This Boring Headline Is Written for Google
http://snipurl.com/p011 (Story from New York Times)
This story is causing a lot of buzz in webmaster forums and
search engine discussions as though it were not previously
common knowledge in the SEO community how important headlines
can be. Somehow people seem surprised at the need to use
important descriptive words and phrases in headlines.
I’m stunned that anyone who professes any knowledge about
search engines can actually still question the value of
headlines to search ranking. Have any of those surprised by
the need for descriptive (rather than creative / cute /
ironic / type headlines) ever done an actual web search?
I do this all day long (search). It is how I earn my living,
so it doesn’t surprise me – but still, aren’t you far more
likely to click on search results links that clearly include
your searched phrase in the search results page at Google,
versus one that doesn’t include what you searched for in the
page title in that search engine results list? (For those who
aren’t aware, your TITLE metatag is what shows up as the link
in search engine results lists.)
You will always see the keywords you searched for in the
TITLE tags of the top ranked sites on search result pages.
Not sometimes – ALWAYS. Maybe the words are not in exact
order you searched for them, and maybe not every word you
used is in those top results, but the more words the site has
in that title and the closer they are to the way you searched
for them, the more likely that page will turn up among the
top results.
Clearly, there are other “off page” factors, like how other
sites link to that page, text included on the body of the
page, internal links on the page and site theme all factor
into this. But the New York Times having reporters and
editors write factual, descriptive headlines is solid proof
that keywords in titles and headlines are critical to ranking
or the Times wouldn’t be admitting the need for a change to
descriptive headlines for Google. Because on news sites, the
headline is used verbatim in the TITLE metatag. If for some
reason the words you searched are NOT in the titles, it is
only because lots of sites have linked to those top ranked
pages using the keywords you searched for.
You can test this by clicking that “Cached” link you see
below the results Google shows. The keywords you searched
with will be highlighted on that cached page. If one or more
of the words you searched don’t actually appear on the page
anywhere, you’ll see an explanation on the Google cached page
header above the Google cached version of the page: I did a
search for “Boring News Headlines” at Google and clicked on
the “Cached” link below the number one result, which was
actually Yahoo news. 
There are a couple of lines in that
Google header which read,
“These search terms have been highlighted: news”
“These terms only appear in links pointing to this page:
boring headline”
(Results like this make me wonder sometimes if Google is
manually messing with results to poke fun at their
competitor.)
So back to my point here – Use of the headline at news sites
in the TITLE tags, combined with the fact that search results
ALWAYS have the words you searched for included in that TITLE
tag and in the headline on that page and probably use H1 tags
(HTML tag intended for headlines or titles on visible page
text) to emphasize the importance of the headline used.
This story reveals that the New York Times is admitting
openly that they are now using descriptive headlines instead
of cute, ironic or fanciful headlines that have little
meaning if they are viewed in a list of headlines and out of
context, minus accompanying photos or illustrations. This is
how many RSS news readers present headlines, in a plain text
list, linked to the news page.
But if the New York Times is writing boring headlines, that
is nobody’s fault but their own. It is still possible to
write dramatic, interesting and even shocking headlines which
still include keywords within the 7 to 10 words used for the
headline. I do it routinely in articles I write on search
engine optimization. As a matter of fact, I pride myself on
my creative headlines on SEO related articles – while still
using the most important keywords in that same headline.
I invite you to search for the following headlines and I
guarantee that you’ll end up on one of my articles.
Keyword Voodoo! Invisible Metatag Mumbo Jumbo
Important words “Keyword Metatag”
Linking Psychosis is Treatable Link Obsession & PageRank
Important keywords “Linking, link, PageRank”
Google Big Daddy Searchquake About to Rock Your Ranking?
Important keywords “Google BigDaddy Ranking”
Now I am very aware that it is unlikely that anyone will
search for and find my articles using ONLY the important
keywords, but the point here is that descriptive and
important keywords can be included in a headline without that
headline being boring. It also makes it extremely easy to
find my articles online since most sites use the articles’
existing headline in the TITLE metatags and it shows up
in search results.
Operating an article archive for the past six and a half
years, I’ve seen how authors submit titles, that when viewed
out of context or without a text snippet, the titles appear
plain odd, cute or funny, sometimes dramatic, even
incendiary. But there is no way to tell what they are ABOUT.
You’ve got to realize that far fewer people will read an
article that isn’t apparent as to topic. Headlines are often
seen online as hyperlinked text in lists of other headlines.
Authors should know that their titles are critical elements
to search engine ranking above all. If they don’t include
descriptive, important keywords related to the article topic,
they are as good as invisible to the search engines when used
in the TITLE tag and H1 title tags on any web page.
Many sites will use free content articles by submitting them
through an automated CMS system which inserts common HTML
tags, hyperlinks URL’s and format the text to reflect site
design standards. These automated systems often take the
title and place it in the TITLE metatag on the page and in an
H1 tag in the page text. Those places on any web page where
headlines are used are critical to search engine ranking and
when they DON’T include important keywords, the page will
rarely rank well for the topic of the article due to that one
oversight by an author attempting to be creative.
When a cute, catchy article title is used without including
descriptive and on-topic keywords, it is guaranteed that the
article will not show up in most searches. If a news site
uses only plain descriptive text, it is still likely that a
search won’t reveal that article in searches. But if a little
creativity is applied to that headline title, then you are
guaranteed to at least be able to find that article in a
search, because you’ll remember both the topic and the
important keywords. Just try searching for “Google SEO
Sleeping Pill” after April 20 (after search engines index it)
it’s GUARANTEED you’ll see this article in top search results.
It should be your goal to creatively title articles while
still including important keywords if you intend your
article to be seen. Maybe the New York Times will get
their creative headline mojo back once they’ve gotten
a little practice, too. My title would’ve worked better.
Google SEO Sleeping Pill – Yawning at Dull News Headlines
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