Search Engine Friendly Article Titles
Many people believe a catchy blog post title is the way to go, some think a search engine friendly article title is - which is best? I think it’s a combination of both. (note that I repeated the blog title in the previous sentence - you should do the same and use it naturally in a sentence at the start of the post). For sake of this discussion, let’s hypothesize there are two types of bloggers: Those who know how search engines work and those who do not.
This is a non-niche, mixed content blog which has many individual articles on page one Google search engine results. To my knowledge, I have 46 articles on page one. Some people say it doesn’t matter if you are on page one, but I strongly disagree. Take a look at my blog post, Employment Profile Test as an example:
search engine friendly article titles
If you type the article title in exactly, it is number one. If you type in variations of the title such as “employment profile test” or many others, it’s still on page one. It varies from day to day, but seems to hang on page one.
Individual articles are more important than your homepage
Like I said earlier, there are two types of bloggers. Some strive all day long trying to get their homepage noticed while their individual articles take a back seat. If you want to really build your search engine traffic, your posts should take on a new importance. It is your content that should matter, not necessarily your homepage. If they get to your homepage and don’t instantly see something they need, they will leave. This is why you need multiple landing pages (The pages people land on when doing a search engine search).
Homepage importance is much more important if your blog is a single landing page, where you are trying to sell something; that type of site may not even need any posts, just one main page, but that’s a different story altogether. In a blog like mine, where I write a lot of varied content, it’s important to have many landing pages other than my homepage.
My approach is extremely simple and requires hardly any advanced seo knowledge (although I highly recommend you learn about seo). Check out my article on seo keywords for further reading.
- Write blog post titles in the same way someone would actually search for your content. I could never stress this enough.
- I see people doing these “Wordless Wednesday” articles all the time. If you name your article that, you are crippling your search engine traffic because there are already thousands of articles with the exact same title. Add something to it. If it’s a picture of roses, think of a title that will be more like used in a search. It’s wise to name your picture’s alt text the same as the blog title (without the words “wordless Wednesday” included)
- Write “how to” articles. People are always looking for these to learn something new.
- Write something totally original. This is the most important aspect of all. In my example search result, that article is original and much different than any others found with the same search. The reason why, is that I actually know a lot about it and was able to convey it in a detailed fashion. The title is designed to fit several different results as well as being user friendly and something people actually look for on the Internet. That one article has brought me a ton of traffic.
- My blog post titles are key phrases, not just one individual keyword. All key phrases are made up of individual keywords (words people commonly search for on Google). It is much easier to be found using a phase than a single word. Be creative and weave the keywords into your titles naturally. I often know what my article is about before choosing a title. I can then do a little research and design a smart title. Make sure you use the title in the beginning of that article’s content for even better results.
Check Out The Competition
In my above example, I checked out the search results on that title, “How To Pass a Psychological Profile Employment Test” before I chose to use it. Most of the competitor sites had a page rank of 2 or less, so I knew I would rank for that particular search before I wrote it. I read several of the top results beforehand just to see what they were about. Because my article was so much different that the others, I knew mine would do well.
You can spend all day doing keyword research (like with google’s adword tool), but a simple search will often tell you much more. I recommend doing a prospective title search on other search engines like Yahoo or MSN to triangulate that search and get a better idea of how to title a post. I’d say the powerful tool available is just doing a search.
My approach is very natural, based solely on how I think people search. Seo is not rocket science and there are many different approaches depending on the type of site you have. Ask yourself, “How do I look things up on Google?” You’ll find you probably already know much more than you think you do.
I chose to use an example of my own results because so many other similar articles don’t - they leave you guessing. Remember, this is only one approach but it has been extremely effective for me.
Let me say it again, “Your individual blog posts are the most important part of your blog.”
