Link Baiting, New York Times Style

Link Baiting, New York Times Style
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Reader Comments (10)

  1. Clever bastards at the NYT. I’ve been on a headline rampage myself here lately, and I love it. There’s been a bit of a debate over headlines that appeal to people versus headlines that pack an SEO punch, but for me, the answer is clear.

    In fact, you’ve driven it home here: write for people. If you want a voice – a real voice – on the internet, then write for people, not programs.

  2. I wonder if you can kill two birds with one stone by using clever, catchy, titles which are good for humans along with a brief yet descriptive excerpt that tells the search engines what your post is about.

  3. Robb, that’s a pretty cool coincidence, because just yesterday I did research into the excerpt function in WordPress, and how Google uses it as essentially the meta-description in search results. It really does seem to be the way to get the best of both worlds.

    Post forthcoming. 🙂

  4. It’s terrible that we have to think of writing for our readers and the search engines both. Our focus “should” be on the reader. But Google has caused us to do all sorts of things to get high rankings and to even be noticed in order to get readers.

    I don’t know the answer to it. But it is good to see the old media having to learn the new tricks. Hopefully someday Google will make it so we can concentrate on the reader.

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