Anyway, because it contained the words "9/11 conspiracy", the article generated loads of traffic for the Guardian site, which in turn means loads of advertising revenue. And in this day and age, what with the credit crunch and the death of print journalism and everything, the use of attention-grabbing keywords is becoming standard practice. "Search engine optimisation", it's known as, and it's the journalistic equivalent of a classified ad that starts with the word "SEX!" in large lettering, and "Now that we've got your attention . . ." printed below it in smaller type.As I was spending my time reading old blog posts written by Charlie Brooker, who is absolutely fantastic, I stumbled upon a post explaining how to attract more traffic to your site, and how important it is today when journalism is almost getting extinct, and the little competition for an audience that is still left, is tiny compared to what it has been. As my head line tells, these are a few of the words that people seem to (or seemed to a couple of years back) look for when googling about on the world wide spider web. And, as a journalist, it is important to know what to write about to attract your audience, even though they might not have had in mind to visit your blog/newspaper when they surfed into google less than a minute ago.
The Internet is a weird, and sometimes vicious, place. Hopefully I will one day understand how to sex my blog up to gain more readers. Master the skills of how the human minds work, and what they need from the Internet - and what their is that isn't already being provided. Maybe some nude pictures... Or maybe not. Nude sex and rock'n'roll.
Long live the Internet - and long live Charlie Brooker!
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