According to an article in the NYTimes today, online newspapers are now writing articles with three audiences in mind: 1) fickle readers, 2) nitpicking editors and 3)search engine bots.

"The search engine has to get a straightforward, factual headline, so it can understand it," Mr. Newman said. With a little programming sleight-of-hand, the search engine can be steered first to the straightforward, somewhat duller headline, according to some search optimizers.

"..software bots are not your ordinary readers: They are blazingly fast yet numbingly literal-minded. There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or stylish writing. The software is a logical, sequential, left-brain reader, while humans are often right brain."

"…On the Web, space limitations can coincide with search-engine preferences. In the print version of The New York Times, an article last Tuesday on Florida beating U.C.L.A. for the men’s college basketball championship carried a longish headline, with allusions to sports history: "It’s Chemistry Over Pedigree as Gators Roll to First Title." On the Times Web site, whose staff has undergone some search-engine optimization training, the headline of the article was, "Gators Cap Run With First Title."

I think I know who is giving the editors at the New York Times their SEO training, it’s Marshall Simmonds who now works for the New York Times.   I have run into Marshall at various SES and Webmasterworld’s and he’s a friend and former co-worker of Bill Hunt who I know through my work at IBM.

Whether search engines will influence journalism below the headline is uncertain. The natural-language processing algorithms, search experts say, scan the title, headline and at least the first hundred words or so of news articles.

Journalists, they say, would be wise to do a little keyword research to determine the two or three most-searched words that relate to their subject — and then include them in the first few sentences. "That’s not something they teach in journalism schools," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch, an online newsletter. "But in the future, they should."

I tried to do this with Discover Magazine when I did their SEO via AvatarNewYork.com but could make little headway.  I know Bill Hunt was able to work with WebMD to do the same thing and it worked.   It takes an adjustment to get writers to think about search engines when they write copy - but once they learn what search engines need it’s not hard to incorporate the needs of seach engine bots along with the needs of humans.  It does not even have to limit creativity and your writing can be just as good.

In fact:

"We’re all struggling and experimenting with how news is presented in the future," said Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media. "And there’s nothing wrong with search engine optimization as long as it doesn’t interfere with news judgment. It shouldn’t, and it’s up to us to make sure it doesn’t. But it is a tool that is part of being effective in this medium."