Since the title of each blog article is a key element in search engine optimization (SEO), it behooves a professional blogger to craft effective titles, designed to optimize primary keywords, and attract clicks from people perusing search results pages (SERPs).

Most blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, Moveable Type, etc) use the title as the filename (and URL) for the article. The words found in the URL are also an element towards search engine optimization.

Later on, I'll talk about how the words in the URL are also part of what determines ad relevancy on Google AdSense.

To illustrate effective titles, look at one of my recent articles, "The Harley Sucks People", on Motorcycle Philosophy...

http://www.motorcyclephilosophy.org/2008/04/harley-sucks-people.htm

I wanted to write an article about "motorcycle bashing", a popular subject on motorcycle forums, where people talk about how their favorite brand of motorcycle is so great, and how everyone else's brand is so bad.

Since I'm always thinking in terms of how to leverage the most from search engines, I put a lot of thought into crafting a good title.

A title not only must contain the most important keywords, but it must contain the most popular variety of that expression. For example, I could have also used...

• "motorcycle bashing"


• "motorcycle hate"


• "Harley bashing"


• "Harley sucks"


• "Harley hate"


• "Harley-Davidson hate"


• "Harley-Davidson sucks"

And I'm sure there are many more.

So, I wanted to find out which phrase is the one most people use when searching Google.

To answer, I used the "Adwords Keyword Tool"...
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This lets you type a word or two, and see how often it was searched on Google. It also shows you all the variations of phrase, and their search frequency.

It turns out that "harley sucks" has the highest search frequency.

Therefore, I used the title, "The Harley Sucks People".

And if you're using Blogger as your blogging platform, note that Blogger doesn't put the word "the" into the title.

Blogger actually has a character limit for the URL. If your title is longer than a certain limit (I don't know what the actual limit is), then it simply leaves off the extra words. Seems like most Blogger URLs cap out at 4-6 words.

To make sure that Blogger doesn't cut off your most important keywords, figure out a way to write a title that has those keywords at the front.

The other thing you can do with Blogger, is to write a "rough title", which is one that contains only your important keywords. Then publish the article. Now, go back to your article, and change the title to a finished title, and republish. You'll notice that Blogger keeps the original URL, but changes the title.

Increasing Clickthroughs from Google SERPs

Even if your page shows up at number one on the SERPs, doesn't guarantee that people will click on it. So, it helps to write a title that picques their curiosity, or uses words that captures their attention...


Notice that your title is also the title used in Google's SERPs. Also note that Google displays the URL with it also. Write a title that's short, but still picques someone's curiosity, to make them want to click.

Labels: SEO