A phrase we journalists hear a lot about these days is “Search Engine Optimisation”, or SEO for short. It refers to the art, sometimes dark, by which online material is presented to attract the widest internet readership. The trick is to maximise each item’s chances of being picked up by search engines, especially Google.
In the vast, noisy amusement arcade that is digital media, newspaper stories are like those little green space aliens whose existentialist plight was lampooned in Toy Story. In this case, "the Claw" is Google, and it god-like ways are endlessly mysterious. But there are techniques to improve your chances of being picked up by it, especially via headline writing. This is SEO.
The biggest challenge for old-school journalists trying to learn the art is the realisation that everything we thought we knew is now wrong. OK, in print editions, headlines should still be snappy. They can also still be funny, where appropriate, or even oblique – drawing readers in with a teasing reference that will only be explained in the text.
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But none of this applies in digital media. There, for one thing, traditional space restrictions don’t apply. So there’s no pressure to be snappy. In fact, snappy headlines can be self-defeating. Instead, the key is to work in as many searchable references as possible. As for being funny or mysterious, that way lies internet oblivion.
Insofar as Google’s algorithms have a sense of humour, it’s accidental. We had a stark illustration of this at an SEO workshop recently where, during an exercise in headline writing, a colleague used the term “fat cat” (on a story about executive bonuses).
At this point, the tutor gleefully tapped the words “fat cat” into Google and the screen lit up with pictures of actual cats, variously obese. The message was that you can’t be too obvious in digital. And any amount of clunkiness is now acceptable if it allows to you to squeeze all the relevant search terms into the headline.
Thus, if the classic “Headless body found in topless bar” story happened today, the digital-edition banner might have to be rewritten to mention that the bar was in Queens, New York, that it was popular with Greeks, or whoever, and so on.
Disconcerting as this is for pre-digital veterans, the term SEO does at least have a reassuringly old-fashioned look to it. Long before it was an acronym, of course, “Seo” was an Irish pronoun, meaning “This”. Indeed, it was also the root of the first Irish word many of us ever spoke: Anseo (“Here“).
The coincidence seems apt now, in more ways than one. The old school roll-calls in which we declared ourselves “Anseo” were, I suppose, a crude, early form of search engine, although the average school master was not as easily deterred as today’s Google user if you failed to show up in the first page of results.
In any case, the word “Anseo” is deeply ingrained in the Irish psyche. Among other things, it’s the title of a Paul Muldoon poem about the Troubles. It’s the name of a trendy Dublin bar. And as I discovered somewhere between Googling the Irish words and the acronym, there is even a company now called, wittily, SEO Anseo, specialising in search-friendly web design.
So in that spirit, as appalling as some digital headlines can be, I sympathise with the efforts of traditional media organisations to embrace the new reality and shout “This!” or “Here!” as much as possible. I too am doing my best to adapt (although if you’re reading this online, I smuggled that oblique headline up there past security).
Speaking of “Anseo”, I read a poignant thing over Christmas, courtesy of a great American writer, Richard Ford. It concerned his latest book – another instalment of the epic Frank Bascombe saga – which itself comprises four stories, including one called “I’m here”. The declarative title speaks of endurance in the face of setbacks. But a particular inspiration for it was an event from 1862 – one of the largest mass executions in US history. The victims were 38 Sioux Indians, who are said to have danced on the gallows and then repeatedly chanted the phrase “I’m here” in their native language, before being hanged.
I don’t know if this was an announcement of their imminent arrival in the spirit world, or a last show of defiance in this one. Either way, I only mention it because of the linguistic coincidence and because it’s a strange, touching story. Any similarities between the plight of 21st-century print journalists and that of a group of condemned Sioux Indians, circa 1862, are unintentional.
@FrankmcnallyIT