An apparent internal oversight at one newspaper may have shed some light on news organizations’ attempts to draw in readers with search engine optimization (SEO).
An article which ran on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s website on Saturday appeared to have been updated again today with the keywords for the piece visible to the public. Although the SEO-marked version appeared at some point early this morning, it has since been removed from the newspaper’s site.
Saturday’s original story ran with the headline "Keeping the faith, in their way," but the page that was updated this morning had the keyword-heavy headline of "Keeping the faith, in their way SEO: Andy Stanley, nondenominational church, faith, Atlanta, Christianity."
The newspaper was not available for comment by the time of publication.
The use of search engine optimization (SEO) appears to be an increasing trend for news organization as various websites attempt to draw in readers in a growing landscape of news content.
Last month the Huffington Post released its publishing standards for articles written by citizen journalists and noted that some content and headlines may be changed with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.
Even well regarded print organizations appear to be using the technique for their sites. In an interview earlier this year with the Association of Online Publishers, Drew Broomhall, search editor for the Times of London, said he already sees journalists using search engine optimization (SEO) in headlines and intros to articles.
