any advice on blog post titles?

The advice Chris Knight (owner of Ezine Articles - and I hope he won't mind my quoting his sage advice here) gives for article titles, which I think will also be good advice for blog post titles, is always to ensure that you have your primary keyword at the start of the title.

I'm paraphrasing his example from memory, but he explains why, if writing about "fractional jet ownership", something like "5 Things You Didn't Know About Fractional Jet Ownership" is a pretty bad title, whereas "Fractional Jet Ownership - 5 Things You Didn't Know About It" would be very much better.

I've always found, with my own articles on my own sites, that they'll rank more highly, more quickly, if I follow his advice on that point.

So I think the people who are using titles like "3 Things To Know About XYZ" and "5 Mistakes To Avoid When Doing Whatever ..." are really missing a trick.

Make it something users will click on because its interesting. not because an incentive is offered.

I totally agree with what Alexa said. From my own personal experience, I have found out that keyword coming first in your title plays a big rule in ranking your post for that keyword.

Also, whenever possible and makes sense, I simply use a long tail keyword for the title. This alone has helped some of my posts to rank high for their keywords, without building even one backlink to those post (well, maybe a few from bookmarking and etc, but nothing like a real backlink building campaign).


I wrote a post with this title (which is also a long tail keyword that gets a few hundred exact searches a month): How to make money on craigslist.

I didn't do any off page seo for it and it ranks 1 for the keyword and many related ones as well.

I hope it helps.

Yes, as others have already said, have your keyword-rich title come first, and then a dash, followed by a description of what the article talks about specifically, that entices the reader to want to read it. It's kinda like a headline followed by a sub-headline. E.g. Anti-aging skin treatment - 5 Tips to proactively protect your skin from premature aging

I always write for the readers, not the search engines. However, the ONLY thing google looks at when it comes to duplicate content is the title. So make sure your title is unique.

Don't use a title that probably was used before such as:

How to Juggle for beginners.

...this has probably been used before.

What you can do is this:

If you are writing a blog post about the new I-Pad 4 or whatever as an example, you could say...

The Brand New I-Pad 4 - Is it Worth Your Money?

The first words of your title are important and should have your keyword, then you should as much as possible, use a question. The question mark makes your reader think and can engage them. Doing it this way, you are writing now for your readers, but in a search engine friendly way.

here are some more examples of good titles ( not all need to have questions, but when it doubt, use them ) :

President Barack Obama's Top Ten Marketing Tips
The Top Five Biggest Mistakes of Pet Groomers - Are you Making These Mistakes?
One of the Best Ways to Curl Your Hair is Simply to...
Oprah Uses This Brand New Shampoo, Why Aren't You?
Everybody Knows About the Brand New Audio 5, But What Most of Them Don't Know is...
The Secret Cancer Fighting food "They" Don't Want You to Know About, and Why You've Never Heard of it.

Stating benefits in the headline is a good way to attract your audience because you tell them what they'll gain.

It is also great for SEO because you can have more traffic keywords.

e.g. "Writing Tips: Why Learning How To Write Headlines Can Increase Your Traffic"

Initially I like to use Google's keyword tool for "general" ideas on which keywords to use.

After finding keyword volume on "exact" searches on supplementary keywords for my niche I'll then do manual searches for how I think the searcher would look for that supplementary keyword.

After that I'll create my blog posts with titles I came across in that research mentioned above. I'll also sprinkle similar search queries throughout my post (if possible!) and then monitor my analytics closely.

After monitoring my analytics I can often pinpoint pages that I should continue linking, and ways to modify the content/titles to help bring in additional rankings for pages that may be on the bottom half of page one on Google.

a how to article is great for SEO , also 10 tips,5 methods ..etc all that kind of titles are catchy and attracts people !

Yes definitely make the title captivating. But include your Seed keyword in the title for SEO purposes. This will help with rankings. Also, I would use the google wheel tool to find other keywords and build out your blog categories. This is a 3 step model that is brilliant for SEO. Goodluck

thanks for all the great advice!

by the way, eza has a suggestion tool and i heard chris knight (on an interview) where he was saying he spent a lot of time and money creating a tool to create that title suggestion tool...so i guess it's worth using those as well.

thanks
bj

A little tip I learned from an SEO guru that makes all the difference in getting your pages ranked:

You have a title at the top of your browser for each URL of your site or blog, and in that title should be three separate keyword rich titles separated by two vertical bars with a limited amount of characters for all three titles. Something like 70 characters total rings a bell for Google. No more. Google supposedly doesn’t like long URL titles.

The first of the three URl titles should be your page or post title (automatic when you create the page or post). The second two titles should both be keyword rich titles relevant to your blog or site niche.

Here is the trick that a lot of people don’t know about ... Your meta keywords should be exactly the same as the URL title, and in the exact same order as your browser page title. Don’t add any more keywords to your meta tags.

Your meta title should also be exactly the same three titles as the URL title, and in the same order.

I get pages ranked super fast with this method.

Your meta description should also have the keywords of your page or post URL.

See example below:

<head>
<TITLE> Arizona Painting | Arizona House Painting | Arizona Painting Contractor </TITLE>

<META NAME="title" CONTENT=" Arizona Painting , Arizona House Painting , Arizona Painting Contractor ">

<META NAME="keywords" content="Arizona Painting , Arizona House Painting , Arizona Painting Contractor">

<META NAME="description" content="Arizona painting contractor ... blah, blah, blah....