Artists, Labels & Managers

By: Jonathan Rick | Mashable
Jonathan Rick is a director at Levick Strategic Communications. He contributes to Levick’s Bulletproof Blog. Follow him @jrick.

Why do search engines always rank certain websites so highly? Sure, their content might be great, but their search engine optimization is definitely awesome. Indeed, for many sites, the search-engine spiders that crawl the web deliver a third or more of their traffic.

So crafting key parts of a page, like a headline, is critical. Perhaps the most famous example comes from the Huffington Post, which in February reeled in readers with the ingenious bait: “What Time Is the Super Bowl?”

In protest, writers for publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Atlantic each took turns slugging the SEO punching bag. The headlines describe their complaint: “Gene Weingarten Column Mentions Lady Gaga.” “This Boring Headline Is Written for Google.” “Google Doesn’t Laugh: Saving Witty Headlines in the Age of SEO.”

In other words, algorithms don’t appreciate wit, irony, humor, or style. As reporter Steve Lohr put it, they’re “numbingly literal-minded.” Yes, it is one of the definitive 21st century truisms that in addition to writing for eternity, or for one’s mother, today’s…