some hope for the subs: I thought it was interesting at yesterday’s talk when Kevin McSpurren from Cover It Live said he think media organisations will move away from a fixation on SEO and page hits and become more concerned with visitor/brand “engagement”. Hopefully, this also means they will start resurrecting some of the creativity and idiosyncrasy that they built their brands on in the first place.