The OSE (Optimized Search Engine) is an important tool to get web traffic directed to your site. It will search for key words within an article you wrote and then compare them to see if they fit the requisits given to the search engine. And if you are a web journalist this is absolutely vital.
Why?
Well, you want to get recognized don't you? You might have an amazing article but no one will read it because they can't find it. The internet is pretty big, and truthfully the topic of your article will probably be covered by billions of other people too. Also most news sites get their main traffic through OSEs, like Google.
Of course, you can't just use popular keywords to get your article out there. That's only a first step. The next step is getting your work to rank higher in the OSEs list of results.
For example, you might be searching for "Oompa-Loompa Land" and once you typed those words into the Google search box and clicked enter you'll get an infinite amount of results. Chances are you will click on a link on the first page rather than go to the 48th page of results. Am I right?
So that your blog ranks higher on the search engine list you have to get people to link to your article. That will increase popularity and the value of your article.
So get cracking and use the Google Adwords (a site that tells allows you to know which are the keywords that are trending right now). And be sure to link to this blog post :)
Cheers!
A great recap of today's lessons. But what I would like to know is do you really care about SEO? What would it mean to you personally?
ReplyDeleteI also liked your recap of the class today. I always knew there was this tool on google to see the top searched things or the more popular adwords, but I never knew how to do it.
ReplyDeleteSarah's question made me think a little about what SEO means to me. Honestly, to me right now it doesn't mean much. I don't have any work I've done that I want the world to search for and be able to find on google. Maybe in the future it might mean something so I can get my name out there if/when I become a journalist, but right now to me it's just another tool to keep in mind of. You might need it later in the future.
Here's what SEO should mean: it can extend the life of your content. If you write something and it still gets traffic days/months/years later, it's bringing you value you otherwise might not have gotten.
ReplyDeleteGood summary. I want to know if these tactics of gaining more "value" for websites is sacrificing the quality of the content. I mean, if everybody wants to have the most popular keywords and the most traffic, wouldn't all blogs start to be about the same things?
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