David Politis

This was just one of the “loud and clear” messages that struck home in a recent training meeting with Business Wire’s Malcolm Atherton at the Politis Communications offices.

To be specific, news releases with headlines that are eight words long was deemed the ideal length.

Such length best for several reasons, Atherton explained.

1. Shorter headlines improve results in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.
2. Shorter headlines have greater impact with readers as there is less to read.
3. Shorter headlines don’t get truncated in returned search results. (Both Google and Yahoo! only include the first 50 or so characters of a headline in the returned summary result; everything else is cut-off in the summary.)
4. Shorter headlines force writers to truly understand the thrust of a release, boiling the content down to the absolute essence — the core of what is needed — no more, no less.

Simple lesson then: When in doubt, shorter headlines are best for news releases.

I recently read Paul Allen’s post about his challenges on being able to blog from the road, and his excitement about being able to blog from his BlackBerry thanks to WordPress v2.0.3.

Well, as fast as Paul Types on a BlackBerry (and apparently he’s really fast, like 50+ words per minute), I suspect he’s probably faster still on a regular keyboard.

If so, another alternative may be looking into Verizon’s Broadband Access, a service now offered locally through our client PC Laptops.

Essentially, the service requires a small wireless PC card that slides into one’s laptop and then (depending upon wher you are in the U.S.) you get access speeds of 400kbps to 700kbps and burstable access up to 2Mbps. Monthly cost? $59.99 on a two-year agreement.

Might be worth checking out for you road-bloggers.