A lesson in SEO

The topic of SEO or search engine optimization has been in the news recently since Google changed the way search is done via their algorithm. I’m going to recommend checking out the most recent On the Media where they address the issue and it’s possible that AOL overpaid for the Huffington Post since sites that churn out repackaged content also known as content farming will be downgraded in Google’s new search.

This weekend, someone at The Washington Post hit the publish button too early and an article was published with place holder text in place where the headline should go. Headlines are being written for search engines meaning the headline may not represent what the article is about, but the most titillating aspect of the story for the sake of searching and clicking.

Below is a picture of how The Washington Post gets clicks:

Add something cool here -->

 

Not to be outdone, The LA Times uses another form type of trick the get people to click on links. It’s called the oldest trick in the book: pictures of hot women (note my own use of SEO language)

Are you ready for some football.com?

Major League Baseball seems to get the internet. They charge users to watch games online and since baseball season is only spring and summer (unless your favorite teams are good) MLB.com bring users to the winter meetings and the draft and more. It’s really worth your while.

The NFL on the other hand, is known as being very stingy in offering its content. Networks unaffiliated with the NFL may only broadcast a very limited amount of football highlights and there are rumors that the NFL will take some of the content off broadcast and cable TV making it exclusively available on the NFL network, a pay network.

However, the NFL and NBC announced that the Sunday night football game will be broadcast online for free…with advertising. The ad revenue will be split between NBC and the NFL.

Partnering with the NFL will be NBC, which broadcasts the league’s games on Sunday nights. NBC will make its television feed — including Al Michaels’ play-by-play and John Madden’s color commentary — available on the websites of both the network and league. NBC will sell the advertising for the venture and presumably share the revenue with the NFL.

Welcome to the internet age NFL. If this works, maybe all games will be broadcast or rebroadcast online. In the past ABC has sold BCS games on iTunes and Hulu has some amazing NBA games available for streaming.

Google is a media company

I have three radio shows that I don’t miss: Howard Stern, On the Media and This American life.  I listen to Howard and On the Media on my Sirius radio.  I listen to This American Life on my local NPR station or the podcast.

I never OTM missed because it’s impossible to miss it. If I don’t hear it on WAMU on Saturday, I’d download the podcast and listen to it on Monday at work. Now I have my Sirius programmed to record the episode every Saturday morning at 9:00. On the media has just always seemed to be ahead in understanding  the emerging media. They were talking about the power of blogs, bloggers and their effect on media for years. OTM just seemed ahead of the curve of new media and the impact of web 2.0.

However today, OTM seemed slightly myopic in their assessment of Google as a political player. In a piece which aired today, the guest host Amy Eddings, asked NPI’s Pete Lyden about the impact of Google and YouTube on the political system.

Google, the host said, has the responsibility to cover politics AND make money from it.  She asked if this was possible to remain as passive  search engine and a provider of political news coverage while trying to be profitable from selling political ad words.

Of course it is. Google, like CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News , the Washington Post, LA Times and more, is a news organization that report on politics, provide commentary and then break for paid content sponsored by the same campaign (or political movement) that was just reported on by the news service. News outlets, websites and some blogs included, are intended as money making ventures. Google, which is more profitable than many of the aforementioned news outlets’ parent companies, is a news organization too. OTM never shows that Google is anything other than a new news outlet.

OTM’s inability to understand that Google is now a news organization is disappointing as the New York Public Radio show is usually ahead of curve, not woefully behind it.