SEO is Nothing New

Search Engine Optimization is nothing new. Long before the internet came around people searched for information manually, and the people who provided that information had to find a way to get their information to the top of the list.

There has been a lot of debate about "writing for SEO", and whether it is appropriate.

Consider the newspaper stand of old. Two papers sit on stacks, face up. One headline reads "Police raid illegal distillery-4 arrested". The other reads "Cops knock down gin mill-Cash and Guns seized".

Which paper is more likely to grab your attention?

Now read the story lead.

Imagine that the first newspaper leads with something like "Inspector John Smith confirms that a home-based distillery was entered early this morning following an anonymous tip..." and the second reads "Heavily armed cops broke down the doors of a massive illegal gin mill in a pre-dawn raid this morning..."

Which article would you most likely read first?

Even though the second example is considered by many to be "tabloid" writing, it has been popular with readers, who use headlines and story leads to guide their reading, for many years. People who prefer (or write for) newspapers that fall into the first example will tell you that our second example is trashy, second rate journalism. But it gets read and, if the information within the body of the story is substantially the same as in its competitor's version, it has value.

Publishers of old learned how people "searched" for information, even when it was printed on paper, and they went out of their way to guide their readers to the stories that they wanted them to read. Perhaps not surprisingly, the stories with the best headlines and strongest leads were positioned next to the newspaper's highest paying ad space. In this regard, the "new" media is no different than the "old" media.

SEO is really just the age-old practice of writing a compelling headline and a strong lead. But now, computers allow us to scan millions of sources simultaneously, and filter out the headlines that are irrelevant.