11 February 2011 | Author: N. Hamilton Media copywriter
The New York Times reports that while The Huff has hired respected journalists to boost its news content, the publication uses top-ranking searched-for terms in article headlines to lure readers.
By choosing story topics based on popular searches, The NYT argues The Huffington Post was able to inflate its own net worth by using SEO tactics to increase readership and display advertising revenues.
The NYT also reported 35 per cent of The Huffington Post's January web audience came from search engines - a comparatively high figure given only 20 per cent of fellow e-publisher CNN.com's web audience came from search engine referrals.
Mario Ruiz, a Huffington Post spokesman, confirmed that SEO did play a role in the publication's success but refused to discuss how SEO strategies were deployed on the site.
NYT journo Claire Cain Miller said experts seem split on whether deploying SEO strategies will help publications to drive profits in a post-print world or simply result in a dumbing-down of journalistic skill and content.
Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta has similarly warned that while SEO is "absolutely essential," e-publishers could find they develop a "heroin drip" reliance on strategies and techniques - with high hit rates and increased ad revenues driven by successful SEO implementation likely to prove irresistible.
"[Web publishers] had this really good content at the beginning, but they realise the more SEO they do, the more money they make, and the pressure really pushes down the quality on their sites," Skrenta told the NYT.
Scholar Vivek Wadhwa said selecting and writing news topics using SEO strategies is only a problem when e-publishers (or content farms) prioritise clicks over content - leaving readers disappointed.
"You're not really crossing the line if you're creating content for the sake of disseminating information," Wadhwa said. "The problem is these other players producing content based on what people click on."
Joshua Benton, director of Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, praised Huff for blending traditional journalism with an internet business model adopting SEO and relevant social networking feeds to attract and engage with a growing, tech-savvy readership.
"HuffPo went from being extremely focused on tactics that a lot of news organizations didn't like, but they've started making money, built up an audience, and now they're moving into more sophisticated territory.
"What they've been successful at is creating the kind of brand that other sites have or would love to have, so that people want to type in 'Huffington Post' in their browser," Benton said.
AOL's Huffington Post: SEO-led news?
As Facebook eyes news services and media moguls the Murdochs push newly-launched iPad publication The Daily, AOL's newly scooped-up Huffington Post has been whistle-blown for using SEO to lure readers and to determine what's newsworthy.The New York Times reports that while The Huff has hired respected journalists to boost its news content, the publication uses top-ranking searched-for terms in article headlines to lure readers.
By choosing story topics based on popular searches, The NYT argues The Huffington Post was able to inflate its own net worth by using SEO tactics to increase readership and display advertising revenues.
The NYT also reported 35 per cent of The Huffington Post's January web audience came from search engines - a comparatively high figure given only 20 per cent of fellow e-publisher CNN.com's web audience came from search engine referrals.
Mario Ruiz, a Huffington Post spokesman, confirmed that SEO did play a role in the publication's success but refused to discuss how SEO strategies were deployed on the site.
NYT journo Claire Cain Miller said experts seem split on whether deploying SEO strategies will help publications to drive profits in a post-print world or simply result in a dumbing-down of journalistic skill and content.
Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta has similarly warned that while SEO is "absolutely essential," e-publishers could find they develop a "heroin drip" reliance on strategies and techniques - with high hit rates and increased ad revenues driven by successful SEO implementation likely to prove irresistible.
"[Web publishers] had this really good content at the beginning, but they realise the more SEO they do, the more money they make, and the pressure really pushes down the quality on their sites," Skrenta told the NYT.
Scholar Vivek Wadhwa said selecting and writing news topics using SEO strategies is only a problem when e-publishers (or content farms) prioritise clicks over content - leaving readers disappointed.
"You're not really crossing the line if you're creating content for the sake of disseminating information," Wadhwa said. "The problem is these other players producing content based on what people click on."
Joshua Benton, director of Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, praised Huff for blending traditional journalism with an internet business model adopting SEO and relevant social networking feeds to attract and engage with a growing, tech-savvy readership.
"HuffPo went from being extremely focused on tactics that a lot of news organizations didn't like, but they've started making money, built up an audience, and now they're moving into more sophisticated territory.
"What they've been successful at is creating the kind of brand that other sites have or would love to have, so that people want to type in 'Huffington Post' in their browser," Benton said.
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