Struggling newspapers can lure more advertising dollars without shedding a nickel by using Newspaper SEO. In doing so, small-to-medium sized daily newspapers increase their ranking among search engines (Google, Ask, Yahoo, MSN), which translates into increased exposure and greater interest from advertisers.
It works this way: Newspaper SEO (or "headline SEO" as it sometimes referred) relies on specific headline keywords to boost the newspaper's search engine ranking; better rankings means more visibility to people searching for specific news content; more site hits translates into higher marks from research firms who track and monitor visitor traffic. High scorecard marks from firms like Nielsen Online are invaluable to smaller companies attempting to lure big advertisers.
Right now, newspapers are experiencing a major shift from print to online. Those with web-savvy are finding refuge as circulation numbers continue to drop. Not only are they surviving, many are thriving, even competing with newspapers three-to-four times their circulation size - an impossibility in the print realm.
A prime example of this: the Cleveland Plains Dealer who cracked Nielsen Online's Top 30 Online Newspaper list in March 2008, a first for the newspaper. Traffic to Cleveland.com (the web site that hosts the Plains Dealer stories) rose 90 percent from a year ago, helping to off set the newspaper's 4 percent drop in circulation. With as many as 1.5 million visitors a month, Cleveland.com is poised to attract newer, bigger advertisers.
But what about those tiny dailies out there who aren't web-savvy? Who's print circulation isn't 400,000 but instead 40,000, or even 4,000? Search marketing of this kind sounds like an impossible feat when so many small-to-medium sized dailies can't even afford a decent web site. These small news outposts are notorious for being understaffed, overworked and underpaid. After making payroll, they have little-to-no revenue left over for technological improvements.
Fortunately, no additionally gadgetry is needed here. The power lies in the hands of the copyeditor, who in the age of ink-and-paper news, based his or her reputation on the ability to generate compelling headlines, bold and clever enough to draw the attention of passers-by. Times have changed though. News in the digital era requires catering to a new type of reader, one driven by computer bytes rather than sound bites: what's known as the web "spider" or web crawler.
These microscopic bots read web content in the same manner as a human eye: vertically, top to bottom. The major difference is that a human reads for content; the spider scans for keywords. The search engine indexes keyword-laden pages in its directory and ranks them with other web pages according to keyword frequency and placement. Since the Web is so enormous, web spiders only have time to read the first few lines of any page, making newspaper headlines among those they scan first.
As you can imagine, the meaning behind idioms, puns, turns-of-phrase, and other forms of clever writing are completely lost in this process. Take this example from a headline that worked great for print, not so great for the web. "D'ow! Credit fear socks it to stocks," which appeared in the New York Daily News, July 27, 2008 edition. Yes, it's catchy and likely created some buzz from Homer Simpson fans. However, an expression like "D'oh" or "D'ow" is largely idiomatic, something a cold, computer algorithm would never understand. The headline writer who played it creative likely lost out to the one who played it straight by simply putting: "Dow falls on bad credit news."
So, if your advertising numbers are way down, opt for some Headline SEO. Make use of any of the number of keyword indicator tools, ranking tools and resources available for free on the web. And whatever you do, save the clever stuff for the print edition. Play it straight (and safe) when writing headlines for the online edition.
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