Title Factors that Impact Search Rankings and Click-through

Improve your site’s searchability by improving your headlines

You can’t write online in the same way that you write a sales letter, brochure or radio script. It simply doesn’t work. Being slow to recognize these differences has proved to be the undoing of many an online venture.

The above is an excerpt from the book Net Words, which talks about why writing for online media should be approached differently than writing intended for offline media. To add to that, when you’re writing blog posts or articles online, the words you choose, especially in the headline or title of the post, will help to shape your search engine rankings and click-throughs.

For this article we’re going to assume that the title you give your online articles or blog posts is also the <title> tag in the source code of the page. Without getting too technical, the <title> tag is the piece of code that denotes the title of the page, which is usually automatically filled in with the title of your blog post by most publishing systems.

Headlines can make or break visibility
Let’s say you’re writing a blog post about Jennifer Lopez’s record-breaking sales of a newly launched women’s sandal called “Lo.” What title would you use?

1. Jennifer Lopez Launches a New Sandal Called ”Lo”
2. We Can’t Live without these Shoes!
3. Jennifer Lopez’s New “Lo” Sandals Stomp Shoe Sales Records!
4. J-Lo’s New Shoe Launch Breaks Sales Records!

Think you have an idea? Let’s look at the factors that go into making a great title for search visibility:

• Directly convey what the content of the page is about.
• Incorporate keywords relevant to the page content.
• Use relevant keywords with the most search volume (optional).
• Attract attention.

Headlines should tell what the page is about
The reason this is important for visibility in search is because search engines look at the title of the page to determine the context of the content on the page. So a title like “We Can’t Live without these Shoes!” tells search engines that the page is about shoes people can’t live without, but it’s not exactly what the content of our article is about.

The title of your blog post is also usually what shows up in search results. So if someone is searching for “J-Lo’s new sandals” and the title of your blog post showing up in her search results is “We Can’t Live without these Shoes!” she might easily skim right over your listing, since she can’t immediately tell what it is about. Your blog post, despite potentially ranking well, will not get as much traffic from search as it could.

The other titles do a better job at being specific and getting to the details. Cross off headline number 2.

Incorporate keywords relevant to the page content
Similar to a headline describing what a page is about, try to use specific keywords that are relevant to the content. In this case, our blog post is about sandals that JLo launched, not just shoes. So when someone types in a search for “JLo’s sandals” and you don’t have the word “sandals” in your headline, you’re again potentially impeding click-through. Ms. Lopez may have also launched a line of shoes last year, so is your blog post relevant to those shoes or the new sandals? We’re aiming for sandals, not shoes, so nix headline number 4 also.

Use keywords with high search volume
This is optional because keywords with high search volume usually have high competition as well, so you may decide that you’d rather go the route with less competition for a better chance at ranking well. This is fine, and actually a great idea if the market is already saturated for a particular keyword, or if lower-volume searches are actually more relevant, but also keep in mind that the more searches there are for a term, the more opportunity there is for search traffic. Make the best decision related to your blog post content.

Type any terms for which you may be interested in determining search volume into a Keyword Tool. In this example, we’ll look at “Jennifer Lopez” vs. “JLo” vs. “J-Lo.”

When you get results, sort by local search volume to easily see what term people are searching for the most. It turns out that “Jennifer Lopez” is four times more popular than “J-Lo” and six times more popular than “JLo.”

So we’ll likely want to use her full name in our blog post title. This still leaves the other two headline options on the table, since both incorporate the term “Jennifer Lopez.” So let’s look at the next factor…

Attract attention
Search engines don’t incorporate headline attractiveness or sensationalism into their algorithms. But a title’s ability to attract attention can indirectly affect your rankings and click-through. Headlines that attract attention tend to get a lot of clicks (from RSS readers, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and oftentimes gain a lot of in-links. An article or post with a lot of links indicates to a search engine that it is popular, which can affect the article’s rankings. Links from other sites or pages on the web also provide additional context to search engines. For example, if most of the links to our J-Lo sandal article come from celebrity sites and fashion sites, it tells the search engine this page is related to celebrities and fashion. Both of these things help search engines help you.

So of the two titles left, “Jennifer Lopez’s New ‘Lo’ Sandals Stomp Shoe Sale Records!” is much more attention-grabbing than “Jennifer Lopez Launches a New Sandal Called ‘Lo’,” not to mention that it also incorporates specific keywords about the sales records. We have a winner!

Keep these things in mind when writing blog post and article titles online. You can also use your analytics tools to determine whether or not you’re actually getting search traffic from the keywords you intend. For more details on optimizing your blog posts titles, check out these resources:

• “Wordpress SEO—The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog“
• “Best Practices for Title Tags“
• “Company Blogging 101“

— Laura Lippay

Visit Laura at Lip Service, and see her previous posts, “Traditional Agencies + Search Marketing” and “Defining Your Target Audience with SEO“.