Last week I wrote a perfectly respectable article for the Belfast Telegraph which got published under the unassuming headline ‘The changing face of SEO’. That original version of the article contained no images and only one reference to Britney Spears to illustrate a point.

Then the digital editor of the Belfast Telegraph decided to ’sex up’ the article a bit. On Friday he added a Beyoncé Knowles reference and a bunch of pictures of Beyoncé and Britney.

Obviously not content with this minor assault on my reputation as a serious (*cough*) search engine optimiser, the editor decided on Monday to spice it up even more and added Angelina Jolie in the article’s headline.

The end result is this:

My article on the Belfast Telegraph site

By virtue of the Belfast Telegraph’s status as an official and respectable news site, the article has since shown up consistently in Google search results for the term ’seo’, both under its old headline and the various sexed up versions:

Now I could claim this was all done without my knowledge and consent and that I severely object to this abuse of my professional reputation just to score pageviews.

But then I’d be lying.

I was informed of these changes beforehand and I wholeheartedly agreed. Having one of my articles serve as a live test case on a high traffic news site is a wet dream come true. I love this stuff.