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

The term, "content fragmentation" is something I coined to describe the strategy of publishing multiple blogs, or multiple blog articles, instead of consolidating everything into one.

It's largely a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Much of my career success as a blogger lies in publishing tons of content. The more content you put out there, the greater the likelihood of attracting visitors from search engines. That is, each URL you put into Google, is another chance of getting your blog listed at the top of its search listings.

With content fragmentation, you simply break your thought into two separate articles, instead of just one. Each article is written to optimize its specific keywords and phrases. Hence, you end up with two URLs, instead of one. And therefore, you've doubled your chances of getting listed at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs)

As some of you may have noticed, I have several motorcycle blogs...

• Biker News Online


• Motorcycle Philosophy


• Harley-Davidson Gear


• Cool Biker T-Shirts


• Motorcycle Blogging (which you're reading now)

Originally, I had just one, Biker News Online. I used to publish all sorts of content on it, not just news, but my own personal thoughts, cool t-shirts I'd find somewhere, kooky H-D logoed products, and so on.

Then I decided to break out H-D logoed products into its own blog, and then broke the t-shirts into its own blog as well. Later on, I decided to break out my personal thoughts into its own blog too. And now, I created Motorcycle Blogging just for moto-blogging thoughts.

This has the same effect of stuffing more URLs into Google, but with the added effect of raising the "page rank" of each blog. Now I can link these blogs to each other, and make these blogs more popular in Google's eyes.

I can also raise some legitimate page rank too. If I can get some motorcycle bloggers to link to all of my blogs, that actually gathers more page rank than if they just linked to one.

Also note that I have two other blogs related to the subject of blogging, "In Your Web", and "Money with AdSense". By creating "Motorcycle Blogging", I can create a transition between my circle of motorcycle blogs and my circle of blogging blogs. This "transition blog" acts as a conduit between the two circles, transferring page rank.

Of course, I could have just taken my one Biker News Online, and still link to my blogging blogs (I've actually done this), but both Google and Yahoo are increasingly looking at the "contextual relevancy" of these links in calculating page rank.

"Page rank" is a term used by SEO experts to identify the "authority" level of a website. With Google, it's largely calculated by how many websites link to you, and then further adjusted by a variety of factors, including how many websites you link out to, the contextual relevancy of these links, and others. The more page rank your website gets, it generally ranks higher on SERPs.

Think of ways to fragment your content into multiple articles, and even multiple blogs. It's almost like each URL you publish is another door into your website(s). Don't shut old websites down just because you haven't updated them in a long time. They still hold "page rank", that you can leverage.

Labels: SEO

Contact me...

Steve Johnson
P.O. Box 3622
Quail Valley, CA 92587

"Motorcycle Blogging" is meant to publish my thoughts, ideas, successes and failures on the subject of making money from a motorcycle blog. The subject of making money from a blog, also includes building traffic and blog design.

A couple weeks ago, I went through a list of blogs on Motorcycle Bloggers International, and notice the list of bloggers had grown quite long from the last time I looked at it. There were a lot of motorcycle bloggers there.

And since my sole source of income is from blogging and publishing websites, I'm always looking for an untapped market to exploit for my own profit. I'm sure several of these bloggers are interested in learning how to put their blogs to work.

I'm also hoping that if I give you, for free, my 11 years of experience of website publishing for profit, you'll return the favor by linking to me. It'll improve my search engine rankings, and help me earn more cash.

There are actually thousands of blogs devoted to the subject of blogging, and making money from blogs. Of those, about 100 of them highly successful in terms of popularity and profitability. The subject of blogging itself is one of the most profitable blogging topics.

In December of 2004, I launched my own "blogging blog" called "In Your Web". My problem was that I didn't publish it regularly, and it never caught on. I still post something new on it, under the same frequency, about once every few months. Later on, I published a different one called, "Money with AdSense", trying to narrow my focus to something more specific. This time, I was blogging more frequently, but quickly ran out of things to say.

So now I figured that if I combine my passion of motorcycling, and my career as a blogger, maybe I can carve out a niche in the "blogging" topic.

But should I fail to earn any success with this blog, maybe I can at least help out my fellow motorcycle bloggers with some tips.