Pippa Middleton’s arse: how newspapers optimise for the phrase without showing it to their readers
Interesting use of different headlines on the Daily Mail today to solve the problem of how to optimise for the high-volume search term "Pippa Middleton's arse".
They have one version of their headline in their HTML title (what Google shows in its web results) and news sitemap - this includes "Pippa Middleton arse" at the front: "Pippa Middleton arse: Motorist paid price for bum comments to girlfriend". This is also the URL they use: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386280/Pippa-Middleton-arse-Motorist-paid-price-bum-comments-girlfriend.html
But the version of the headline on their page just says "'Is Pippa's bum still better than mine???' How motorist with Middleton envy paid the price for comments to girlfriend".
Here's how their story looks in Google.
Saucy
And here's how it looks when you get to the Mail.
No arse in the on-page version
Cheeky, one might say. They haven't gone as far as optimising for Pippa's underwear yet (and they need to do a bit more as the caption on the last picture says "write caption here").
Update: They've removed the word arse! New screenshot:
Booooo
Pah.
Is this not just another example of the loose approach to URLs that led to a minor and brief Twitter sensation a few weeks back in relation to a bogus independent.co.uk URL? For example http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386280/put-any-old-bollocks-here.html leads to the same story.
No it isn't the same thing, for it to show up in google like that it would have been in the head title="" part of the html, so it was deliberate. The googlebot doesn't read pages like people, it reads what you see when you press ctrl+u.
They were clearly going for search volume for higher rankings
John
What John said
They've changed it to bottom now and republished though.
Ah, thanks, John and Malcolm, for helping me get to the, er, bottom of this important matter
(Good to see, also, that the Indy have fixed the, er, feature - ie fault - that allowed anyone to fake their URLs - http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/04/19/fakes-abuse-and-a-social-media-storm/ )
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But would they dare optimise for the American market - Pippa Middleton’s fanny?
You are now top ranked for the above term.
They've changed the on-page headline as well now. I wonder if there's anything to be gained by making frequent changes like this? After all, they'll have the volume of data to know what they're doing. Or might it be an editorial decision rather than an SEO-led one?
Let's put it this way. Google indexes content far quicker than it spots redirects or duplicate content ...
Hi there,
Interesting and entertaining piece, thanks.
I also notice you've made full use of this prime search term in your own URL and header!
Cheers,
Sally
Shhh!
can i use this story on anorak?
Sure
The url has been changed again.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386280/Pippa-Middleton-derriere-Motorist-paid-price-admitting-preferred-Pippas-figure.html
Headline is now:
"Pippa rage! Motorist who paid the price for telling his girlfriend he preferred the famous Middleton derriere"