So when a writer is paying attention to the Google algorithm, is his creativity hampered by the damper factor? When otherwise creative copy is subjected to the cruel hand of the optimizer, does it lose its zing?
Many bloggers contend that SEO will be the death of the interesting title or the creative headline. There are many examples of old-fashioned, grab –the-reader headlines: In Sunday’s (4/23/2010) Los Angeles Times, a front sports page headline demands attention:
KING’S ENGLISH
The reader assumes this story is about the LA Kings given its placement in the sport section. But the way the headline writer plays on the words (King’s English connotes refined use of the language harkening back to some King in England), might draw in a reader who otherwise would only look for a Lakers story.
The allusion to ole’ England disappears in the online version of the headline, since the L.A. Times has clearly learned the importance of SEO. A keyword-enhanced headline remains, perfectly optimized for the “boredom” factor:
Dan Redding, in a 2010 blogpost entitled, “When SEO Kills Good Writing,” gives an excellent example of how SEO might conflict with the classics:
Ernest Hemingway titled one of his masterpieces For Whom the Bell Tolls. The novel benefits from a gorgeous title that strikes a chord in the context of its themes. The title and the novel are one. But if the book had been titled by SEO specialists, it would’ve been named Spanish Civil War Drama with Romance. Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Have all the rules for reading and writing changed? In the old print-reader’s world, an entire publication was delivered to your doorstep, be it a newspaper, a magazine or a book that ordered from Amazon. Currently and more so in the future, we are not dealing with entire publications. We aren’t dealing with chapters or articles or even stories. We are dealing with “sound bites” or “micro-stories” as readers scan their RSS feeds for tidbits of information. These readers already know what they’re looking for. Noami S. Baron calls this “snippet literacy.” (p. 148).
Readers of old-style publications didn’t necessarily know what they were looking for. A newspaper reader only knew he wanted today’s news. A reader of Time magazine only knew he wanted an overview of the week’s major events. A reader of Vogue only knew she wanted a smattering of fashion and beauty advice for the month.
You present a lot helpful ideas! Perhaps I should think of trying to do this myself.
Hi Wendolyn,
Thanks so much for reading. Yes, it’s a good idea to use these SEO practices if you are writing for the web, but be careful, there’s a lot of bad information out there about what to do.