How Huffington Post's Clever Traffic-Generation Machine Works

Hugh Pickens writes "Frédéric Filloux writes that traditional newspapers that move online are losing the war against pure players and aggregators because original stories are getting very little traffic due to the poor marketing tactics of old-fashion publishers. Meanwhile, aggregators like the Huffington Post use clever traffic-generation techniques, so the same journalistic item will generate much more traffic. Here's an example: On July 5th, The Wall Street Journal runs an editorial piece about Mitt Romney's position on Obamacare and the rather dull and generic 'Romney's Tax Confusion' title for this 1000-word article attracted a remarkable 938 comments. But look at what the Huffington Post did: a 500-word treatment, including a 300 words article plus a 200-word excerpt of the WSJ opinion and a link back (completely useless) but, unlike the Journal, the HuffPo ran a much sexier headline: 'Mitt Romney is 'Squandering' Candidacy With Health Care Snafu.' The choice of words for the headline takes in account all Search Engine Optimization prerequisites, using high yield words such as 'Squandering' and 'Snafu,' in conjunction with much sought-after topics such as 'Romney' and 'Health Care.' Altogether, this guarantees a nice blip on Google's radar — and a considerable audience : 7000+ comments."

"Huffington Post has invested a lot in SEO tools and will even A/B test headlines to random groups. 'I was told that every headline is matched in realtime against Google most searched items right before being posted. If the editor's choice scores low in SEO, the system suggests better terms,' writes Filloux, adding that original stories are getting very little traffic due to the poor marketing tactics of old-fashion publishers. 'Who can look to the better future in the digital world? Is it the virtuous author carving language-smart headlines or the aggregator generating eye-gobbling phrases thanks to high tech tools? Your guess. Maybe it's time to wake-up.'"

Only the SEO Part Is True

[eldavojohn]

First concern is that a comparison of 938 comments at The Wall Street Journal versus 7000 comments at The Huffington Post means nothing to me. Some sites attract more vocal readers and when you cater to one side or the other you're going to get a lot of stupid comments reiterating the same thing. I'd also wager that The Wall Street Journal is trying to target the online demographic of their paper readership that are used to reading the paper the old fashion way: if you wanted to comment, you wrote the paper. Just because internet citizens don't have the patience to read 1,000 words so they don't comment doesn't mean you experienced less traffic. You could just as well argue that the sites had the same exact readership but 7x the amount of "readers" got through the article with enough stamina left to comment at The Huffington Post.

I agree that The Huffington Post is doing much better search engine optimization. That part is true because when I google for a news item they somehow will beat out even the AFP in my search results. And I do think that gets them more traffic. But I don't think counting the number of comments means anything at all. Even as a liberal, some of their titles disgust me so there's no question they are poking and prodding readers into commenting more.

Lastly, ever since The Wall Street Journal put up that arcane paywall, I don't think I can even read the comments let alone click a link to go there and see anything. Even if it's an Op-Ed they are practically gutting themselves while aggregators feed off their remains.

using high yield words such as 'Squandering' and 'Snafu,'

How exactly are those "high yield words"? They just seem more memorable and inflammatory to me which (surprise surprise) nets them 7 kilocomments.

If we're judging articles by comments...

[sohmc]

Their use of SEO not-withstanding, judging articles by the number of comments generated is kind of like judging the performance of a car engine based on how load the stereo gets.

Controversial topics will get many more comments than topics about boring stuff. Hell, comments with horrible grammer andd skeling mystakes will get more comments than the actual story.

And yes, I realize the irony of posting this in the comments section of Slashdot. ;-)

On a related note

[OzPeter]

I was listening to NPR last night and heard this debate program (originally from April 2012):
 
  When It Comes To Politics, The Internet Is Closing Our Minds [intelligen...aredus.org]

Quality?

[SJHillman]

But which one had better quality?

I'll gladly go to a site with 50 comments making a quality discussion and just read without commenting rather than going to a site with 5000 comments, most of which are people that never read the article or are completely offtopic.

That said, I don't know why the hell I'm on Slashdot.

I don't know how this is clever

[joenathan7]

It's internet trolling, nothing more. Huff uses inflammatory words to work people up so they post, it's not constructive or useful it just further creates an Us vs Them mentality. Not really what reporting needs.

Does Mitt Romney suffer from quasixenophobia?

[arth1]

I think TFS has his panties in a twist, looking for injustice because of personal bias.

Unless I'm all wrong, I doubt "squandering" and "snafu" are words that people commonly Google, so how "high yield" they are is rather irrelevant, and I doubt they'll lead to any higher traffic. I'm pretty sure that "quasixenophobia" is even higher yield (tomorrow, this post may be on the first page result for Google searches for it) , but I sincerely doubt that entering it in a headline will lead to more visitors.

There's no doubt that the Huff gets more visitors, but that could just be because it's more popular in the first place, and that Google pushes it up because of its popularity. I know, amazing concept...

Re:On a related note

[MickyTheIdiot]

While I agree somewhat with that, what is closing our minds MORE than the Internet is the closing down of true debate. Right now mainstream political debate consists at two "sides" yelling talking points at one another and not acknowledging proven facts as they come to light. You don't make any progress when facts are ignored.

Re:On a related note

[azalin]

That used to be the job of journalists. To point out errors, or outright lies and demand answers with as little bias as possible.

What's the use of a gazillion comments?

[no-body]

Can anyone even partially read those 200/500/1500 or whatever comments (4000) on Huffingtonpost?

Isn't that a deterrent, to stay away from those "posts" - totally useless!

Furthermore, Huffingtonpost lures with catchy headlines and provides ... not much on content, shallow, often frustrating to read those.

It may be clever and create traffic - for what - ads? Aren't ads automatically avoided by viewers, those popups glaring at you before you even can look at the page?

Don't you love all that crap!

Re:I don't know how this is clever

[Sez Zero]

I admin I've fallen for this trap a few times-- seen the salacious HuffPo headline in a sidebar somewhere and clicked it. Unfortunately, their traffic-generation machine always makes me feel like I've been tricked and that the headline isn't really representative of the story. Now if I see a sidebar headline links to HuffPo, I just ignore it, knowing that I've saved myself some disappointment.

MSNBC

[Anonymous Coward]

I could say the same thing, from MY point of view, about MSNBC/ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS.
In YOUR opinion, FOX is "biased". In MY opinion, the alphabet networks are biased.
I have ABSOLUTELY no problem with the mainstream news networks, they can say anything
they want, report it anyway they wish. My right, as a citizen is to either watch it or not watch it.
That is how it works. The problem I have with some liberals (and conservatives for that matter)
is some on BOTH sides of the political isle is they want to RESTRICT what is on tv/radio/print/internet.
I hate to use a well worn phrase, but, the minute you start restricting "speech", you start down that
slippery slope. It has to be an all or nothing thing. I don't care for porn, rap music, or about 80% of
the garbage out there, but, I have the CHOICE to NOT listen/watch it. I would rather have that choice,
than what the alternative would be.

Re:Only the SEO Part Is True

[MightyYar]

It won't happen - trashy headlines predate the internet and are a time-tested way to get attention.