SEOing Patrick Swayze’s and Keith Floyd’s death

Update There is a later, and better, version of this Patrick Swazye post on the Online Journalism Blog. I’d read that instead if I were you.

Patrick Swayze has died. So has Keith Floyd.

So no surprise that UK newspapers are rushing to publish as many news stories as they can on the subject to try to appear multiple times in the news and web search results, even if some of the pages are very similar.

Update 12.03am: The Telegraph is now taking the idea of multiple similar pages a little too far if the number 4 and 5 stories in their most read list are anything to go by: “Patrick Swayze dies: best Dirty Dancing quotes” and “Patrick Swayze dies: best Dirty Dancing quotes and lines”

Update 11.50am The Telegraph have now added ‘Patrick Swayze Obituary’ to their hot topics list on their home page and is now ranking first for the term.

Interestingly, the Guardian’s flexible templates allow it to already have category pages up and running (if it didn’t already have them). The Telegraph and Mirror, for instance, don’t have these.

Below are what the Guardian and Telegraph have so far – I’m sure the Mail and others will catch up soon. It isn’t doing them all a lot of good, however, as the US sites are dominating the news results for Swazye, and there are some regional results appearing for Keith Floyd.

Patrick Swazye

The Guardian

The Guardian has 10 pages on Swayze’s death, including the very similar “Patrick Swayze dies at 57 after battle with cancer” and “Patrick Swayze, star of Dirty Dancing and Ghost, dies after battle with cancer aged 57”. You can see them all here (there’s also a blog post not showing on that page)

The Telegraph

The Telegraph has 6 pages on Patrick Swayze’s death plus a blog post, including some very similar reports of his death. It has no Patrick Swayze category page.

Keith Floyd

The Guardian

There are 4 stories on Floyd, including “Celebrity chef Keith Floyd dies” and “TV chef Keith Floyd dies”. The Guardian has a Keith Floyd category page here.

The Telegraph

There are 3 Floyd stories today, but no Keith Floyd category page.

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