Headlines are important for SEO and understanding the content. There are three key aspects of a great headline: parsability, promise, and proper nouns. A good headline is easy to understand without context, conveys what the reader will learn, and includes important words. When writing headlines, identify relevant information, what's interesting, rewrite, use strong verbs, and get feedback. Google prioritizes fresh, text-heavy content with relevant keywords and links to credible sources. It dislikes little text, poor headlines, abbreviations, and new domains.

1. Headlines & SEO

2. Headlines make or break the story
2

3. Three P’s of a great web headline
 Parsability
-Is it easy to understand?
-Do you understand the story without additional context?
 Promise
-What the reader will get?
 Proper Nouns
-Words that the reader seeks.
3

17. “A joke that works is complete knowledge in a nanosecond.”
Steve Martin

18. 5 Steps to a great web headline
1. Identify relevant words and information (proper nouns)
2. Identify what’s interesting about the story
3. Write, then rewrite
4. Find better verbs
5. Check with a colleague
o Bonus: Is it Tweetable?
18

20. Relevant words: Relevant information:
Budget Deficit Women should make up half of the committee
Super Committee
Women
Debt Ceiling
Congress
$1.5 trillion
What’s interesting about the story?
- Women, who represent half the population,
should make up half of the super committee.
- A committee that decides our tax obligations
should represent the population by gender.

21. Women missing from Super Committee on deficit deal
Women absent from Super Committee on deficit deal
Call to action: Super Committee Must be Half Women
Super Committee Must be Half Women
Super Committee Should be Half Women
Budget Deficit Best Solved by Women
Budget Deficit Best Solved with Women
Why the budget deficit should be solved with women*
Is the budget deficit gender biased?*
Women: Deficit in the Super Committee
Female Deficit in the Budget Super Committee
Deficit: Women in Budget
Budget crisis needs a league of extraordinary ladies*
Secret weapon for the budget crisis: women
The case for a half-woman Super Committee

23. Relevant words: Relevant information:
water -Drop in precipitation by 4 - 5 %
peril -Will be 5 - 6 degrees warmer in the Central Valley
rain -Existing infrastructure can't keep up with
drought changes to climate
global warming
climate change
infrastructure
Central Valley
California
What’s interesting about the story?
-Something has to change in order to break even
-Existing infrastructure can't keep up with changes to climate

24. Report: Less rain, more pain this century for California water supplies
Rivers and dams can't keep up with California climate
Rivers and dams fall behind California's warming climate*
6 degrees of separation between…
6 degrees in Central California: The difference
6 degrees of heat in Central California may pinch water supplies
6 degrees of heat in Central California: the state is not ready
6 degrees of heat in Central California: state water supply not ready
Central California temps to rise by 6 degrees...
California still has no water
California still has water issues
California yet to overcome water crisis
For California water crisis, glass still half empty*
Why California rivers need more rain

25. SEO likes
25

26. How does Google work?
 Crawls text, imitating user behavior
-Google crawls from left to right
-Google crawls from top to bottom
 Headlines rule
26

27. What does Google like?
 Fresh content – news rules
 Text, Text, Text
 Relevant proper nouns
 Linking out to quality pages
 Being a credible established source of news
 Quality sites linking to you
27

28. SEO dislikes
28

29. What does Google dislike?
 Little or no text
 Bad headlines
 Abbreviations
 New domains
kplunews.org vs. news.kplu.org
29

30. Titles Exercise
30

31. Questions?
Ki-Min Sung
ksung@npr.org
(310)815-4220
http://editorial.digitalservices.npr.org/
31