Tips on writing titles for blogs and websites

Understanding and writing good web page headlines or titles for your blog or website isn't rocket science but it does need a little forethought and planning if you want to reach the right people.

There are literally thousands of garden and landscape websites that are as good as redundant and useless to search engines because of the lack of discernible content or direction.

I read many good sites during the week that have some really good information to share yet the good parts are buried deep inside a thick smoke of disarray and confusion meaning the intended message is far from clear.

The title (tag) and the initial paragraph should be considered carefully before pressing the 'publish' button because for most publishing packages mean that the title forms the URL and cannot be changed (although Typepad has introduced an editing option in their new release).

I am talking from a position of experience and two and a half years ago, when Landscape Juice was in its infancy I was as guilty as the next blog owner for ignoring some basic principles and I am looking forward to my Typepad upgrade to be able to edit some older titles.

Here are two examples: the first is a good title and first paragraph and the second example is a poor title and then a rambling first paragraph that will only serve to confuse and rank poorly in SERPS.

Example one.

"Tips on writing titles for blogs and websites

Understanding and writing good web page headlines or titles for your blog or website isn't rocket science but it does need a little forethought and planning if you want to reach the right people."

I have used the title and first two lines of this post - an important note; search engines will read left to right with the first five words holding the most descriptive advantage.

The words 'tips' is often used by searchers when looking for help so it is always wise to put this early on in the title. The first two lines of the post or descriptive meta tag should be based on real human instinct. Often the right titles to write are exactly what you would put into a search engine yourself if looking for information and help.

Example two.

Never a dull moment in the office.

I have just had my brew and I thought I would get my head around doing some stuff on my blog - lots to do to get some bods landing on the info.

OK, this might be a bit of a wacky second example but I wanted to distract you from the real title of this post deliberately. This distraction is something that blog writers are doing without really knowing it - there is nothing of value to attract search engines to my page if I were to use this.

Even if I had steered the post back towards the target content in paragraphs two and three I would have lost ranking and wasted the use of the post.

Linking out to a post that ranks highly (like I am doing at the bottom of this post) for the information you are offering will help your cause but by strengthening the early part of the post and adding the link, preferable as anchor text - using the words in your out-bound URL that the target post has used, embedded in your post - will bring your post right up in SERPS.

Now here is an example of good anchor text: it is well worth bookmarking this website if you want to use HTML meta tags on your blog.