A post's headline and generally its first 25 words appear in search indexes, as well as on subscription feeds, aggregator sites and social-media links. Seed this canvas with the strongest material possible: news angles, dynamic prose, original reporting, etc. It's the bait on your hook.
Subscribers and regular readers aside, winning attention can be even more challenging online than in print. Someone perusing, say, a hard copy of Nutcracker Collector Monthly or Wise Widgeter Digest already has enough interest in a topic to seek out a publication on it (or pick one off the doctor's waiting room table). The audience self-selects to a great degree and often pays money for the privilege, upping its stake in consumption of that media. So magazine and newspaper writers often preach to the choir.
Fishers on the ocean of free Internet content need to be more crafty.
As we discussed last week, search engines send spider bots to crawl the web, analyzing domain names, keywords, inbound and outbound links, and 190-something other mysterious factors to determine a page's point ... and also its authority, called PageRank in the Googleverse. Various techniques exist to boost SEO (search engine optimization).
The higher your PageRank, the higher your site appears when people search. And if your first impression is compelling, they click through and read. The same goes for folks perusing feeds, Facebook links or fecklessly skimming spamtastic linkfarms.
Wow 'em. Hard and fast.
For the bots, touch upon keywords – the terms that really sum up the gist of a post. Don't stuff them in, but if you're reviewing the Big Book of Biscuits, don't lead with 250 words on your grandfather's favorite cookie-making apron. That's called "burying the lede" in media jargon.
People-wise, be precise and colorful, emphasizing the original (language and material). Avoid word repetition between the headline and first paragraph. Those 35-ish words together are the post's ambassador and advert alike. Make every one count.
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