April 11th, 2006 by James Omdahl
Warning: This turned into a bit of a rant…
I ran across this article in the New York Times titled “This Boring Headline is Written for Google.” The piece looks at how journalists are realizing that they are going to have to consider search engines when they are writing their article titles.
The sad part is that many journalists are kicking and screaming as they are forced to “dumb down” their titles for the search engines. This is one of my favorite quotes from the piece:
In newspapers and magazines, for example, section titles and headlines are distilled nuggets of human brainwork, tapping context and culture. “Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines, and Google comes along and says, The heck with that, ” observed Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee.
Ah, yeah Eddy, this is all a conspiracy by Google to make you write bad headlines.
Or maybe it is because algorithms have a difficult time figuring out what your creative, keyword-free titles actually mean. Do you think that could be it?
If you are going to whine Ed, why not whine about companies like Craigslist that have managed to take away profits from your paper by reshaping the classifieds industry? Why not whine about your industrys inability to successfully hold ground on the Web? Heck, you should whine about how bloggers are taking away steam and clout from the mighty journalist.
Actually, no. That might be too scary for Ed. Lets stick fighting for a journalists right to write creative headlines.
So why rant about this here? I think the attitude conveyed in the article is something that affiliate marketers can feel pretty good about.
I think there are many large companies out there (media and non-media) who have ad agencies or writers that feel their creativity is more important than Web visibility. They will opt for the non-indexable flash Web site, the keyword-free creative title tags and headlines, and a SEO-be-damned attitude when designing their company Web sites.
And that, my friends, creates great opportunity for you affiliates out there.
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April 13th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Good rant. And due to the technical nature of SEO, Im inclined to agree with you. Mostly.
I read the Times article and I appreciated this comment by Steve Lohr:
So I suppose I take issue with your post for two reasons.
1. As a writer and lover of all things witty and weird, I can respect that some industries arent down with losing this part of their identity to please search engines.
2. While I dont think creativity is necessarily more important than Web visibility, I do think its an absoutely essential part of being remarkable on the Web.
And yes, there can probably be a happy marriage of SEO and creativity which is what I think both of us hope to instantiate in our site(s) at InsureMe. But when Im not writing on company time, the fact that I have to forsake off-the-wall titles for blog posts and articles for the sake of search engine ranking is a tad disconcerting.
Besides, dont you think there will be a day when consumers consciously realize that theyre reading keyword-laden material and become completely turned off by it? Scary thought, but I find it happening to me already.
Alright, thats enough for now. We can duke this out later. I think you know where to find me.