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

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.