Tips on How to write good SEO blog post titles

Written by:<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sparkplugging.com/craft-boom/author/craftylisa/" title="Posts by Lisa Lam">Lisa Lam</a> <p>The title of a blog post is important for search engine optimisation (or in other words ranking high up on web searches) because the words in your title are used by the search engines to fish out sites for web search results. If you’ve spent yonks on writing a blog post (that you’d love to share with a wider audience) you don’t want it to get lost in sea of other blog posts and sites by not giving your post an equally strong title. In this post I am going to give some tips on writing titles that will hopefully please readers and the search engine robots. This post was inspired by <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.sparkplugging.com/believer-in-balance/">Shannon</a> who was kind enough to share some of her knowledge of good SEO. Thanks Shannon!</p> <p>.</p> <h3><span style="color:#cc3366;">Tips on writing blog post titles that will help your blog stand out:</span></h3> <ol> <li>Is it a tutorial? - if yes than say so. I enjoy writing tutorials and folks generally love a tutorial. How many times have you web searched for a tutorial on how to do something or another? Lots of times I bet. Make your tutorial easier to find on the the web to find by beginning the blog post title with <em>‘Tutorial on…’ or ‘How to…’. </em></li> <li>Does your post include a list of information or a breakdown of points? If yes than say so in your title eg. <em>“My 10 top tips for….”</em> Lists/bullet points are easy to digest for the reader and they are an easy way to organise information for the writer (that’s why I like them so much!)</li> <li>Is your post about a rant, a happy experience, a memory etc.? If yes than say so in your title eg. “Why I love nothing more than…” or “The …est day of my life was…”. Blog posts which offer an intimate peek into the life of the writer always stir an interest in readers because as humans we are fascinated by each other. Great isn’t it?</li> <li>Keep your titles shorter rather than longer. Try to be succinct, but at the same time informative. Search engine robots only read a certain number of words so longer titles tend to get cut short. So your title needs to have the most important words in the first half of the title (just in case).</li> <li>Writing the title for yourself vs writing the title for search engines. If you are not bothered by appearing high in search engines than (arguably) you would write your posts and your titles in a way that suits you eg. they could be funny, daft, abstract etc. etc. etc. BUT search engine robots/spiders are ultra efficient and totally unfeeling, they don’t care for writing with flair, they are just after cold hard keywords (see below for more info on keywords)</li> <li>Try to put yourself in the mindset of your readers - what search terms/words do you think they would type into the search engines? Including words in your title that readers are likely to search for will help your post will appear higher in the search engines.</li> </ol> <p>.</p> <h3><span style="color:#cc3366;">Further Reading</span></h3> <ul> <li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.seomoz.org/article/bg1">What is SEO</a></li> <li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/internetmarketingandseo/a/how2metatitles.htm">SEO Tip - How to write winning meta titles.</a></li> <li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keywords#Website_and_Search_Engine_Keywords">What are key words?</a></li> <li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/calculatorsandquizes/tp/free-keyword-tools.htm">Key word generator tools</a></li> <li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/09/20/writing-effective-attention-getting-headlines-and-titles-on-your-blog/">Wring effective, attention-getting headlines and titles on your blog</a></li> </ul>