MDIA5001 Chap.6 Writing for digital media: SEO, social and search
Writing for digital media: SEO, social and search
Week 4 starts from evidence rather than opinion. Eye tracking research the lecture cites finds that people read roughly a fifth to a quarter of the text on a web page, scanning headlines and keywords instead, and that around four in five users scan rather than read fully.
The scanning follows an F shape: a horizontal sweep across the headline and opening, a shorter horizontal sweep further down, then a vertical run down the left edge picking up cross headings and opening words. Everything else this week is a consequence of that finding. Six shifts separate print from digital.
Print is linear with a fixed word count set by a page designer; digital is non linear, has no length ceiling, and the reader can leave in one click. Print headlines reward brevity and puns and often omit place names because the reader has already committed by picking up the paper; online headlines need full names and places because a search engine has to understand them.
Print treats publication as the end point; digital treats it as the beginning of engagement across devices and formats.
The structural advice follows: subheadings start on the left to catch the third eye movement, subheads and bullets open with information carrying words because the first two words are read far more than the third, every subheading must make sense in isolation, a cross heading every three to five paragraphs, and captions treated as mini headlines because they rank independently.
Search optimisation is framed as an exchange in the reader's own words: what would somebody type, and does your page give a clear signal in the headline, the standfirst, the opening, the subheadings, the captions and the links.
The operative rule is front loading, because search engines weight opening words most heavily, and the kicker format shows it working, uniting who, what and where in about four scannable words before a colon and the detail. For genuinely new events, where no search history exists, the course gives a construction rule: a specific place or person name plus a specific event type.
What this chapter covers
- 01
What eye tracking shows about how much of a page is actually read
- 02
The F pattern and its three movements, and what each one catches
- 03
Six differences between print and digital, from linearity to what publication means
- 04
Structuring web copy: left aligned subheads, information carrying first words, standalone headings
- 05
Cross headings every three to five paragraphs, and captions as independently ranking mini headlines
- 06
Search optimisation as a two way exchange: the reader's words, answered in their words
- 07
Front loading, and why the first words of a headline carry the most weight
- 08
The kicker format: four scannable words, then a colon and the detail
- 09
Building search terms for a brand new event, where no search history exists
- 10
Six ways to research what people are actually searching for
- 11
Register switching between formal editorial language and platform language
- 12
Platform by platform conventions, and the rule about posting a link once
Writing three headlines for one story and choosing between them
- +1Print styled first, to see what you are giving up. Something like 'Hospital rebuild: the bill and the wait' is short, has rhythm, and assumes a reader who already holds the paper and knows which hospital. It omits the place name, the number and the actor, which is exactly the omission print can afford and digital cannot.
- +1Search optimised next, built by asking what somebody would type. They would type the hospital or the region, plus the words rebuild or delay, plus perhaps the word auditor. So: 'Regional hospital rebuild 19 months late and 240 million over budget, auditor finds.' Thirteen words, inside the usual band, and the terms that carry search weight are in the first six.
- +1Social next, which is a different job again. A post should not repeat the headline, it should add an angle, so lead on the consequence rather than the finding: the number of months patients will keep travelling for treatment, with the report linked. That is a different sentence from the headline and it is the difference between a post that performs and a post that duplicates.
- +1Justify the search word order explicitly. The place and the asset come first because that is what a reader types and what an engine weights most heavily. The two numbers come next because they are the specific, searchable detail nobody else will phrase identically. The attribution moves to the end because it is the least searched element while still being necessary. Notice that this ordering is the opposite of the print instinct, which puts the wit first.
Key terms
- F pattern
- The eye tracking shape readers follow on a web page: a horizontal sweep across the headline and opening, a second shorter horizontal sweep lower down, then a vertical scan down the left edge.
- Front loading
- Placing the most searchable and information carrying words at the start of a headline, subheading or bullet, because opening words are weighted most heavily by search engines and read most often by people.
- Kicker format
- A headline construction that unites who, what and where in roughly four scannable words that work as a standalone mobile headline, followed by a colon and the supporting detail.
- Standfirst
- The short block between the headline and the article that contextualises the story, carries search weight and is where the value to the reader is usually made explicit.
- Cross heading
- A subheading inserted every three to five paragraphs to break long copy, written to be informative and to make sense on its own because scanning readers jump straight to it.
Writing for digital media: SEO, social and search FAQ
Is search optimisation the same as writing clickbait?
No, and the course frames the difference usefully: a search query is a question, and an optimised page is a page that answers it in the words it was asked in. Clickbait withholds the answer to force a click. Search optimisation supplies the answer in the terms the reader used to ask, which is why the technique is mostly about specificity rather than about excitement.
The concrete moves are all unglamorous: use the full name and the place instead of a pronoun or a pun; put the searchable words at the front; make each subheading intelligible on its own; treat captions as mini headlines because they rank independently; and choose links carefully because search engines weigh the quality of what you link to. None of that asks you to overstate anything.
If your search optimised headline promises more than the article delivers, the problem is not optimisation, it is accuracy, and the rubric scores accuracy.
My story is brand new, so nobody has searched for it yet. How do I optimise for it?
The course names this problem directly and gives a construction rule for it: a specific place or person name plus a specific event type. Nobody has searched your story, but people are already searching the components, so the compound of the two gives you a term that will match the moment anyone looks. The second half of the rule is that the terms evolve.
As reporting develops, a proper name that emerges later can become the dominant search term and displace the location you started with, which is why headlines on live stories get rewritten. For an assignment this matters less than it does in a newsroom, but the habit it teaches is exactly the one the marker sees: choose the terms your reader has, not the terms your source used.
Assessment move
Do the scanning test on your own draft before anyone else reads it. Print it, then read only the headline, the first two words of each paragraph and every subheading, and ask whether that reduced version still tells the story. That is close to what four in five readers actually take, and if the reduced version is incoherent the problem is not your prose, it is your placement of information carrying words.
Second, practise the register switch as a timed drill. Take one paragraph of formal editorial writing and rewrite it as a platform post in two minutes, then reverse the exercise. Both directions are assessed in this course, the second assignment in one direction and the first in the other, and most students are fluent in one register and stiff in the other.
Third, spend twenty minutes with the search research tools the course names rather than reading about them: type the opening of a question into a search box and read the autocomplete, then compare two candidate terms in a trends tool. The output is real demand data and it will contradict your instinct at least once, which is the point. Fourth, collect examples of the kicker format from live news sites.
Five of them, pasted into your notes, teach the shape faster than any description of it.
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