SEO for Reformed Newspaper Journalists

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There are lots of fabulous writers out there who are crafting some amazing web copy, but they just don’t get SEO. The problem is SEO is the way to get all those cool readers you’ve heard about. SEO doesn’t have to be a dirty word, even if you’re a reformed newspaper journalist who doesn’t care for all these newfangled terms. I know it does seem icky to think of writing for an algorithm (and writers don’t tend to like anything that has a term like algorithm in it…. since that sounds a little too much like math).

But the funny thing is just how easy the very basics of SEO are. That’s especially true for writers who are writing to a specific medium and are already used to certain terms and rules.

So here, for the reformed newspaper journalists turned web writers (or journalists who are at one of the few newspapers who get that they might actually want organic search traffic… or even know what the hell that means): my journaleze-to-geek decoder on SEO:

Hed = Title

You get this, right? The header to your article. Easy enough. In SEO and web terms, that’s your title. In newspapers, your goal is to grab the attention of some loser walking past a newspaper box while busy buying groceries. So accuracy is kinda sorta important, but grabbing attention is so much more so.

With SEO and web writing, your main goal with the header is to say what the article is. Don’t get clever or cute or creative and (for reasons that go well beyond SEO), don’t use obnoxious puns. Just say what it is. Ask yourself: is anyone on the planet ever going to type this into a search engine? If so, will that person be looking for something remotely similar to what I’m writing about?

Lede = Intro Graph

The lede, or lead (why to journalists intentionally mispell that word anyway?), was once supposed to answer the what, when, where, why, yada yada. Then journalists realized that was pretty boring, and started doing work-up leads and enticing people into stories. I love that stuff.

In web writing, don’t do that. You want to get that term you used in your title into your intro graph. A couple times, if you can do that without being obvious. Then you want to use the term again sprinkled comfortably throughout the copy. If you don’t have the words from your title anywhere in your first graph, please reread the last two paragraphs until you do.

Nut graf = Meta description

The nut graph in newspapers is that paragraph, sometimes the lead and sometimes buried 10 painful paragraphs in, that says what the story is about. It’s for those readers who wonder, interestingly enough, “Why the hell am I reading this anyway?” Sometimes it’s missing entirely. But that’s a whole other issue.

In web writing, your nut graph is your lead. Yes, it is. Don’t argue, damn it. It’s also your meta description, which is the paragraph you tell search engines your article is about. Sometimes they believe you and tell the world that, too. Sometimes they decide you’re full of crap and ignore you. But you should have the description there anyway, just in case.

So there you go. It isn’t so hard. It didn’t even feel like math. I hope you don’t feel too geeky-dirty now.

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