The Associated Press announced last week that student journalists should use Search Engine Optimisation style over AP’s style when publishing online.
On the face of it this is sound advice, journalists need to understand how to create content that can be properly indexed by Google – why produce content that cannot be found.
But the AP guide and SEO are not utterly different. Google’s, or any other search engine’s, SEO guidlines are simply require online publishers to describe data as fully as possibility. And it is often very simple – eg use long link text to increase the users ability to identify page links, don’t open pages in new windows (this confuses page readers and search engines) and always use ‘alt text’ to describe images (so Google image search can find it)
