

De-Optimized Content - shandip
https://medium.com/lou-reeds-nephew/b167366c7e17

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themodelplumber
I thought this was going to be about all the sites on Tumblr that read like
the copy was finalized on a napkin, make you hunt for tiny navigation arrows,
and yet end up being full of some pretty cool stuff that shows up in Google
results.

Edit: It's still kind of a cool idea anyway. I recently contacted a guy about
his Perl-driven site to ask him how the plumbing worked, just because it
looked like it was still going strong based on code that was written in 1995
and maintained to this day. There's something cool and comforting about seeing
sites that aren't powered by Node or Wintersmith or some other zippy new thing
--especially if they have become really popular for some reason or another.

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werner34
I am sorry, but what is the message here?

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GotAnyMegadeth
Don't employ hipsters to do your SEO

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visakanv
Satire or not, this is really not worth anybody's time. Move along folks.

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user24
Insightful!

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nsfyn55
What is the significance of Lou Reed?

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ChrisBanner
Proto-hipster?

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ssharp
So stuffing sex-related words into the keywords tag is the SEO equivalent of
drinking PBR?

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danso
Satire, I think. Sadly, the idea that SEO has killed the art of artsy headline
writing is pretty prevalent in the media industry, in which traditional
j-school courses have classes devoted to copy-writing/headlines, and in which
"Headless body found in topless bar" is the gold standard.

That is a pretty good headline, and one that doesn't need to be optimized
(unless the body belonged to someone relatively famous), or the stripper bar
was owned by a city councilmember. But the point of SEO is to make content
accessible in the long-tail...A headline celebrating the home team finally
winning the Super Bowl, "YES! FINALLY!", has some poetic power but its impact
is in its _context and display_...that is, 160-pt font across the top with
huge celebratory photos.

But "YES! FINALLY!" doesn't tell you anything about the story when viewed a
week later in a search engine or archive results. It's strange that
newspapers, which pride themselves on being the official recordkeepers of
history, often have such a dim view of the importance of SEO...which really,
when done with non-black-hat intentions, is _reader-optimized_ text.

Edit: one more point...many news editors who hate on SEO still seem to be
unaware that you can do a SEO headline in the meta tags while preserving the
pithy headline for he we page display...so it's not even really a dilemma
between art and business, just technical ignorance.

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user24
> But the point of SEO is to make content accessible in the long-tail

It shouldn't be the job of editors to second guess search engines. A search
engine that doesn't give you my article about the home team winning the
superbowl because I titled it "YES! FINALLY!" is a poor search engine (all
other things being equal).

The point is that content is _compromised_ by the all-too-widespread practice
of making sure our content is accessible to machines first, and humans second.

If the home team win the superbowl, I want to say "YES! FINALLY!" without fear
of losing audience.

In today's internet, I have to say "Home team win Superbowl 2013 sports news
football usa teams stats"

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danso
You can do both, of course, with the use of metatags.

But that point aside, it _is_ the editor's job to second guess things, as you
say. By writing a headline, an editor is implicitly saying, just in case you
don't get to reading every story on this page, here's a 10 to 100 word summary
of what it's about. The difference here is the medium...the print page makes
it easy to convey meaning through design and photos. A search engine does not.
And unless you want your search result pages to look like Myspace, I think
it's important for the metadata to convey actual meaning that doesn't require
the context (I.e. Buying a back issue of the newspaper) for it to make sense

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user24
> You can do both, of course, with the use of metatags.

says who? How do you know how Google works? Do they pay attention to metatags
any more? Even if we knew they did, the rest of the algorithm is deliberately
mysterious to the point that if Site A is ranking higher than Site B, and Site
A happens to have more descriptive titles, Site B will start copying that
style in the name of "SEO" and you're back to square one. Metatags indeed.

> it is the editor's job to second guess things

That's not what I said. I said it's not the job of editors to second guess
search engines.

I think the theory of headlines goes far beyond "here's a summary".

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normloman
Are there really people like this out there? Otherwise, I don't see the point
of satire.

