Blog post titles are important

I'm currently having a dilemma with using w.Bloggar. It's a good application for bloggers but it has one major problem. It can't write a damn blog post title! The features w.Bloggar offers are really excellent save that one flaw. I love titles! They provide a glimpse of what an article is all about and they are also a factor in search engine optimization.

For bloggers, "Blogging for Business" by Ted Demopoulos is a good read. I'm sharing an excerpt of his take on blog post titles below:

“Look Better Naked” is an interesting title. The local health club is using it in their advertising. Hey, fit people look better naked. I think it’s brilliant – offline.

Online, it has problems. It both contains no “keywords” or “ key phrases,” things people would search on when looking for a health club, and it’s too generic. People might look because it’s cute and sexy, but it doesn’t particularly appeal to someone looking for a health club, and it won’t help get search engine traffic.

Let's improve it by adding keywords. The follow two titles are infinitely better:

* Exercise – Look Better Naked
* Health clubs help you "Look Better Naked”

So, what keyword is best, “exercise,” “health club,” or . . .

There are simple tools that will help you out. I like the “Keyword Selector Tool” at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/ (or look in the "Resource Center" at overture.com) - it’s free. Other keyword tools include the well-regarded wordtracker.com (free trial available).

The keyword selector tool tells you roughly how many times a term has been searched on in search engines in the past month. It’s the relative numbers that matter.

* exercise has been searched on 116437 times
* health club has been searched on 333616 times
* gym has been searched on 183545 times
* world gym has been searched on 14572 times

Since this happens to be a “World Gym,” and that phrase includes “gym,” I’m going to pick “World Gym” and the final title is . . . World Gym – Look Better Naked.

No it’s not exact science! Health clubs help you Look Better Naked would be fine as well.

Now in the post, include the other keywords and phrases as well to please the search engines and help people find your no-doubt great content. Make sure you include them in a natural way – i.e., write for the reader, not the search engines. DO NOT write something like the following garbage. People, and the increasingly intelligent search engines, will hate it!

Health clubs and gyms are great for exercise to look better naked. Everyone should exercise in a health club or gym. Give a health club or gym membership as a present to a loved one. I love to exercise in health clubs and gyms because I love exercising in health clubs and gyms . . .

A couple of hints:

* Keywords at the beginning of a title are better than keywords at the end of a title.
* Put keywords early in the post.
* Don't obsess over this!

That was insightful. I like the "Don't obsess over this" hint. And then a couple equates to three:) Titles are like faces of articles -- in both reader and search engine perspectives. Well written, they really do an article a bunch of benefits. We just have to remember that blogging or article and adticle writing shouldn't just be for the search engines. Humans are the ultimate blog readers. Write to inform, entertain, and enjoy. To earn some bucks in the process is just an added bonus.