Sure-fire titles for SEO

I see a lot of talk about writing sure-fire titles for social media marketing but lets not forget SEO either (or even paid search marketing for that matter). Writing sure-fire titles for those are just as important. It’s something that takes both creativity and a little technical know how. You still have to entice click-throughs, convert well, create mindshare, but at the same time you also have to please algorithms.

So while there are top 10 ways to write good titles for social media marketing, there are also other things like putting keywords closer to the beginning of your title tags so they rank well. And yes that really does make a noticeable difference, but keep the titles user friendly too.

One of the best examples I can think of are WordPress blogs; we optimize a lot of WordPress blogs and one of the first things to do is tweak the title tags.

Example:
GigaOM  << India’s Consumer Internet Space â Too Crowded?

To:
India’s Consumer Internet Space â Too Crowded? >> GigaOM

The first thing this does is it moves the brand to the end and all the important keywords closer to the front. I know there are people that disagree with this and think it’s better to have the brand first, especially if you’re reputable, but I think the opposite. I think it’s better to have the keywordscloser the front not only for SEO reasons but also for branding reasons as well. Take this screenshot for example.

They all stand out better to me than the Apple title does. So while it’s also more search friendly by theory, it is also more brandable too. Which do you prefer?

So next time you have you’re thinking of clever titles that will get you on Digg also think of clever titles that will get you on Google too. They both play a big importance in their respective disciplines and I find that very cool.

Just don’t stuff keywords as that’s annoying and doesn’t work.