The key to search engine success is to create keyword phrases that make the reader want to find out more!
When writing a new headline for a post, it is important that the reader understands what your post will be about and be intrigued enough to want to read on and discover what you have to say.
When you title a blog post, it’s also important to avoid ambiguous phrases, metaphors, and words with double meanings. While this can be an effective tactic for print articles, it can backfire for online text.
When someone reads an article in the newspaper or a magazine, they already know what the publication is about and they can appreciate a play on words as creative or humorous.
If a reader is new to your blog or stumbles across your article online, he may have no idea what your blog is about. The blog may have nothing to do with what they are looking for.
How does this happen? It’s actually very simple. When search engines scan newly created text, they need to correlate the headline to the article text in order to provide relevant search results.
A new blog or website that has not yet been fully indexed in the search engines may not have enough other content for the search engines to fully “understand” what it is about. Use this technique judiciously until your blog is established.
You should also be aware that search engines only display the first 70 characters of the title in the search results. There is some debate in the blogging community about whether short or long titles are more effective for ranking purposes. However, since the reader will only see the first 70 characters or so, it’s important to include the “meat” of the title near the beginning.
This will make it more likely that readers will see it as relevant and click on it.
Avoid too many adjectives and exclamations at the beginning of the title. You have a limited amount of space to work with, so be sure to include a solution word and your product (A recipe name for example) so that readers will see it.
As you get more familiar with blogging, you will probably have many flashes of inspiration of topics to write about. It’s good to go ahead and get them in writing as soon as you can. But when you are sitting down to create a blog post, most blogging experts recommend creating the title first.
This will help set the tone for your post and keep you on track. When your title creates the reader’s expectation, it’s easier to fulfill that expectation in your post.
