Recently, Editing and Design has become quite fun for me. Not that it wasn't always this way, but I've found that I highly enjoy writing headlines. Being a language person,this isn't surprising; finding the perfect word or witty combination is the greatest joy of any writer, but proficiency in this area does seem to be correlating success in the online news world.
While interesting headlines do grab attention, it has been discovered that online search engines may have trouble bringing up a related story when the headline contains no words that are literally germane to the topic. This situation translates into less readership, and that's not good for anyone but the competition. The way that news rooms have chosen to combat this is the science of search engine optimization, which helps these stories get noticed by major search engines like Google.
SEO is, more simply, a way of making headlines more literal and straightforward so that readers not only comprehend what the story is about, but can find it when they enter simple search terms into online databases. The Boston Globe's sister web site, Boston.com, has become a leader in this area, though it is not even in the top 10 of the United States' most ciruclated newspapers. Because of SEO though, their readership stands ready to grow.
While writing headlines is an essential talent for a copy editor, making the jump from print to online is a skill they must possess as well.
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