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November 12, 2008
Writing Better Page Titles to Increase Web Site Traffic has got to be one of the most challenging tasks we all face! I mean, how in the world do we know how to write page titles on our new page or post, in order to attract the right kind of readers and increase our web site traffic? The answer is far easier than you could imagine… and this short Exercise will help you out!
Imagine for a second, you were driving down the road in your car, and needed a part! You see a HUGE sign ahead that reads… “Auto Parts Here!” Naturally, you pull in and head inside to get what you need. As you go inside, you see wicker baskets, flowers, loaves of bread… but WTF, there are no Auto Parts anywhere! Since this is the brick and mortar world, you can surely go over and cuss out the manager… but what about the online world?
Search Engine Visitors rely completely on the power of the engine itself to read all those signs AND visit the websites, to be sure they are directing traffic to the right places! That’s right… the search engines are the equivalent of the road you were driving on, your browser is the car… and those signs you see, well they are called Search Engine Results. The biggest difference online however, is that you don’t get the chance to cuss out a store manager… when you click the X in your browser, or back button… you have cussed out the search engine for sending you there! How many times do you think that will happen?
Page Titles are the all important, “First Impression” you have with Search Engines and Visitors! Craft them wisely! Search engines will be glad to help you increase your web site traffic, as long as your titles are relevant to your content and users find what they were looking for when they were sent!
For this page, its pretty obvious, I chose the phrase “Write Better Page Titles to Increase Web Site Traffic“… let me share the basic methods I used to write that title? Just like the entire website, each post or article needs to have a focused purpose that will benefit your visitors and prompt them to read it! In the case of this website, my overall purpose is to help visitors get ahead in their niche website efforts. Whether that’s by helping with the software they choose to use and the different ways to use it, the way they market a site, or the standards they choose to use on the site development itself, each post on this site supports the overall mission.
Regardless of what eBook you buy or website you subscribe to, there are no magic formula’s out there for writing your website titles. There are however a few simple rules you can follow, and eventually craft your own style to support your goals. When I wrote the title to this page, I followed the steps below:
At this point, I asked myself a few simple questions…
From there… I thought of what may prompt ME to click that link in a search engine or on a social network and decided a good title would be just what you see above. It addresses the exact and specific purpose of the post and lets prospective visitors know what they can expect when they get here.
What Methods do You Use to Write Better Page Titles to Increase Web Site Traffic?
8 Responses to “Write Better Page Titles to Increase Web Site Traffic”
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Yep pretty much the same as you Mark. I always have a keyword in mind that I am targeting in the article and make sure this appears somewhere in the title.
I totally agree. The page title is usually the thing I work from. From the title comes the article. Title should say it all.
Mark,
Is it possible to make an H1 title using photoshop?
Mark,
Do you ever check competition for a keyword phrase you want to use in the title?
I try not to spend a lot of time with it but if I can invest a little time that makes the difference between a post that can end up on page one and another that I can’t find anywhere I think it can be worth it. Especially if the site is new.
I think you’ve made mention before of creating a keyword list for your site when you build it. That would seem like a good place to start when adding content to it.
Jeff
Hi
Good post and I agree with you, however I have also tried using titles I found through adwords keyword tool or wordtracker to avoid targeting too competitive keywords. The title should always match your content of course.
@ DRBob -
No… Images should be used to “Compliment” your site and content, not form it.
Of course, you could put an image inside the h1 tag, but it will have no benefit as the engine spiders do not read images, they read text.
@ Jeff - I do still use WT regularly, but I have shifted from using KEI only titles to volume titles, with KEI text throughout the posts.
In addition, I do not use it as much as I used to!
Mark
Mark,
I’m assuming you’re talking about finding a phrase for the title with reasonably high volume that you stand a chance to rank for and then using the WT KEI terms in your post?
Jeff
@ Jeff -
Correct… although I do give less weight to the KEI portion for titles, and lean toward stringing multiple related high volume terms together instead, then using kei and pulling it all together with phrases in the content, that you would expect to find, based on the title.