The Inigo Montoya approach to search engine optimization (plus, the word of the week)

A few OJR readers verbally jumped me last week for my first Inigo Montoya feature. So I’d like to take a moment of your day to explain why I think nit-picking about language remains important.

First, allow me to admit that I’m a dreadful candidate for the office of language cop. If it weren’t for gym, grammar would have been my least favorite subject in school. If your readers can figure out what you meant to say, you done wrote good enough, in my view.

But getting your readers to understand what you’re trying to say is just part of your job as a writer online. You’ve got to lure new readers with your words, too. Your current readers can help, by retweeting, liking, sharing and blogging your articles. But, for many of us, the bulk of our new readers arrive via search engines.

Search engine optimization [SEO] rewards obsessive attention to language – English as well as hypertext markup. Writing for my own website, without a copy desk to save my reputation, has forced me to think more carefully about the words I use. That’s why I started looking up the definition of at least one word I thought I knew in each article I post.

This new habit is changing the way I write. I’d like to think that it is helping me use adjectives more precisely, but at first it just made me afraid of them. Discovering how little I knew about the alternate meanings of words such as “incredible” disturbed me.

So what did I do? I stopped using so many of them. Rather than take the time to look up all those adjectives and adverbs, I just cut some of them out. Those I kept, I meant.

Sure, the language can expand to accommodate slang and idiomatic meanings for many words. But do you need to burden your writing with them?

Search engines reward articles with a high percentage of relevant keywords. Stripping extra words from your work leaves you with a higher percentage of those keywords in your remaining copy. If you want to use an adjective in your work, then make it carry some weight. If a word doesn’t work on multiple levels, it’s not doing enough work for you. Pick another one, or do without it.

I’ve become a huge fan of hard-coding my own HTML templates, because I can strip the extraneous tags that weigh down a webpage and rob it of SEO appeal. Reporters should do the same with their language.

No, you don’t have to. If people get what you’re trying to say, that’s good enough. But in a highly competitive online publishing market, shouldn’t try to do better, to lure an ever-larger audience to your work?

You want to learn how to write for SEO? This is how you start.

So I invite you to try my trick: Look up at least one word in every article you write. See what you discover. Make your words carry multiple meanings. And learn to leave out a few, too.

That said now, here’s my Inigo Montoya word of the week: Terrific.

Sure, it means “extraordinarily great.” But let’s look at a few other words in that definition: “intense,” “wonderful” and the ones found in the third meaning – “causing terror.”

“Terrific” has become one of my go-to words for describing outstanding roller coaster drops, or other elements on amusement park thrill rides. I love how the reference to terror gives this adjective a darker flavor. Why dilute the potential power of this word by using it in a context devoid of those qualities, when one of perhaps another dozen adjectives could stand in its place?

Make your words carry multiple meanings. Reward your readers who know them. Educate those who don’t. Use a word only when you mean that word.

An intense experience that causes wonder, even terror. Yeah, that’s terrific.

The Inigo Montoya word of the week: 'Incredible'

This week’s post is for all the independent publishers and bloggers out there who don’t have an in-house grammarian to advise them, but would like some inspiration to think more carefully about the words they use in their posts.

So I’m kicking off this feature in honor of the character from William Goldman’s The Princess Bride who utters this famous line in the Rob Reiner film version:

For those of you not clicking the video link, here’s the quote: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Too often writers type superlatives without care for the subleties that the individual words they select offer. This week’s Inigo Montoya word of the week is “incredible.”

Folks typically use this adjective to suggest a positive quality, but it actually means “not credible,” that is, something not worthy of belief, confidence or trust. As a journalist, pretty much the last word you want someone to use in describing your work is “incredible.” :^)

And yet… here are a couple of examples from the past week’s news where someone missed the definition:

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Connected: The Incredible lives up to its name

“The Droid Incredible from htc and available on the Verizon Wireless network is an Android phone that generally fits its name. Over a few weeks of use, I have found it comfortable to carry, convenient to use and capable of my trust. That means it does what I expect when I expect it — something not all electronic devices live up to.”

What a lousy name for a cell phone. But the writer here never calls the manufacturer on that. Instead, he makes the same mistake, declaring that the device he deems “capable of my trust” “generally fits its name” that means… something incapable of trust.

From The Indian Express: Incredible India wins over athletes

“With the curtains about to fall on this edition of the Commonwealth Games, it is time for the athletes to savour their experiences of the city and the Games. With most of the events already over, there is a sudden spurt of athletes at popular Delhi landmarks like Dilli Haat, Janpath and Connaught Place. And contrary to all the apprehensions and negativity clouding the Games, most of the athletes have given the city a thumbs up.”

