Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is quickly changing some aspects of what we used to think of as good journalism practice.
Photo courtesy Danard Vincente
Competition for Google rankings is incredibly stiff, as commercial websites strive to reach their page view targets.
Flow Communications has several high-profile clients, for whom we do our very best to attract a stipulated number of visitors to their websites every month. One of the most effective ways to attract visitors to these websites, is through search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
We take into account popular search terms relating to a particular subject, and include those words in our content and our meta data (“invisible” information on websites).
While blogging about the cricket match between South Africa and England at Newlands in Cape Town, we had a discusion about one way SEO is affecting modern journalism.
We pride ourselves on accuracy in all our writing, especially spelling and punctuation, with the correct spelling of names being obligatory.
We debated the name of a South African bowler, wondering whether it was Morne or Morné Morkel. We entered both spellings of the name into Google and in both instances, the top results all linked to sites that spelled his name Morne. We then thought about how people searching for this particular player would generally spell his name and concluded that because of the process involved in inserting an “é” into Google, very few people would do this.
We then decided that regardless of how the man himself spells his name, we would be losing out on Google rankings by spelling his name ‘Morné’.
This is just one example of how SEO is changing the nature of journalism in the digital era.
Comments
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Could anybody tell me the thing to do to get good rankings in serach engines if you have a good ranking website could you tell me how you got there.Toronto SEO Services
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The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.web design dc
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It can take two life times just to filter through all the junk to locate just one free work at home job lead. And it will take just as much time to find the next lead. I know what you are thinking he must be a mind reader. As a result, you have found my article.
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Hi,
The big problem with bringing SEO into the newsrooms is the way in which it’s introduced. It seems to me managers do little more than a few Google searches on SEO, glean some information off the web, shove some buzzwords and phraseology into a training session, and pray no one asks them any difficult questions about SEO. The fact is, many managers and editors of publications haven’t the first clue about SEO. What they should do is find a way to integrate SEO into a journalist’s work-flow, they should introduce the concepts and principles behind SEO in the journalist’s own language.