Google has announced a new update which could give brands using content marketing a little creative freedom, pocket-lint.com reports.
In the past, online news articles would need to be keyword-rich in order to be read by large audiences.
A misunderstanding could also mean certain stories were not grouped with related articles by the Google algorithm, but instead coupled with something completely different. This meant that online news stories couldn’t use printed press-style puns or phrases for a headline, but would instead need to make everything more straight-laced and objective.
Now, in a bid to combat this and allow greater freedom for news writers/readers, Google has unveiled a new keyword metatag function for its Google News platform.
It would work by allowing news sites to stipulate a number of tags which Google could then use (among with its other factors) to determine exactly what the story is about and therefore where it should be hosted. This would then allow writers more freedom to insert puns, abstract or witty features without as much fear that it could impede the article’s potential reach.
Announcing the new feature, Google News’ product manager, Rudy Galfi, told searchengineland.com: “The goal is simple: empower news writers to express their stories freely while helping Google News to properly understand and classify that content so that it’s discoverable by our wide audience of users.
“Similar in spirit to the plain metakeywords tag, the news-keywords metatag lets publishes specify a collection of terms that apply to a news article. These words don’t need to appear anywhere within the headline or body text.”