How to Make Google Laugh: SEO Your Headlines

In addition to writing for one’s mom, today’s writer must also write for Google. Yet, as always, the devil’s in the metadata.

The secret of SEO is that every online article requires two headlines: The first is for the wordsmith in you — loaded up with wit, irony, and humor — while the second is for Google — loaded down with straightforward keywords.

We’ll review how leading news outlets pull off this balancing act — and how you can, too.

Transcript

1. SEO Your Headlines by JONATHAN RICK @jrick
2. Bad
3. ARTICLE TITLE Beach Force One PAGE TITLE Beach Force One [Time.com]
4. ARTICLE TITLE Hacked! PAGE TITLE Hacked! [TheAtlantic.com]
5. ARTICLE TITLE The Woman Who Knew Too Much PAGE TITLE The Woman Who Knew Too Much [VanityFair.com]
6. ARTICLE TITLE When Anonymice Attack! PAGE TITLE When Anonymice Attack! [Reuters.com]
7. Good
8. ARTICLE TITLE 15 Case Studies to Get Your Client on Board With Social Media PAGE TITLE 15 Case Studies to Get Your Client on Board With Social Media [Mashable.com]
9. ARTICLE TITLE Scott Forstall, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Apple PAGE TITLE Scott Forstall, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Apple [BusinessWeek.com]
10. ARTICLE TITLE What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs PAGE TITLE What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs [Gawker.com]
11. ARTICLE TITLE The Bridge to Nowhere: A National Embarrassment PAGE TITLE The Bridge to Nowhere: A National Embarrassment [Heritage.org]
12. Better
13. ARTICLE TITLE Changing Times PAGE TITLE Jill Abramson, New York Times’s First Woman Executive Editor [NewYorker.com]
14. ARTICLE TITLE White House Party Crashers Cause a Hangover PAGE TITLE Obama Asks for Review After Michaele and Tareq Salahi Crash White House State Dinner [TheDailyBeast.com]
15. ARTICLE TITLE Deliverance PAGE TITLE U.S. Postal Service: Will It Survive? [Slate.com]
16. ARTICLE TITLE Snooki Slept Here. So Did I PAGE TITLE “Jersey Shore,” Reality vs. Reality TV [NYTimes.com]
17. ARTICLE TITLE Better Never Than Late PAGE TITLE Conan O’Brien Won’t Give Up “Tonight Show” Time Show to Make Room for Jay Leno [WashingtonPost.com]
18. Best
19. ARTICLE TITLE What’s Eating the NYPD? PAGE TITLE Why the NYPD Is Turning on Ray Kelly ARTICLE TITLE What’s Eating the NYPD? META DESCRIPTION Ray Kelly has built the best police force in the country. Now it is turning on him.
20. ARTICLE TITLE What’s Eating the NYPD? PAGE TITLE Herman Cain’s Unlikely Republican Rise ARTICLE TITLE Citizen Cain META DESCRIPTION A month ago, he was a punchline. Now Herman Cain is laughing. Meet the rising GOP star who is confounding the pundits and much of black America.
21. ARTICLE TITLE What’s Eating the NYPD? PAGE TITLE The Fate of Republicans Who Supported Gay Marriage ARTICLE TITLE When Is a Flip Not a Flop? META DESCRIPTION The four Republicans who broke with their party on New York’s gay-marriage law were supposedly marked for electoral death. But that’s not exactly how it is working out.