Web hosting users learn of BBC SEO efforts

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a growing market and big-name organisations are jumping on the bandwagon. The BBC has now revealed it will be using SEO-optimised headlines and web hosting users not getting decent search results may want to follow suit.

Steve Hermann, editor of the BBC News website, posted on a company blog that SEO is important for the organisation as well as for others across the internet.

Journalists at the BBC now have the option to create two headlines for a story, one that will appear on the front page as well as other website indexes and another longer one that will be seen on the story page itself and in search engine results.

These longer headlines will be up to 55 characters long, including spaces, and will look to include key words that web users may be expected to type in when searching for certain issues.

Talking about the BBC’s revelations, Sam Tilston, online marketing director of vitabits.co.uk, commented: "They are not only optimising their headlines but also doing internal linking within the articles, which is a very effective SEO method."

He also had a warning for those web hosting users looking to improve the SEO of their content: "Overstuffing a headline title with too many keywords would not only damage a website brand and reputation, but could also result in a penalty from Google which will drop their rankings."

In April, the UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2009 revealed that 45 per cent of firms were increasing their paid search budgets. Nearly half of respondents (48 per cent) reported that SEO return on investment had increased over the past year.

Google was the main choice for firms, with 85 per cent of responding companies using the search engine for paid search. The majority (94 per cent) of agencies said their clients normally pay to advertise on Google.

Written by Jessica Lighthouse.