Posts tagged Article titles
Writing Great Headlines: Do You Love People or Money?
Apr 25th
You’ve heard us discuss before that the headline is the MOST critical component of your written piece.
But to start back at zero, let’s ask a question first:
“What is the primary purpose of any piece of writing that you publish both online and in physical form — whether a blog post, an E-newsletter, a sales letter or web tutorial?”
In the most basic sense, it’s to get visitors to read what you’ve written, correct? Before you can generate sales, revenues and profits, or even awareness, someone has to take the time to actually read what you’ve written.
And with that said, what is then the primary purpose of your headline; your layout and graphics; your color schemes and fonts; every single element of your content?
The simple but perhaps surprising answer is…
To get the first sentence read..
This may seem simplistic or maybe even confusing to you. “Don’t we have to write compelling and interesting content with great structure and design? Don’t we have to convert?” you might ask.
Well, of course, but until the visitor reads the content in the first place, nothing else can happen.
When focused on writing great headlines remember that your headline is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make More >
Write Keyword Rich Article Titles and Subject Lines
May 4th
Ask yourself a quick question, “Do I write keyword-rich article or subject titles?”
Example 1: “Home Theater”
* This article title is too short to get any hooks and the reader has to simply guess what your angle to the topic is.
Example 2: “Home Theater Components”
* This is better, yet still does not explain why someone should read the article.
Example 3: “Home Theater Audio and Video Components That Will Make Your Friends Envy You”
* Now we have picked up a 2 more keywords, “audio” and “video” and a reason why to read the article.
Example 4: “Home Theater Audio and Video Components, Speakers and Setup - 7 Tips to Amp Up Your Sound”
* Here you see multiple, high-value keywords, gave a good reason to read the article, and even used a high-value keyword as a verb, “Amp.”
Not sure what keywords to use? For good keywords to use in your article titles, use an online tool such as Google Suggest, GoodKeywords, or Wordtracker to help identify them.
Also ask yourself another question: “Do the first three or four words of my article title introduce the topic of the article?”
More tips:
1. Avoid starting your title with ‘throw away’ or ‘junk words’ and conjunctions, like “a” or More >
