Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is what those people who use phrases like 'no brainer' call a 'no brainer'.
It means making your online content findable by search engines. E.g. Google (other search engines are available).
So that's easy, isn't it?
Well, no, it isn't. Because the journalistic world we're leaving - mass audiences which need to be told that your story really, really is sexy - was such fun. And journalists - yes, you - need to be enticed out of that world.
E.g. how we larrffed at the Sun's "How do you solve a problem like Korea?".
And at the Guardian when Sir Tom Legge was appointed to chair the Sierra Leone weapons inquiry - the Sandline inquiry: "Legge heads arms body".
And at football's "Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious" ... golf's "Mother of eight makes hole in one" ... or "Prostitutes appeal to pope".
Unforgettable. And unfindable.
Martin Asser is the BBC's SEO specialist. He can be grumpy, critical and wide-eyed in admiration, as appropriate. He'll be writing regularly for CoJo online on all things search. Do not miss what he has to say if you want people to find your stuff.
Here's his latest survey on the Jonathan Ross resignation story in the hours after it broke. He used the search term 'jonathan ross' throughout and this is what he found:
Google organic search (google.co.uk) had a 'News results for ...' section at the top of its Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Guardian stories were first and second. Third was a story from Digital Spy from the previous day. And the featured image was from the Guardian.
A BBC result ranked on the second screenful ... but it was the Jonathan Ross Radio 2 programme page, which failed to mention his announcement.
Google organic SERP also featured 'Image results for ...' at the bottom of Page 1. It included six images of Ross ... none was from the BBC.
Guardian, Daily Mail and Coventry Telegraph images ranked - all were old stories though.
The Google News SERP for 'jonathan ross' was led by a Daily Telegraph sidebar. At 2 was the BBC; at 3, Guardian; 4 Daily Mirror; 5 NME; 6 BBC News.
Three other up-to-date headlines were included below the top ranking story on the Google News SERP - all were from the Guardian.
The Jonathan Ross section on the Google News UK aggregated page was led by the Telegraph sidebar. Second was BBC, third NME - followed by Guardian, Times, Mirror, Press Association and Wikipedia ... all without headlines visible.
Conclusions? The best SEO performance by far was from the Guardian. The Telegraph was second; the BBC was a respectable third.
So, what did the Guardian do right?
1. Story volume:
By mid-afternoon, the Guardian was offering a dozen stories related to Jonathan Ross, most of them with bylines (which appears to add link juice).
In most cases the full name 'Jonathan Ross' is used, near the front of the headline.
The stories marked* ranked on Google and Google News.
- Jonathan Ross quits BBC, by Steve Busfield and John Plunket
- Jonathan Ross's full BBC resignation statement
- Maybe Jonathan Ross jumped? But the BBC weren't sanding in his way (sic), by Steve Busfield (Organgrinder, blog)
- Jonathan Ross: a career in pictures
- Jonathan Ross's finest moments in clips, by Vicky Frost
- Jonathan Ross profile; jester who may have lost his court, by James Robinson and John Plunket
- Mail's audience supports its Ross campaign*, by Roy Greenslade (#2)
- How should the Beeb spend Wossy's salary, by Richard Vine
- As Jonathan Ross quits, who should take over his BBC shows*, by James Robinson (Image result)
- Jonathan Ross's career: timeline* by Mercedes Bunz (#1)
- Jonathan Ross did the right thing in resigning - for the BBC and for himself, by Emily Bell
- Is Ross a loss?
2. Linking
The Guardian has a dedicated URL for Jonathan Ross stories (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/jonathan-ross) and one for BBC stories (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/bbc). And all the day's stories had an inline link (or hyperlink) to both URLs, either in the first paragraph or very high up in the story.
There was also liberal use of inline links throughout the coverage - either to old Guardian stories or other specially themed URLs (e.g. for Channel 4, Russell Brand etc) or external pages (Daily Mail, Telegraph, BBC).
