I always enjoy reading a good headline, they always make me chuckle. However, with the dawning of SEO, witty headlines are causing to be a problem.
Crafty headlines are just not SEO-friendly. A much better headline would include the keywords and wouldn't have much room for puns or plays on words.
The Atlantic has weight in on this notion with its recent article "Google Doesn't Laugh Saving Witty Headlines in the Age of SEO."
Matthew Crowly, a copy editor for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, has won awards for his on-so-clever headlines. "I understand the shift toward search optimization" he told The Atlantic. "But I think we're losing something when we take the wordplay and surprise out of headline writing."
In many ways, SEO is killing the art of the clever headline in journalism, and it doesn't seem like a trend that will reverse as long as such a huge chunk of Web traffic comes from search engines.
Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post addressed this same issue last summer, and he didn't offer optimism either.
Something I discovered this week that I'll share with you... You can post a SEO friendly headline which gives you a SEO friendly permalink. Then you can go back and change the headline and the permalink stays the same. We were told there's not necessarily a rule that says the Post title has to reflect the permalink, so feel free to optimize both and play around.
ReplyDeleteGreat tip Gina! I've never thought of trying that. Thank you! :)
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