« SEO Saturday Haha - Now That’s a Wanker! | Main | Creating Titles That The Search Engines Will Love »
The Art of Creating Titles
By Kimberly Bock | March 9, 2008
You may be visiting this blog from your living room computer thinking “My website has very little traffic and / or very low conversion rate. What the hell am I missing?” You’ve heard about that “SEO stuff” and you know that you need all the help you can get.
photo by wikigpia
SEO is not a miracle pill that shows immediate results I’m afraid. But with patience it can be quite fruitful. And SEO begins with the little things.
Titles and the art of creating them
One of those little things are optimizing titles.
So many times you will read about the importance of titles. You will hear:
- titles need to be catchy
- titles need to be sexy
- titles need to grab attention!
- titles need to sell the reader
- titles need to be relevant to the content
- titles do not need to be relevant to the content
- titles need to be expressive
- title, titles, titles
But the fact of the matter is..we need to know who and what we are trying to get the attention of before we can provide that piece of art we call a title.
Just how do you suppose we do that?
3 things to consider when creating your titles:
- Keywords
- Target Audience
- Fellow marketers
Only briefly I’ll say that from an SEO standpoint, our titles need to contain our optimized keywords. but since this post is in reference to the options that are available as you are awaiting organic results, that’s all I’ll address on that. If you are new here, I suggest you begin reading through my “Search Engine Compatibility” posts found here. This will better explain usefulness of keywords and a lot of other SEO goodies.
As a website owner/businessman you may not be aware of the power of your online social networks which may be trying to work for you even while you sleep. Places such as:
- Stumbleupon
- Mixx
- Sphinn
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Technorati
- and others
“In my sleep? What bologna is she talking about?”
photo by “Natalie Dee”
Social Networks and bookmarking sites can carry traffic traffic traffic for sure. It’s “Word of Mouth” free advertising. You may even find it to be quite the goldmine depending upon the worthiness of your content. (product and / or services)
So what kind of titles appeal to your target audience in a social atmosphere?
Each environment is different. You will find yourself making friends with persons of multiple interests. Hopefully you are there to have mutual friendships with the benefit of promotion of your content to boot.
For myself, I enjoy hooking up with people that have similar tastes as me. It’s sometimes very much a playground of sorts. I spend a lot of time expressing my personality through the photos I submit, music I listen to, SEO/M posts I like best, childrens books I have found, etc..(no telling with me..I can be eccentric)
Others seem to enjoy my pages in my networks (especially Stumbleupon). I do not spend time submitting only my own pages. In fact I RARELY submit my own pages. This is considered to be spam by a majority of persons in these networks, so being unselfish and simply having fun with others is key. You’ll find that you grow as a person and a marketer this way.
In social networks, you’ll begin to learn what it is that thrills those that follow you. As you become less selfish and more focused on others desires, you begin to empathize with them. In essence, this becomes an analytics tool, so to speak.
This is when you’ll know what kind of titles are most attractive to the bulk of those that surround you in that particular network. As they find appeal in your content after you caught their eye with an appropriate title, they will pass it on to their friends by giving you a review, comment or other means of hand-to-hand depending upon what network you are using.
So your titles in essence, are determined by the personality of those that are in your own personal network.
Fellow marketers
photo by PR 2.0
Not to be neglected are those that you may be affiliated with as fellow marketers.
With these folks, you’ll quickly find that they do not presume your innocence without your first securing their trust. So no matter what title you give your posts / submissions, you are likely to be under scrutiny. Do not let this deter you unless you’re selfish scammer that’s trying to ‘work‘ or ‘game‘ them. Because if that’s what your intentions are, you are losing more than what you bargain for. You’ll be lucky to show your face again if you start off on the wrong foot. There’s more of them than there are you, so get your foot in the door by doing a lot of observing, reading, voting upon their submissions.
And don’t become a bullsh*tter…I hate that..and so do others. Although, if you want to be sucked dry, then there’s a few that will want you to tell them how wonderful they are on a regular basis, vote a thumbs up at every given opportunity, and pass their pages all over the place no matter how crappy the post might be. They’ll admit you as a ‘team member‘ for sure. But that’s not going to help your traffic because if they don’t have to support you, don’t think they will. They are marketers with busy schedules. They don’t like extra work any more than you do.
(Don’t worry..If they are worth your vote, they’ll find mutual enjoyment in a give and take relationship.)
Back to the point…
When submitting your post to a fellow marketers territory such as Sphinn, a marketer likes to see titles that speak to them.
Although the bulk of their support isn’t given to the title as much as it is given to the the support that is being reciprocated between you and them. Yet, they have personalities too and enjoy a marketable title as well such as:
“What Pisses Me Off About SEO Blogs” or
“Top 21 Signs You Need a Break From SEO (2007 version)”
Although for this guy, a title like, “Smarter Google Maps Would Add movement and Templates for Tasks” would give you an edge. (wink)
So there you have my two cents worth on the art of creating titles. Obviously I gave more weight to your target audience than I did your fellow marketers. Why? Maybe it’s because you are not targeting your fellow marketers to your suggested call-to-action. (sales, signing for newsletter, taking a survey, etc)
Until next time, have fun learning!
Topics: SEO/SEM Training |
March 10th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Writing a title that’s compelling to readers AND keyword rich is an art form. I can take just a long mulling over the title as the post, and still walk away feeling I’ve missed the mark! Thankfully, titles can be easily updated later.
One suggestion … can’t remember where I read this, was to optimize your title for social submission initially, and later update as needed to focus specifically on your market. What’s your opinion of this strategy?
March 10th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I never thought about doing that Shari. Great idea for sure! That makes sense, because then you can optimize for both the SEs and your social arena. Thanks for the tip *-)
March 10th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Hi Kimberly & Shari:
The only thing about rewriting your titles later down the road is making sure if the title is updated when you change it (for wordpress) or any other content management system.
The last thing you want are broken links populated around the web via RSS or otherwise then they pull a 404 from a page missing in action. Just my 2 cents…
March 14th, 2008 at 11:31 am
[...] Learn SEO: The Art of Creating Titles [...]
March 18th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
I like this:
“…we need to know who and what we are trying to get the attention of before we can provide that piece of art we call a title.”
But what I like best about this post is the idea that a title has as much to do with the personalities that surround you as it does with the content of the post or article.
March 23rd, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Very good about the social media. I have seen visits on the increase since I have been more active with different forms of social media.
March 23rd, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Hi Cindy: Thanks for commenting. I think you’ll notice quite an increase in traffic once you have began regular participation in these social arenas. Once your traffic has found you, it then becomes an issue of making them want to return!
April 1st, 2008 at 1:11 am
[...] The Art of Creating Titles [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:30 am
Titles of posts are like book covers. You need to make them accessible to all and they should evoke emotion/curiousity/whatever.
This is probably the best post I’ve seen on the topic - very thorough. Nice job!
Blogging Tips And Tricks’s last blog post..How To Effectively Comment On High PR DoFollow/CommentLuv Blogs For Backlinks
June 6th, 2008 at 6:40 am
[...] The Art of Creating Titles at Learning SEO Basics. [...]