Anyone else getting tired of these headlines?

And then you click and find out it's defensive lineman A'Shawn Robinson.

 

Disneyworld?

 

I hate it. But I don’t see it changing because it works. For now at least.

I can just do my part and not click on those.

 

13 of the worst headline writing misteaks and how to avoid them

 

My question: If everyone is using the same SEO tricks, how does that help the Podunk Journal move up the Google search pages? Seems to me they'd fall behind everyone else, as before, when no one was using them.

 

Search depends on a number of factors: Page speed (Google has started placing you higher in rankings if your load time is faster), mobile compatibility (which goes in with page speed), page authority, search terms and who posts it first. That's why everywhere rushes to get one-liners up. If you hit the button immediately and post first after the Super Bowl ends, for example, you're likely to see a big spike in traffic. Vanity traffic that will probably never visit your site again, but the bosses still view that as a win.

 

What time is the Super Bowl on?

 

And How To Watch. (Uhh, turn on TV maybe?)

 

I was complaining on Facebook about how it's impossible to find a recipe online without having to first scroll through a long narrative and someone replied that Google changed its search engine algorithm to favor articles of more than 800 words. So now every content creator has to write 800-word recipes if they want their post to turn up in Google's search results.

 

I'm sick of these motherfucking keywords in my motherfucking headlines!

 

If you're beginning a 'headline' with one of the W's then it's counterintuitive to the entire process.

It's the headline writer's job to answer that 'Why my cat's breath smells like cat food' question in the space allotted. That's the whole game.

 

Yeah, forgot to mention the length. I’ve sat through multiple seminars discussing total content (contented?) paint and load times and it still sails over my head. Luckily we have a good SEO person who turns it into layman’s English. Learned more from my first five minutes of talking to her than I ever did in a newsroom.