If I do a search on the word revellian, it is of course number one. I’m not even concerned if it isn’t. 99.9% of all people will never type revellian in the search bar (this may not apply if your site is titled “make money on line” which has extreme competition). To improve how you are found in searches, you must write posts that will be found. I don’t write every post with that goal, but do with around 50% of them. I want to be found. I want to have a blog that answers questions and helps people. With a mixed content blog, it’s the smart thing to do. I make the most money from the posts that are found through searches - something to definitely keep in mind. Once you get used to doing these things, you learn to think like a search engine.
I hope this helps someone. It is a natural approach and actually works, not to mention being easy to do.
Related Posts
Comments
24 Responses to “Search Engine Friendly Article Titles”
Leave a Reply
Comment Count
Get your Badge!
-
Subscribe!
Titles certainly are important! That’s what helped me get #1 on searches for creepy underwear guy pictures! If I had a site with pictures and charged admission, I’d be making like $1 a month by now!
Seriously, though, titles are important. The most important thing to keep in mind is to write for readers and not for the search engines. You might get temporarily ranked high for subpar articles stuffed with keywords, but that’s not a good long-term strategy. But, you can create titles and articles that are both search engine friendly and reader friendly, though it may be a bit more challenging!
@DCR: I write my content for the people and the titles for the search engines (basically). I see people using poor titles all the time when a different one would magnify their traffic greatly.
I always try to use a title that both the people and search engines like, though it does take a lot of practice. I am getting much better at it now, and think a natural approach works best for me. I think anyone can gain a natural instinct of how to write more effectively without losing any substance.
I looked up that post, congratulations on that number one result! You can’t argue with that!
Thanks for a very useful post. I’m pretty green and still struggling with google ranking. This should help.
@Jakill: Learning this stuff can be a daunting task. I recommend to not expect instant results and try different concepts. On a blogspot blog like yours, your blog post titles are very important, especially on your best posts. Keep it simple and if you ever have questions, don’t hesitate to ask
See this is why I like your blog- Horror one day- personal life stories, and then really useful tips.
The majority for my traffic comes from my eBay customers or google, not bloggers. So when I write the educational - like on “how to tell if a cameo is real” posts I try to make it friendly to search engines. I really try to think what would I put in google to get to that article.
But you know I have been failing to make my posts like this more readily available and I am trying to remedy this. I am not sure which widget I want to use to make these posts stand out on my home page. I did stop using the date archives because I couldn’t even find posts of mine on a year old blog…
You have given me a lot of ideas today- thanks Bobby and I do WW- and I never thought about not putting Wordless Wednesday in the title- I am going to stop doing that tonight’s entry.
Thanks Michelle! I think your wordless Wednesday posts are titled just fine because you added something besides the words “wordless Wednesday”. I noticed your pictures on your last WW post had the keyword underoos in the picture title which matched the post title - very good job. I do think something different may even be better though, but I don’t know your stats.
I wrote my own text widget of my best posts in my sidebar. I am actually going to redo it and make it better with subcategories. I my just create a selected site map page at the top of my site with a categorized break down for easy use.
I think I have too many links on my home page which is getting too much link juice, so I will probably optimize it. One of the most overlooked ideas is to reiterate the post title in the beginning of the post content, a fantastic thing to do for better indexing
Hi Bobby
Very helpful article here and I agree with you. Post title are very important as it does generate incoming traffic from searches as well.
Have a great day!
LJ
Personally, I couldn’t care less about driving traffic to my homepage.
Instead, I prefer to rank for content because, if it is good enough, then visitors will be curious to know more anyway and will visit the homepage or navigate around the site.
When I first started writing I had what I thought was good content but my titles were undoubtedly very lame.
Now that I put some thought into them it does make a lot of difference, even though I write titles more for people than Google.
@LJ: Thanks! In my opinion, post titles are just as, if not more important than the blog title.
@Scam: I think it just takes time to learn how to create effective titles. I’m still an amateur, but am getting better. I don’t really care so much about my homepage either, but I do take care of the basics. So many bloggers don’t realize that true seo has much more to do with content than anything else. Your blog has an effective title as well as good post titles. You’re on your way and on the right path
Good morning Bobby! It’s 8.04am and you are the first blog I’m visiting today!
