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 Jonathan Rick @jrick
2. Bad
3. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE Beach Force One Beach Force One Time.com
4. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE Hacked! Hacked! TheAtlantic.com
5. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE The Woman Who Knew Too Much The Woman Who Knew Too Much VanityFair.com
6. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE When Anonymice Attack! When Anonymice Attack! Reuters.com
7. Good
8. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE 15 Case Studies to Get Your Client on Board With Social Media 15 Case Studies to Get Your Client on Board With Social Media Mashable.com
9. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE Scott Forstall, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Apple Scott Forstall, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Apple BusinessWeek.com
10. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs Gawker.com
11. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE The Bridge to Nowhere: A National Embarrassment The Bridge to Nowhere: A National Embarrassment Heritage.org
12. Better
13. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE Changing Times Jill Abramson, New York Times’s First Woman Executive Editor NewYorker.com
14. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE White House Party Crashers Cause a Hangover Obama Asks for Review After Michaele and Tareq Salahi Crash White House State Dinner TheDailyBeast.com
15. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE Deliverance U.S. Postal Service: Will It Survive? Slate.com
16. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE Snooki Slept Here. So Did I “Jersey Shore,” Reality vs. Reality TV NYTimes.com
17. ARTICLE TITLE PAGE TITLE Better Never Than Late Conan O’Brien Won’t Give Up “Tonight Show” Time Show to Make Room for Jay Leno WashingtonPost.com
18. Best
19. ARTICLE TITLE ARTICLE TITLE What’s Eating the theNYPD? NYPD? What’s Eating PAGE TITLE Why the NYPD Is Turning on Ray Kelly META DESCRIPTION Ray Kelly has built the best police force in the country. Now it is turning on him.
20. ARTICLE TITLE ARTICLE TITLE What’s Eating the NYPD? Citizen Cain PAGE TITLE Herman Cain’s Unlikely Republican Rise 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 ARTICLE TITLE What’s When IsEating a Flip the NotNYPD? a Flop? PAGE TITLE The Fate of Republicans Who Supported Gay Marriage 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.