Comments on: Globe spikes a reporters view on SEO

By: Judy Margolis

Judy Margolis — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:55:12 +0000

SEO’s new domination of the editorial sphere sticks in my craw, too. But the Globe’s hard-won lesson is one I will heed from now on.

By: Ethics of social media for journalists | Save the Media

Ethics of social media for journalists | Save the Media — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:34:05 +0000

[...] The pulled blog post: The Globe and Mail’s book editor attended a search-engine optimization seminar at the newspaper and then blogged critically on the newspaper’s Web site about the worshop. According to Ingram’s explanation, the books editor felt the workshop stressed too much that online headlines should be understandable to search engines, rather than people. Some senior editors at the Globe took umbrage at the post, and it was pulled. Ingram urged that he explain to readers why the post was taken down, especially considering some people had already seen the post, and at least one blog had linked to it. [...]

By: David Reevely

David Reevely — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:41:58 +0000

The trouble with witty flourishes online, versus in the paper, is that they often appear in isolation. In a printed newspaper, you’d get a subhed, maybe an image of the book cover or the author, or a label overlining the “The marinating of the ancient rhymer” hed.

Without any of those additional cues, presented the way heds normally are on a webpage (whether it’s Google’s or the Globe’s) there’s simply no way to tell what the hell “The marinating of the ancient rhymer” is about. It doesn’t do what a hed needs to do. It’s not serving Google’s robots, but it’s also not serving human readers coming to the Globe to read interesting things about important books.

By: Greg J. Smith

Greg J. Smith — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:28:37 +0000

Jeff, you just saved me a post. Well said.

(Web) article titles are metadata, not an opportunity to add a pithy flourish. If I didn’t know better I’d think the newspaper industry has something against the search engine biz…

By: bmo

bmo — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:18:26 +0000

scowen’s is one of the best pieces emanating from the globe in a while. and they spike it because a thin-skinned journo profs nose is out of joint or it doesn’t fit the brand image. yeesh. so much for transparency. “as long as we look transparent we’ll be fine.” clueless. the folks in charge do not understand even when they get it right.

By: Walking the walk on transparency » Nieman Journalism Lab

Walking the walk on transparency » Nieman Journalism Lab — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:01:25 +0000

[...] post (which you can read in full at this blog, which grabbed a copy shortly after it appeared) was about search engine optimization or SEO, which [...]

By: Lori Kittelberg

Lori Kittelberg — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:31:15 +0000

Some good points made in the now-deleted blog post. I have to say, I am a sucker for clever headlines.

By: Jeff Jedras

Jeff Jedras — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:30:14 +0000

While the removal of posts is troublesome, there’s something both amusing and troubling about their aversion to SEO techniques.

I work for a trade publisher and we’ve been employing SEO techniques in our headline writing for a number of years. I agree, it can make for more factual/less exciting headlines. It does lead to a little less creativity; those witty headlines that the book guys were so proud of aren’t going to drive traffic.

SEO, however, is a necessary evil in the world of modern Web journalism. And the fact the Globe is just getting into this now, and that the reaction of the old-school print reporters is so visceral, seems to me emblematic of the challenges that the traditional “main-stream media” has a whole has faced adopting its business model to the Web world.

The book guys can either do SEO to get their traffic stats up and find readers, or they could find themselves without a book section one day soon as part of the latest cost-cutting measure because, surprise, readers aren’t finding them.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:21:00 +0000

Ian, I’ve written something at my Globe blog about the removal of Peter’s post, if you (or anyone else) wants to have a look. It’s here: http://tgam.ca/CH7

By: Parker

Parker — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:42:36 +0000

Snap! Who was that “hipster-doofus” journalism professor?

I think both sides make great arguments, and can’t there be a happy middle ground?

For example: can’t they have the title be “Book title by Author: A Review” and have a sub-title (visible upon click through) be something whimsical?

I also don’t see how this changes anything in the switch from the print version to the web version. I’m as likely to read an article based on the title in a newspaper as I am on the web version.

I’ve also always heard that the BBC is praised for their headlines, all of them too the point and factual.