Search Marketing News

BBC to begin using SEO-focused headlines

November 23rd 2009

The BBC is to begin gearing its headlines towards search engine optimisation (SEO), it has been announced.

The official BBC blog announced the company would begin optimising its story headlines for search engine's algorithms to help BBC pages appear higher in search results.

Sam Tilston, online marketing director of vitabits.co.uk, said the announcement showed the BBC was keen to remain an online leader rather than "playing catch-up" with other companies.

"The BBC is optimising its own headlines along with many other online news publishers," Mr Tilston said.

"They are not only optimising their headlines but also doing internal linking within the articles, which is a very effective SEO (search engine optimisation) method."

A recent survey by Guava and Econsultancy found that 85 per cent of respondents use Google for paid-search.

However Mr Tilston pointed out that the BBC may need to tread carefully, as "overstuffing" a headline title with too many keywords would not only damage a website brand and reputation, but could also result in a penalty from Google which will drop their rankings.

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