Thanks for advertising on Mariuca. I see Revellian is also at Jean’s and Jan’s, what a cool coincidence!
And thanks for the great tips, it’s always great to have reminder articles like this. Helps to keep my blogging in focus, way to go Bobby!
@Marzie: Yay! Thanks for visiting me first, especially so early! I’m not so sure you need any tips Mrs. Traffic
Thanks for the kind words Bobby.. I guess reading Copyblogger must be paying off!
@Scam: Hahaha…that’s a great site! I read it myself quite often.
I believe matching the title with the first line having a similar phrase is what even makes AdSense/Adword Advertising work for ranking near or at the very top of search results. That is if you take your adword left out for Search Engines being the Title, and the Title of your website this adword leads back to becoming the first line of the content your writing. This would lower Keyword Bid Values while increasing your traffic’S ability to stay responsive and helps show all keyword matching of many is best if used in top parts of the content that are than following news publication article writing guide outlines.
@Rayhere: I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Please explain a little more clearly.
I’ll definitely keep titles in mind from now on. The only search I’ve ever been number one on I believe is “bong cozy” and yes, there are several of them, oddly enough
Ha Ha Bobby- I took Wordless Weds out of my post as per your post Google sugestion and I can see by my blog log that the regulars from WW have been by- but no one has commented but one guy. I usually have about 10 to 15 comments from WW. I am sad and stumped all at once. I mean there is a picture there- and I am up in the WW roll and I see the visitors- do I have to spell out WW. I blame you! Hee Hee Or maybe the picture of my dad is scaring people away oh boo hoo- how that makes me even more sad!
I do a semi regular post entitled Blogosphere News to vary it I just add the date - I often wonder if it is wise using this title each time though. What do you think?
@Robin: I would only aim for a great title on the posts you feel are your best ones. Just try different things. You could try google analytics if you want to get serious!
@Michelle: Haha! Like I told you in my previous reply, your Wordless Wednesday titles are fine the way they are. What I meant in the article is that only using the title “Wordless Wednesday” with no additional keywords is not good. Lots of folks have 75 “Wordless Wednesday” posts and they only differ in the publishing date. As long as you add something like “Wordless Wednesday: My Dad” or something similar, you’ll be ok!
@Sue: In your case, I would not change it. Your readers are already used to it. I do the same thing with my “Bobby’s Batch” articles, but I add a different title after “Bobby’s Batch” to make each one more unique.
You could try something like “Blogosphere News: Great CSS Tutorials” if you had a particular episode of similarly themed links in that particular post. That’s up to you. Overall, I’d say to not change it unless you just want to try something new.
I usually apply this concept to unique individual articles that I want to do well.
There’s a lot of good info here. Thanks for sharing your insights with us, Bobby. I appreciate it.
I’ve always liked trying to have catchy titles but didn’t know how to make them work for me.
Do you ever do anything different with the slug or make the page title tag different than the article title (with an SEO plugin)? I have played with this a little. Just want to know if this helps much. For example, using stems or synonyms in the html title or removing stop words from the page slug?
@Teeni: Thanks! I don’t try for catchy titles so much as I do for search engine indexing. It’s nice if I’m able to do both though.
@Stephan: I’ve tried that(with AllInOneSeoPack) and I used to use the seo slugs plugin. I have never noticed even the slightest difference with removing stop words - it seems like google doesn’t pay attention to them anyway. Sometimes I think some stop words actually help indexing…lol. Maybe using a different title tag might help more if you have articles with similar content or similar titles, and a unique title tag can help index it differently. I’m willing to try anything and nearly all techniques seem to have value these days.
Thanks for the useful tips! I’m still experimenting with how to bring traffic to my site through focusing my posts, but at the same time I don’t want to be repetitive.
Frequent deep linking also helps a lot. Every so often, you can do a blog entry that just refers to old entries. Lifehacker does that well; every week or so the folks there do a “a year ago, we taught you how to ______”. Since most blogs have a focused topic, it should be easy to embed a link or two to quality previous entries in each new entry.