“Incredible” here is meant as a compliment, but unless the headline writer (“incredible” is not used within the article) meant to imply that Games athletes were expecting to live like the kids in “Slumdog Millionaire,” perhaps he or she should have passed on the alliteration.

So let’s give credit this week to the Chicago Tribune for Marathon not enough for incredible Benoit Samuelson

“What Joan Benoit Samuelson did in Sunday’s Bank of America Chicago Marathon was remarkable.

“Added to what she did Monday in Boston, she ought to be in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

“Benoit Samuelson not only raced again the day after fighting through a hot 26.2 miles in the fastest time ever by a woman 53 or older, 2 hours, 47 minutes, 50 seconds.

“She also finished 10th in the Masters (40 & over) Division of Monday’s Tufts Health Plan 10k (6.2 miles) for Women with a time of 40:29. That clocking was good enough for 60th place among the 6,699 women in the race.”

The Tribune’s use of “incredible” suggests something so outstanding as to defy belief, accurately evoking the full meaning of the word.

Effective use of adjectives should add spice to our language, giving readers the full flavor of the stories we bring to them. But those words must accurately reflect the story. After all, we wouldn’t want anyone to believe our work is, well, incredible.

What the 'Ground Zero mosque' flap says about the state of journalism

The Ground Zero mosque does not exist.

There is, of course, the planned Park51 Muslim community center and mosque, which local authorities approved for construction on Park Place in lower Manhattan about two blocks, or about 600 feet, from Ground Zero.

And there is also, of course, a myth – the latest outrage brand- of a “Ground Zero mosque.” Headlines from dozens of outlets have trumpeted that three-word shorthand, tempered at best by the flimsy embrace of quotation marks. Yet the phrase “Ground Zero mosque” violates the most basic tenets of journalism: be truthful and be accurate.

So what’s false? Simple: the mosque in question will not be built at Ground Zero. To conflate the lingering psychological toll of the destroyed World Trade Center with a building 600 feet away is as absurd as calling the Lace Gentlemen’s Club on 7th Avenue in Manhattan the “Fox News Strip Club” by virtue of its two-block proximity to Fox’s headquarters.

Speaking to Michael Calderone at Yahoo News, AP New York assistant chief Chad Roedemeier said that the slug on the story has always been “Ground Zero mosque,” and that phrase has often appeared in headlines. But he said the wire service has always said the mosque was “near” ground zero in stories. (I used to work as a freelance photographer with the AP in New York City.)

That distinction isn’t good enough in an age of six-word iPhone headlines, warp speed online skimming, and well-financed PR and political hucksters trying to smoke-bomb plain languge. Whether it’s birthers, Breitbart, or BP, there will always be cynical and reductive operators trying to exploit the uninformed in the age of too much information. The question is why responsible news media doesn’t fight as aggressively to reframe stories with the facts.

Our brains, like search engines, gauge information on a hierarchy, prioritizing headlines and the active nouns and verbs they employ. Copy further down in the story or watery qualifiers like “near” or “so-called” don’t stick in our brains as much, nor do they help a website climb the SEO ladder.

Yes, we all skim. And no, it’s not the job of a journalist to stand over the consumer’s shoulder to make sure he or she reads to the end. Nonetheless, a basic standard of factual accuracy like “tell the truth about a location” should be self-evident, or else media outlets are no better then performance art.

But let’s go even further: responsible media outlets needs to stiffen their ethical spine and take a more active role in ignoring or correcting manipulative catchphrases. A story whipped up by a group called ‘Stop Islamization of America,’ like blocking the construction of Park51, should not have an even playing field with a more sober truth because of false or tricky language. Yet right now, the language manipulators are on a winning streak.

Last year’s “death panels” (there was no such thing) fit a headline far more easily than Atul Gawande’s nuanced and moving 12,000 words on end of life care. We’re now hearing about “terror babies” despite the fact that they don’t exist either. There are dozens of other examples.

Media ethics today fight a fierce riptide. Online media’s economic success depends on page views and click-through rates that in turn depend on the most blunt, emotionally engaging subjects. That’s a powerful incentive to create controversy.

“Not all words have equal meaning,” Frank Luntz, who coined dozens of phrases such as “death tax,” told the New York Times Magazine in May 2009. The PR executives, activists and politicians recognize that fact, and will continue to exploit it until news media outlets robustly resist. Let’s hope that day comes soon.