Headlines & SEO

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Headlines make or break the story

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Parsability

-Is it easy to understand?

-Do you understand the story without additional context?

Promise

-What the reader will get?

Proper Nouns

-Words that the reader seeks.

Three P’s of a great web headline

“A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond.”Steve Martin

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5 Steps to a great web headline

1. Identify relevant words and information (proper nouns)

2. Identify what’s interesting about the story

3. Write, then rewrite

4. Find better verbs

5. Check with a colleague

o Bonus: Is it Tweetable?

Relevant words:Budget Deficit Super CommitteeWomenDebt Ceiling Congress $1.5 trillion

Relevant information:Women should make up half of the committee

What’s interesting about the story?- Women, who represent half the population, should make up half of the super committee. - A committee that decides our tax obligations should represent the population by gender.

Women missing from Super Committee on deficit deal Women absent from Super Committee on deficit deal Call to action: Super Committee Must be Half WomenSuper Committee Must be Half WomenSuper Committee Should be Half WomenBudget Deficit Best Solved by Women Budget Deficit Best Solved with Women Why the budget deficit should be solved with women* Is the budget deficit gender biased?* Women: Deficit in the Super CommitteeFemale Deficit in the Budget Super Committee Deficit: Women in Budget Budget crisis needs a league of extraordinary ladies*Secret weapon for the budget crisis: womenThe case for a half-woman Super Committee

Relevant words:water perilraindroughtglobal warmingclimate changeinfrastructureCentral ValleyCalifornia

Relevant information:-Drop in precipitation by 4 - 5 %-Will be 5 - 6 degrees warmer in the Central Valley -Existing infrastructure can't keep up with changes to climate

What’s interesting about the story?-Something has to change in order to break even -Existing infrastructure can't keep up with changes to climate

Report: Less rain, more pain this century for California water suppliesRivers and dams can't keep up with California climate Rivers and dams fall behind California's warming climate* 6 degrees of separation between…6 degrees in Central California: The difference 6 degrees of heat in Central California may pinch water supplies6 degrees of heat in Central California: the state is not ready6 degrees of heat in Central California: state water supply not ready Central California temps to rise by 6 degrees... California still has no waterCalifornia still has water issuesCalifornia yet to overcome water crisisFor California water crisis, glass still half empty*Why California rivers need more rain

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SEO likes

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Crawls text, imitating user behavior

-Google crawls from left to right

-Google crawls from top to bottom

Headlines rule

How does Google work?

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Fresh content – news rules

Text, Text, Text

Relevant proper nouns

Linking out to quality pages

Being a credible established source of news

Quality sites linking to you

What does Google like?

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SEO dislikes

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Little or no text

Bad headlines

Abbreviations

New domains

kplunews.org vs. news.kplu.org

What does Google dislike?

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Titles Exercise

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Ki-Min Sung

ksung@npr.org

(310)815-4220

http://editorial.digitalservices.npr.org/

Questions?