The New York Times has an article today about newspaper websites being more tuned for search engines:

News organizations, by contrast, have moved cautiously. Mostly, they are making titles and headlines easier for search engines to find and fathom. About a year ago, The Sacramento Bee changed online section titles. “Real Estate” became “Homes,” “Scene” turned into “Lifestyle,” and dining information found in newsprint under “Taste,” is online under “Taste/Food.”

Some news sites offer two headlines. One headline, often on the first Web page, is clever, meant to attract human readers. Then, one click to a second Web page, a more quotidian, factual headline appears with the article itself. The popular BBC News Web site does this routinely on longer articles.

A need for news sites to change headlines and categories simply to improve Google ranking bothers me on some level. By using different labelling systems in print and online, the news service is showing a disregard for print subscribers that wish to take advantage of the web site as well. Beyond that, it is a need that quite often is simply not actually a need. If a news site has a category labeled “Real Estate,” Google should be able to equate that with “Homes.”

Google already already spends a good deal of time with any number of true news sites (meaning journalist or mainstream) with Google News. One would hope that, if your news site is being indexed within Google News, your labels are being equated with nonidentical, but synonymous labels. Google’s own stated goal is to index all information. If they are missing this piece, they need to do some programming.

All ranting aside, simply having a by-line to the category label that focuses down (a minor design decision) allows for the news service to serve each type of user in a consistent fashion without sacrificing pagerank. Perhaps that solution should have been considered before making an experience inconsistent.

(Via Tom Raferty’s I.T. Views)

http://blogometer.com/2006/02/16/f-brinley-bruton/

Feels sort of like I said 2 entries ago. Someone acting as an SEO is generally trying to sell you bad feelings. Have good people link to you, and let the rest sort it out. The way to have people link is to give them something worth linking to. I’m not sure it can be said any simpler.

SEO (or its full name, Search Engine Optimization) is a relatively benign term for a more malignent practice. What is actually happening is that Google (or MSN search, or whatever) is being hacked to provide a false result. Sometimes the SEO methods are positive, but never because of the root reason.

One such positive approach would be the use of actual text. Google’s robots read this data more effectively than images or flash, or even meta tags. And this is good, not because Google can read it easier, but because a whole new subset of readers can actually read what’s on your site: the blind. See, screen readers have trouble with little things like flash and images instead of text. Advances have been made, but the simplest is still the best.

Now, I can understand the desire to have an attractive web site with moving graphics and all of that. Really, I can. I like pictures myself. But if you are trying to expand your business and gain more customers, it doesn’t bode well if you are alienating a whole subset of potential customers at the outset, does it?

I’m going to give everyone who is looking for the services of an SEO some free advice. I think you’ll find that, if you actually implement it, it will work out better for your organization regardless of the field you are in. Not only will Google notice you, but people accessing your site from Google will be more likely to take advantage of your products or services.

Here it is: Have interesting, unique, and applicable content that will make people return and link to you. That’s it. But, you have to understand that while Google is multilingual, its primary language is the link. The link determines how important you are. Not only that, but the level of importance the linker has determines how important you are.

The way to win is to be the most popular kid in your field. Do that by spending time on your actual web content, not just improving your Google rank. It may start a little slower, but in the end the payoff will be even bigger. And everyone benefits from that.