The timeline, which was the best performing Guardian piece on the day, has no fewer than 11 inline links, as well as a hyperlink to Ms Bunz's own page and additional links to the Guardian/Ross URL and the Guardian/BBC URL at the side and bottom.
3. URL structure
There remains some debate about the effectiveness of keywords in URLs, but it could be important that all the Guardian stories have the words 'Jonathan Ross' in their unique web address.
For the most part it is an abbreviated version of the headline/title tag.
Jonathan Ross's finest moments in clips - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/jan/07/jonathan-ross-finest-moments
But if the headline doesn't include the full phrase 'Jonathan Ross', an optimised version is supplied in the URL anyway:
Is Ross a loss? - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2010/jan/07/jonathan-ross-bbc
How should the Beeb spend Wossy's salary http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/tvandradioblog/2010/jan/07/jonathan-ross-bbc-money
Mail's audience supports its Ross campaign http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/jan/07/jonathan-ross-dailymail
What did the Telegraph do right?
The Telegraph also had ten stories up about Jonathan Ross by mid-afternoon, but three of these were different versions of the main news article. There was a smattering of byline pieces and all URLs had the words 'Jonathan Ross' in them - derived directly from the headline, unlike the Guardian URLs which seem to be written manually.
The Telegraph has no inline linking and no special URL for Jonathan Ross stories. Its technique is to gather five or six links in a box in the main body of the story. Sometimes there are duplications in this box, which looks pretty terrible and may dilute the link juice.
Headlines were as follows (note front focusing of key term 'Jonathan Ross'):
- Jonathan Ross quits the BBC by Gordon Rayner
- Jonathan Ross: a history of blunders in broadcasting
- Jonathan Ross: profile of a researcher turned chatshow king
- Jonathan Ross: the salary that was a bigger talking point than the show by Andrew Pettie (#1 in Google news, and Google news aggregated)
- Video: Jonathan Ross speaks after quitting the BBC
- Jonathan Ross: I quit the BBC - statement in full
- Farewell then, Jonathan Ross - funny, affable and crude by Ed West (blog)
Note, the ranking story has a byline.
What could the BBC have done better?
For several of its early versions, the BBC's main news article ("Ross to leave BBC after 13 years" ID 8446395) did not have a separate SEO headline.
That meant it wasn't clear to the search engine that the ambiguous (Mr or Mrs?) 'Ross' was in fact 'Mr-controversy-personified-Jonathan-Ross'.
Whether this was an oversight or the result of technical problems the BBC News website was experiencing at the time, it certainly would have hobbled the BBC story in SEO terms and might well have been the reason why it never ranked anywhere.
There's evidence that once Google has written off a story, that's it - you don't get a second chance.
What about sidebars? The picture is slightly better here.
Initially, the BBC Profile; Jonathan Ross (with Liam Allen's byline) went in as top story on the Google News SERP. It dropped soon afterwards, but then stuck around for a long time in the 2 spot.
Including bylines of people who have previously appeared in Google News often helps to get their latest story ranked again, because it assists the search engine in establishing an article's credibility. And if you rank in Google News it will often get passed onto the more widely used Google organic pages in a 'News results for' section).
The BBC's other sidebar, 'What's next for Jonathan Ross?', meanwhile ranked on the Google News aggregated page and its body picture appeared as an image result on Google News for a while.
The BBC is never likely to match the impressive 10+ cross-linked Guardian stories and it doesn't have dedicated subject URLs for easy and effective SEO linking (e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/jonathan-ross) - but clearly, when headlines have the 'right' words in them, from the search engine's point of view, they get picked up.
Perhaps the biggest problem on the day was the Jonathan Ross R2 programme page which ranked on Page 1 of the Google organic SERP ... but which made no mention of Ross's bombshell resignation.
The lack of a link to BBC coverage squanders any potential link juice to be gained from that page ... and, from the SEO point of view, it's important that such pages, which often rank high up in Google during periods of heavy search, are kept up to date.
