Little things count for a lot, especially in business blogging. Titles can be one of those little things that make the difference between the reader clicking through to your post or ignoring it. The question becomes, how can you create a title that serves both optimization and catches your reader’s attention?

When keeping search engine visibility in mind, you have the added dilemma of trying to create a catchy title that also has within it an optimized keyword. Rule of thumb, especially once you are getting up in your search engine rankings, is to not sacrifice the headline for the keyword. In the beginning you may wish to do so, but if your blog marketing plan is hitting on all cylinders, more creative license is allowed.

But, there are still further nuances to consider when brainstorming your titles (also applicable to email as well), a partial list of which follows.

• Clearly explain what the article (or email) is about in terms that relate to the user. Microcontent should be an ultra-short abstract of its associated macrocontent.
• Written in plain language: no puns, no “cute” or “clever” headlines.
• No teasers that try to entice people to click to find out what the story is about. Users have been burned too often on the Web to have time to wait for a page to download unless they have clear expectations for what they will get. In print, curiosity can get people to turn the page or start reading an article. Online, it’s simply too painful for people to do so.
• Skip leading articles like “the” and “a” in email subjects and page titles (but do include them in headlines that are embedded within a page). Shorter microcontent is more scannable, and since lists are often alphabetized, you don’t want your content to be listed under “T” in a confused mess with many other pages starting with “the”.
• Make the first word an important, information-carrying one. Results in better position in alphabetized lists and facilitates scanning. For example, start with the name of the company, person, or concept discussed in an article.
• Do not make all page titles start with the same word: they will be hard to differentiate when scanning a list. Move common markers toward the end of the line. For example, the title of this page is Microcontent: Headlines and Subject Lines (Alertbox).

(Source)

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Tags: business-blogging, catchy_title, marketing_plan, page_titles, search_engine_rankings, search_engine_visibility

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Blog Training, Business Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.