Web killing headline creativity: clarity, information increases search rankings
February 3, 2007 in Tech Talk
Cory Doctorow points out a CNET article about the effect of search engines on clever headline writing. #
You can win awards with a headline like “BASTARDS!” over a shot of the Twin Towers in flames, but in a search-engine results-page, that headline is invisible. Instead, you want a clean, informative headline that alphabetizes well (no punctuation, numbers or articles at the start), along with a totally straight, totally informative lede graf. #I have to admit that my old-skool journalism training still has me grasping for the clever headline (Ball State gets the map on, for instance), but I’m learning. #
For online editors at student news orgs, this should serve as a hint that you may have to rewrite the headlines handed to you by design editors when putting stories on the web. Important details about the story should appear in the online headline so the resulting story appears higher in search results. #
Of course, it's not terribly hard to write a web hed that says: "BASTARDS!: Terrorists attack World Trade Center, Pentagon."
Writing informational heds doesn't mean you have to clean all the fun out of them.
Try and fit the full name of the place involved in, get a solid verb in there, and feel free to be creative enough to make folks click on your hed rather than someone else's when they're scanning a news portal page.
The copy editor in me would correct that from "Bastards!:" to just "Bastards!" You're right. The key is perhaps to treat the headline more as a headline/subhead combination. The example in the CNET article was much more to the point in its vagueness. "Green Beans come marching home" doesn't make sense at all. "Green Beans come marching home: bean company …" would help.