Anyone else getting tired of these headlines?

[playthrough]

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.

Recipes are the forking worst. I guess I can understand Google favoring length to prevent a slew of bite-sized (no pun intended) stories but there has to be a happy medium for my ingredients to not go bad in the time it takes me to get to the part where I figure out how to prepare them.

 

[playthrough]

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.

Page authority is one aspect I'm hooked on. Keep adding timely links to your other content to tell Google that you're the most knowledgeable stop on that subject.

 

[MTM]

Recipes are the forking worst. I guess I can understand Google favoring length to prevent a slew of bite-sized (no pun intended) stories but there has to be a happy medium for my ingredients to not go bad in the time it takes me to get to the part where I figure out how to prepare them.

Right? If I ask Google how to make hot dogs in an air fryer, just tell me 6 minutes at 350 degrees. I don't need the history of the hot dog, what to serve it with and what condiments to add.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Right? If I ask Google how to make hot dogs in an air fryer, just tell me 6 minutes at 350 degrees. I don't need the history of the hot dog, what to serve it with and what condiments to add.

 

[wicked]

Page authority is one aspect I'm hooked on. Keep adding timely links to your other content to tell Google that you're the most knowledgeable stop on that subject.

Now they take into account more who's linking to you and their rep. Their bots can tell if you're just using internal links.

We use Brightedge to track this stuff and the amount of data they give us each week is massive. Who's linking to you, where your 404s are, suggestions on optimizing each page… it's insane. I try looking at and interpreting their numbers, and I have to stop after 10 seconds. Immediate headache.

 

[BTExpress]

As the writing has gotten shallower, the headlines pretend that you're getting more "depth."

"HOW Podunk U. destroyed State U.", not simply reporting THAT Podunk destroyed State.

Open the story, however, and it's just a run of the mill gamer. Or five "highlights" or "things we learned" from the game.

 

[TexasVet]

All of these examples remind me of someone writing:

Joe T took to Twitter, or, Bob took to social media. WTF does that even mean?

That's just lazy, meaningless writing. Figure out how to say it in a smarter way.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

As the writing has gotten shallower, the headlines pretend that you're getting more "depth."

"HOW Podunk U. destroyed State U.", not simply reporting THAT Podunk destroyed State.

Open the story, however, and it's just a run of the mill gamer. Or five "highlights" or "things we learned" from the game.

I know it was probably on the way out anyway, but I hate how bullet point stories have ruined the game story. There was a certain art to a good gamer...turning it into a mini-feature by emphasizing the key part of the game and minimizing the play-by-play by finding the quote that tied things together better than any four graphs of PBP. Oh well.