The role of the journalist in SEO positioning
In Colombia, “Black Friday” is a day of sales which has become an institution, where sellers try to make a fortune and buyers try to find a bargain. Aware of this fact, El Colombiano decided to try to become the benchmark website for any search related to this subject around this time; in other words, to ensure that this website appeared in first position in any search using Google or any other search engine.
Although not easy, they managed to achieve their goal. I say it wasn’t easy because I’m told that only a fortnight ago the newspaper had changed its CMS Web solution and not much time had passed to enable the robots of the search engine to assess the website adequately. But what I found most interesting was the explanation given to me by the person I spoke to from the newspaper, according to whom the key to success was what journalists call “SEO culture”. They have been trained to write their articles bearing in mind the communication channel on which these will be published and, moreover, they were aware of the corporate objective being pursued. Naturally, the new technological solution with which they now work offers them advanced SEO capacities, but it would have been impossible to attain their goal in such a short time if the Newsroom had not designed the appropriate strategy: own content rather than that of agencies, well-focused headings, groupings of contents designed for the best possible positioning, cataloguing with precise metadata...
This made me think. Could it be that in this time of rapid technological change, we are underestimating the role of professionals? Are we overlooking, more often than not, the human factor in this search for the magic formula that makes possible the journalism of the future? In their desire to be profitable, there are companies that are cutting spending on their newsrooms. They replace their veteran journalists - those with sources, experience and, of course, higher salaries, with younger members of staff, digital natives, but with little experience of life and journalism. As the saying goes, “feast today, famine tomorrow”.
Tomorrow’s success will be the result of today’s training of newsrooms; and this involves training in something more than usability of technological tools. It means understanding the nature of each digital channel, the idiosyncrasy of the potential reader who we want to reach. And this is not a question of age. It is a question of intelligence, having an open mind, motivation... and experience. El Colombiano, with its newsroom’s “SEO culture”, has given us a good example.