Online news organizations spent the 2000s focusing a lot of energy on search engine optimization — tailoring their content to the needs of Google…
But SEO turned out to be a game that others could play better…
More importantly, search declined in importance as a traffic driver because something rose to take its place: social media…
This shift is, on net, a good thing. You get better work when you’re trying to please actual humans instead of opaque algorithms. Making work good enough to inspire someone to tell their friends about it encourages a lot of healthy behavior. But it also encourages changes to old news forms that some traditionalists might find disorienting. It turns out that the stories that you share with your friends don’t line up perfectly with the ones old-line news organizations produce.
Read the full piece at Nieman Journalism Lab
