How to SEO your Blog Titles

There is one SEO trick that is overlooked quite a lot by bloggers which could boost their traffic; how they appear in the search results. And I’m not talking about where they appear, but how they appear. It’s in the titles.  One of the most powerful tools you can use to drive traffic to your blog is to create unique and intriguing post titles. Here are some basic tips that can help your posts appear higher on search engines like Google and Bing.

• Most search engines display the first 60 to 70 characters in the search results. Make sure your important keywords occur early in the page title for scan-ability. If your title goes beyond 70 characters search results may cut off the title before 69 characters and display “…” at the end of your page title.

• Rather than making your page title just the keyword and/or starting your page title with the keyword, sometimes it helps to add in a descriptive modifier before your core keyword. This helps ensure your page is less likely to get filtered out of the search results (and thus makes your rankings more stable) while helping you rank for additional terms. For example, if you were going to call your post “The Handbag” instead call it “My Favorite Black Handbag” instead.

• Good titles evoke an emotional response, ask a question, or promise something (that the landing page fulfills). If you call you post “My Favorite Black Handbag” the post should be descriptive of a black handbag, that you own, and tell the story of why it is your favorite. The content of the post delivers what the title promised.

• Overlapping modifiers in a reasonable and readable way allows you improve your relevancy scores for an array of keywords, but they still need to read well. Rather than loading up page titles with a keyword list it is better to write a clear compelling offer that contains your keywords and describes your services. If you are going to sell handbags it isn’t a good idea to have a blog post called “Favorite Black Handbags Discount Price Clearance Sale” as this title is confusing with too many key words in one title.  The title, “My Favorite Black Handbag” is still a better title, with a description of your retail site in the content of the blog post and links to your site.

• Qualifying the wrong prospective clients with a bad offer will lead to a low conversion rate, or wasting time servicing non-clients. For example, if you sell something that is high end you wouldn’t necessarily want to rank for your keyword with modifiers like cheap and discount, as servicing those people will waste your time. If you are selling expensive bags the same things goes as before. Don’t name your post, “Favorite Black Handbags Cheap Price” if you want to sell high quality product. You want to attract the kind of customer that you want to sell to with your title, so be careful.

• Page titles should be differentiated from page to page on your site. Unless limited by the size and scope of your site, it is best not to have all your page titles follow the exact same formula across your site. You also should not use the same keyword at or near the start of every page title. Be original in your titles.  Sometimes you will tell a story, sometimes you will ask a question.  Another good title for a blog about handbags would be, “Are Straw Handbags Making A Comeback For Summer?” This sentence would come up in a number of different searches.

• The format, order, and word selection of the words in your page title should be (at least slightly) different than the words in your meta description and on page headers.

• If you have a strong brand you may want to place it at the end of your page title. If you have one of the leading trusted Internet brands (Amazon, eBay, etc.) then it might make sense to place your brand at the start of the page title. In most cases the page title should still be more focused on the page copy and searcher’s intent than on your brand.

Take some time to think out the title of your blog post, a great title can go a long way in driving traffic to your blog. Good blog titles attract people.  Having great titles will also make people more likely to click on your link from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, so spend some time on it.

Here is a simple how to video about creating SEO friendly titles: