The 80/20 Value of Titles
Recently, Rand did one of the best Whiteboard Fridays I've seen in a while (I do watch all of them) about increasing the likelihood of your content going viral. He touches briefly upon the importance of your title for click through rate and sharability, but in this post I'd like to take a more in depth look at titles and how they help spread your content. (By the way, this is my first YouMoz - woohoo!)
In my opinion, the elements of writing click worthy titles deserve more attention. In the wonderful marketing book "Made To Stick", the Heath brothers note that any good news or editorial writer may spend 80% of their time crafting the title (or "lead") and then whatever time they have left on the body of the content.
For those familiar with 80/20, what this means is, the size of the title compared to the actual content (and time spent crafting it) disproportionately affects the success of that content. It's one small piece of text with a lot power!
Note: to clarify, I am not necessarily referring to the title tag exclusively. I'm referring to simply the title of a page, post, article... which as you will see below can be the same as your title tag, but doesn't have to be.
A Quick Analogy: The Internet As a Highway
If your webpage was a store on the side of a busy highway, the title's job would be to capture attention and get people in the door. As many of the right people as possible. If you've ever driven on Route 1 heading into Boston, MA, you know what I mean (see photo).
Lots of people may pass by your links, tweets and shares, but few may actually stop to come in and check things out.
I hope this little analogy illustrates the extreme importance of crafting a clickable title - and that you will join me as I suggest some ideas for making your titles more clickable. Let's go!!!
7 Ingredients of a Click Worthy Title
Assuming all other factors neutral for the moment, let's look at what I think are 7 most important ingredients of your titles;
- Curiosity
- Benefit
- Emotion
- Tangible
- Appearance
- Sound
- Expectation
Ingredient 1: Curiosity
Your title should be clear enough that people know what they're going to get when they click, but also leave an element of curiosity - so you almost can't help but to click. You just have to find out what's on the other side. Some examples of elements that can entice curiosity;
Curiosity A: Unexpected
How do you make something unexpected? Combine two things that usually do not go together, like this;
"Diet Coke" is not something you usually expect to see in a post about SEO. 77 thumbs up.
Curiosity B: Incomplete Thought or Question
Pete's title here makes me curious, because he asks an open question, which I wonder how/if it will be answered within the post.
Curiosity C: Present A Conflict (Plot)
Rand does a great job here of introducing curiosity because there is an inherent conflict; a choice requiring resolution. Which one will he choose and why? Which do I choose and can I offer an alternative opinion? Will I agree with him?
Curiosity D: State What Something Isn't
I'm left thinking; It isn't? What Is? Do I know them? What's John going to say?
Ingredient 2: Highlight The Benefit
Benefit is congruent to differentiation. On the whole, people will visit a page because there is some sort of benefit to them. Useful content, entertainment, or even content that will make them look good if they share it. Why should someone click and visit your page? What are they going to get out of it? Some examples that imply benefit;
- How to...
- 7 Ways...
- Find Out How...
- Introducing.... (implies newness)
These are all common elements of a title that hint at benefit. Like this;
Providing a clear benefit is also a way to differentiate your content from others, in that you're implying it holds unique value that can't be found elsewhere. I also like "face-off" - there's a lot of meaning (visual, emotion, tension, etc) packed into those two words.
Ingredient 3: Elicit Excitement/Emotion
People also act on emotion - excitement, fear, hope. Your title should conjure the right emotion in viewers. I don't think people always click purely on emotion, but emotion can certainly support the other ingredients. Things like;
Thanks for the tweet Tom :-) I think the emotional aspect (as in this case) can apply more to social media - the title you might craft in a tweet of something, such as Tom's "ridiculously awesome" text here. Some other emotional words are;
- killer
- amazingly
- fantastic
- FREE
- mistakes
- mind-blowing
- surprising
- staggering
- surprisingly
- uncommonly
- unusually
- myths
- irresistibly
- seductively
- tempting
- uncontrollably
- unexpected
- unbelievably
- astonishing
- astoundingly
- remarkably
- insanely
- stupidly
- wicked
- viral
- epic
You get the idea :-)
Note that adverbs (ending in "ly") are quite popular. Honestly, I'm just using the thesaurus for a lot of those :-) But if you're fine with describing your own work in such glamorous words, go for it! I typically reserve this for something I'm really confident about, or if I'm referring to something else, like a product review.
Also;
- Exclamation points!!!!!!
- ALL CAPS - You MUST Read This NOW
- -------->Arrows. The Best Post Ever ---> Read Now
- *Asterisks* - I Just *Love* The Ideas in blah blah blah....
Just remember that not all special type characters work well across different platforms (social, blog themes etc) so use carefully. And they can also get annoying quickly, so use sparingly.
Ingredient 4: Make It Tangible
The Health Brother's book "Made To Stick" talks a lot about making your ideas concrete or tangible. I highly recommend going to this page of resources and downloading the free PDF "Made To Stick Success Model" (and read their book!)
Great example here though by Mike King;
I'm sure we all get an instant clear picture in mind of the "Cat In The Hat", as it's a familiar tangible graphic. Also keep in mind that, in Mike's case especially, a great post can naturally lend its self to a great title.
Ingredient 5: Appearance & Length
Although, in my opinion, not as important as 1-4, but if you can get your titles to look aesthetically pleasing, even better. Like this;
I like what Neil has done here, however intentional or not. The title fits on one line. It looks pleasing graphically, and its seven words long (which is supposedly the recommended length of a title or headline).
Ingredient 6: Sound
I don't know about you, but I "hear" myself saying the titles in my head. Just like appearance, this is of secondary importance, but if you can put an artistic touch to your titles, it makes them that much better.
I'm going to use Neil's title (noted just above) again as an example here. It sounds nice. It has a poetic ring to it.
- The alliteration "Lessons Learned".
- The "esss" sound in "Lessons" and "SEO" fit nicely
- as well as the "sea" sound in agency.
Can you tell I am a musician?
Again, the appearance and sound of your title is secondary, I believe, to the first four ingredients, but in my mind if you can get all 7 elements into a title, you're a freakin' genius. :-)
Ingredient 7: Expectations
Don't advertise "the best burger in town" and then have it be a veggie burger. It could be the best veggie burger that ever existed, but you set the wrong expectation. This is where you need to have some serious alignment and harmony between what you promise in the title and deliver with the content.
For this, I'd like to cite an example where the wrong expectation may have been set;
While honestly, I've only skimmed this post, the 17 thumbs down and people's comments (some about the title directly) illustrate the point that you don't want misrepresent the content of your post. Whether intentional or not, this post unfortunately seemed to do that. But conversely it did get quite a bit of attention (101 thumbs up and promotion to main blog) so it was a well-written title, just may not have been best aligned with the content.
So some questions to ask yourself to double check this;
- Does the title match the content? - What would YOU expect to see on the other side if you read the title? Does it match in what you imply the benefits will be?
- Does it imply content type? - Do you use the words "photo, video, graphic, interview, read, slideshow" etc implying what the core content type is going to be? Does that in fact match what's in the post?
- How long will it take to consume? - Do you call something a "complete guide", implying extensive length, when it is just a short overview? Do you call something a "quick recap" when in fact it's an in-depth look? Or say "7 steps" when in fact that's only a piece of the whole content?
Finally, note that you don't have to have all of these ingredients all of the time. Certain content may be more inherently exciting, or other content more controversial and thus evokes more curiosity.
Breaking The Rules
There are, of course plenty of exceptions to these ingredients in the real world:
Exception 1: Created By Influential Person/Business
If Rand or Danny Sullivan or Avinash posts a new article, there is an inherent trust and reputation built in. I think the concept of authority is explained well in Rand's post about thought leadership. Along those lines, when Roger (@SEOmoz) tweets out the newest blog post, since this is coming from a popular SEO company, Roger's reputation can boost up click worthiness and thus, the title is not quite as important.
Exception 2: Extremely Noteworthy or Newsworthy Content
During the time of SOPA or the Google (Not Provided) dilemma or now SPYW, if you were to post something with a decent title that was timely, this would be more likely to get clicks, just by nature of it being a hot topic.
Exception 3: Rebellion / Pure Artistic Liberty / Don't Care
Obviously there are sectors of the web or moments where you just want to throw your hair down and crank out an over the top, creative, artistic, rebellious title. Of course, as I'm now typing this, those sound like they'd get some good clicks as well! They just won't follow the "formula".
I shamelessly use my own example;
When I was first getting my SEO blog going, I didn't care so much about getting tons of traffic, because I knew I was just starting to blog about SEO, and thus it wouldn't be my best content. It was more for practice, and to have some content there to build upon. So why not have some fun right?
And as I imply, the "ingredients" as described above do not always have to follow this formula, depending upon your audience and industry and even goals.
Where / How The Title Appears Around the Web
When you come up with a great title, where do you put it? Should it always go in your title tag? Header?
Most often, some version of your title is going to be in three places;
- Title Tag
- Header (which should be the H1)
- URL (in a "clean" format, with hyphens etc).
But there are exceptions and considerations. A balance needs to be found between what will appear on-site, in the SERPs in social media or even bookmarking. Some things to keep in mind about each;
1. The SERPs
1. The title tag IS the anchor text in the SERPs (unless Google decides to change it).
I know this is basic, but SO important to remember when we're composing the title tag not only for rankings but CTR. Doesn't help if it ranks but no one clicks!
2. (In My Opinion) The Title Tag Should Be 50% for SEO and 50% for clicks
What do I mean by this? Good practice technical SEO (for ranking) says to put your most important keyword/keyphrase in the title tag, and as close to the front as possible. I'm speaking more about blog posts in this case, but I feel that if the keyword needs to be towards the end, or split up/modified in some way, to create a click worthy title, this is essential. Obviously if you're trying to rank a page for an extremely competitive keyword in the e-commerce space for example, this is going to differ, but that case may be extreme.
3. URLs - This is where you can win for rankings!!
Look at the URL in Avinash's post;
His TITLE (with "change or perish" is click worthy) but his URL does not need "change or perish". Keep your URLs as clean, focused and optimized as possible. This again is simply my opinion and experience and what I would recommend to clients in most cases. I even recommend switching the order of your words in the URL to get the keywords in the front of the URL, if this was not possible in the title tag.
The header will likely NOT appear in the SERPs, unless it ends up in the description.
2. Twitter
What I find unique about Twitter is, the link anchor text is not the title, which differs from most other places on the web. Thus why I like Twitter as a tool for experimentation, because you can change the headline easily just by writing a new tweet, but it is important to know where the title can come from.
Via The Tweet Button
Normally, what will auto-fill by default is the title tag;
Yet another reason to optimize your title tag for CTR!!!
You can of course control to an extent what text auto-fills via the tweet button, and I recommend starting with the Twitter documentation for this.
What The User Inputs
Often it's the case that people will create their own text to tweet a link, but in many cases they will just copy your page header (this is what I do anyway if just sharing quickly) because it's the easiest thing to do. In many cases, your CMS (WordPress for example) will make your title tag and header the same thing by default (and also add the website name at the end of the title tag).
Twitter and URLs
This is an interesting and outlying example that Rand pointed out, where the URL can potentially help CTR. That is, when you hover over most URLs in Twitter, you can see the full URL as you hover;
Very useful, and this for me will make or break a click 100% of the time. I always hover before clicking. Obviously this is limited to desktop/laptop devices :-)
But here you can see that is not always the case, and in this case I am much less likely to click;
3. Facebook
Ahh... Facebook and the Open Graph. This is where things get interesting for sure. I remember when I first was learning about the Facebook like/share/recommend buttons, I was confused how it all worked. In short though - you have to properly add the Facebook open graph meta tags to your site to control what appears when people use Facebook share buttons, and even to an extent, when people simply cut and paste a link into Facebook.
And I would highly recommend reading this post and especially ---> this post by Aaron Friedman on Search Engine Land for more details on controlling your Facebook titles around the web.
4. Google Plus
As expected, Goolge Plus uses your title tag for the title of a link when sharing;
It's OK to share stuff about Facebook on Google Plus right?
So to conclude for implementation, in general:
- Write Title Tags for CTR with enough SEO to help rankings.
- Write URLs mainly for SEO but descriptive enough for clicks. Keep them clean looking.
- Write Headers that closely match your title but also look and feel great on-page.
- While all three elements should contain your core keyword, the three elements do not have to be exactly the same.
Analyzing The Effectiveness Of Your Titles
While an in depth technique for measuring CTR is out of the scope of this post (it still seems CTR is one of those Holy Grail metrics for SEO - deceptively hard to calculate average CTR and even actual CTR for specific sites. Not just in SERPs, but everywhere around the web. If SEOmoz developed a way to truly and accurately measure this, I would use it! Do you agree?) .. I can however point you to a few resources, which can help you get a basic feel for how your CTR is going;
Bit.ly Data
There are many options for URL shorteners, but I personally use and like bit.ly, so we'll focus on that here.
First, I recommend reading bit.ly's documentation on how they capture data and display metrics.
Secondly, Rand mentions how if you add the + (plus) sign to the end of any bit.ly URL, you can see the stats for that link. This is awesome!!
For instance, take someone like Tim Ferriss, who has a relatively high amount of followers on Twitter. I can take a link he's shared on Twitter and see how many clicks its received. Not only that, I can look through his entire list of publically shortened URLs.
That said, I'm sure there are technical geniuses who can figure out a more robust method to measuring and using publically available data like this, but just eyeballing it is worthwhile, to study what titles have been effective.
External Resources
Click Through Rate For Twitter - Rand wrote a great post, which attempts to measure Twitter CTR in conjunction with some other interesting metrics.
SERP Turkey - The new tool by Tom Anthony, which allows you to test CTR in the SERPs. Admittedly I have not tried it yet, but would also like to say it deserves more attention! Richard Baxter wrote about it here in a fantastic post about how search intention may influence CTR.
Practice Writing Titles!
A/B Test Titles
Again, using bit.ly, you can;
- Create two (or more if you want to go nuts) short links to the same article.
- Tweet them both using two versions of the title in your tweet - try to keep other variables as similar as possible.
- Look at your bit.ly stats and see which one got more clicks and shares.
This isn't to be scientific, as much as to practice and have fun!!
Re-Write Other People's Titles
I love this one. I regularly will compose tweets to other people's content and write my own title, use bit.ly and measure the clicks. Again, we're just having fun and practicing here, not necessarily being super scientific.
Write Ten Titles in 60 Seconds
Sometime you just have to get those ideas moving. Try setting a timer and jot down ten titles as fast as you can!! Just do it!! The creative moment can be a powerful thing.
Study Non-Web Sources
As Gianluca pointed out in his comments to Rand's post, look at how newspapers and editorial print publications compose titles. This is not a new concept, in fact as you'll learn in Made To Stick, the idea of crafting a lead has been around a long time!! You can gain a lot of inspiration from non-web sources.
Try Identifying the "Ingredients" Of Any Given Title;
- Curiosity
- Benefit
- Emotion
- Tangible
- Appearance
- Sound
- Expectation
Inspiration & Resources
The Class I'd Like to Teach - 37Signals - Love this little piece by co-founder Jason Fried. He talks about writing a "one sentence paper" but the spirit of it certainly applies to titles.
6 Tips for Improving Twitter CTR - Get Elastic - Fantastic article with a wide variety of suggestions for improving CTR in Twitter (not just Titles), but things like link placement, length, word types etc.
Irresistible Headlines - Jonathan Fields - I confess, a few of my "ingredient" ideas for titles came from this post, and although Jonathan's SEO tips are pretty basic, there's some fantastic idea in this post. One interesting suggestion he makes is that the use of numbers, specifically the number '7' has shown highest success.
Anything You Want - Derek Sivers - Founder of CDBaby, Derek Sivers (I think) is brilliant at tangible little headlines. His work in general is of inspiration. But specifically, in his book "Anything You Want" he tells an interesting story about the value of user feedback when sending out huge bulk emails to their mailing list. If one sentence was slightly unclear, they'd get thousands of confused replies back, that would take $5,000 of man-hours to respond to. Many of us do not get this type of feedback loop from our webpages and titles. If something is unclear or uninspiring, all we get is silence. He makes the point - imagine you were to email thousands of people your webpage/article - would you get lots of confused replies back? To that I'd add - imagine your title was the subject of the email. Would it get opened?
Made To Stick Resources - The Heath Brothers - Previously mentioned a few times in this post, I probably learned the most about crafting a good title and making your words and ideas stick from their book. Highly recommend you check it out!
The Thesaurus - One of my favorite SEO tools!! Helps you find that perfect word.
Final Thought: Titles Are Timeless
Perhaps what I love most is the skill of crafting a click worthy title is timeless. While so many things in SEO change so fast, this is at least one facet that is deeply rooted in the past, and will thus endure for a long time.
To me, it's worthwhile and inspiring to step back and identify these timeless elements in a field that changes so rapidly. And it helps me remember that, despite the strong technical aspects to SEO, there is plenty of room for art and humanity. That, and we'll still all have jobs in 20 years :-)
What Did You Think?
As mentioned, this was my first YouMoz. *Wild Applause!!* Perhaps a bit overdue by my standards (I'd drafted and scrapped two posts prior to settling on this one). I would LOVE to hear your comments, suggestions and questions below: I will respond to all, promise :-)
You can also hit me up on Twitter.
Great post Dan.
I like how you practically have mixed-up old Copywriting school with CRO and Analytics.
Very well done... even though - and I would need to snap your face - you have not used any of my hyper oustandingly amazing titles :)
Hey Thanks!
That brings to mind, I meant to mention something else as a tip;
For example, Rand tweeted this post as "How To Make An Irresistably Click Worthy Title". If he meant to change it or not, I actually like that version a lot!
And just as in your comment, I've often noticed others describe content better than the person who wrote it.
This is a "ridiculously awesome" post, Dan ;-) Great examples; great insights; great resources. Well done! And while I'm on the congratulations wagon, excellent job on your Distilled guest post yesterday. In case others are interested, here it is: Case Study: A Mysterious Google Search For Fave. Keep up the good work!
Steve
Thanks man, glad you liked and much appreciate you including that link!
Just want to add, Bill Slawski brought my research in that post to an entirely new level - its here in comment #4 on this G+ thread: https://bit.ly/fave-bill
Wow... you weren't kidding. Bill's analysis of the situation is amazing. If anyone wants to see what happens when two search algorithms collide, check out the discussion by clicking on Dan's link above.
Dan -
Great stuff dude! You give a lot of awesome actionable insights here that are basically a textbook on how to craft great titles. I love your point about writing titles 50% for search engines and 50% for users.
Watch for my post next Tuesday on my site where I used these tips (before I even knew you were writing this post!). Also, if it's your own stuff, you can always go back and do some more on-page optimization after the social sharing has died down :-)
John! You hit the nail on the head dude, you can always reoptimize after the social launch. Really the only thing you don't want to re-do is the URL unless you really have to, but for sure the title tag, description and h1 etc. Good call man!
Now I'm very curious about your post :)
Exactly. Title tag, description, all of that can be changed after the fact. I believe in shorter URLs anyways, from experience of shareability and some tests I ran, so I avoid changing URLs at all costs. Make the URL relevant and short. There's no reason you can't have both.
Post publishes on Tuesday. Oh, and congrats on the promotion from Youmoz!
I agree, the shorter you can get the URL the better! Can't wait for your post :-)
Beeeeeeeautiful work, Dan. I'm adding a link to this post to my documentation for internal copywriters. You rock!
Truely a compliment when I hear people are going to pass this along to others on their team. Thanks man!
Just as Jonathon said, your great Title Blog Post Dan will be superb learning material for copywriters here also.
Often, articles are published directly by the copywriters who know the basics of SEO, however ensuring they are totally clued-up on creating fantastic Titles will be most beneficial indeed.
Congrats on your first blog post, it's excellent by any standard, whether someones' 1st or 100th :-)
Thanks Simon! In my mind I've always thought holistically about things, and no different in this situation. SEOs and copywriters can learn a lot from one another - and ultimately I see more similarities (ideally) in both crafts than differences.
Exactly, they sure can. Search and Copywriting are always evolving, even becoming more like Hybrids, in that Inbound Marketing is more like a role that includes Copywriting, SEO, Distribution, PR... all done by one person & one team that's competent in all those areas.
We still need the true specialists in each area though to do the real technical know-how and educate/advise others :-)
You Shure did an awesome job for a first post, Dan! I look forward to you one-upping yourself next time and I'll be heading your blog's way soon. I always thought it was my muse speaking to me (#6) so I'm glad to know others hear voices too. Great point about using sound - I would also add that some of us are suckers for puns and wit. I often gravitate toward a title because I like an attached literary device. Usually, a wit-infused title is telling of similar tidbits to come in the body. And you referenced the Thesaurus! Yes! Writer to writer, great job, dude. I hope you're ready to keep your promise, cause this piece is likely movin on up to the main blog!
I think #6 (Sound) comes from being a musician and also dabbling off and on with writing lyrics. Shakespeare comes to mind, with the carefully constructed rhythm of his words. Some of the best headlines I've seen could have almost been lines from Hamlet (besides the old English part) or song titles.
Thanks Anthony :-)
EDIT - meant to add... I do like the wit element. Making a title sound like it was just rattled off ad lib (even when it was not) is a skill in its self!!
"10 titles in 60 seconds" - definitely something that can be (and should be) utlizied for more than just titles.
I personally use this tactic while crafting tweets (it's more like 5 variations of 140 characters in under 2 minutes, but I guess it's close enough.) Sometimes I even bust out a Thesaurus to ensure I'm using the best language possible.
Yes, definitly, anything to just get the creative juices going, almost like an improv game for acting. I'm sure certain Rappers/SEOs we might know around here are really good at it :)
Thanks for this! Able to make some quick cheat sheets to double check myself when creating posts for clients. THANKS for stepping out on the limb 3 years ago and making this first post. Still working.....
Well done, Dan. You've touched on a number of aspects of creating a title that I, myself, might have never conciously considered. Certainly a wealth of tremendous information.
One thing that I might contest is your example of 'the wrong expectation being set'. While the title is crafted by the poster, the responsibility of interpretation (which shouldn't be all too much) falls on the user. Although I might agree that the poster should be careful to avoid glaring ambiguity in his or her title, there are circumstances wherin this ambiguity is eliminated by context clues. In this case, the title "How to Get the Equivalent of $100K in PPC Ads for Free" is vague by nature and creates a certain allure. The expectations set by this allure, though, should be indicative of the author's reputation, the location of the post, and other reputation factors, rather than just the title itself. The SEOmoz blog often houses tales of strong values and unrelenting perseverance paying dividends. While the expectations that the title conveys might not be met exactly, the expectations set by the location of the post (and its subsequent promotion to the main blog) are dead on. If I read this title on a grayhat SEO forum or perhaps even a reputable affiliate marketing site, this probably wouldn't hold true.
I think most people tend to share titles with at least some reference to the author/location of the post - not always, though. All things considered, you're dead on with the expectations. I think it's important remember, though, that the title isn't the only variable in the user expectation function.
Again, awesome post.
No, I think you're exactly right, there is some objectivity going on by way of how the reader interprets/projects their own thoughts onto the title.
The idea is intent. I'd advise people to not try and trick others with a title. You make a good point, the writer of that PPC title may not have intended to trick or set the wrong expectation - it may very well just have been unclear, so in his case, just some tweaking would've help project his intent.
Thanks for the thoughts! I like having a challenging view to think about!
Cheers Dan, I thought the photo of the signs on the side of highway was a great illustration, so many signs and the art of making yours jump out. I also think timing and relevancy is of major importance, to illustrate - if you was driving along the highway and was starving hungry you would be looking for signs for food outlets, this example shows if you tailor you signs/titles to the needs of the searcher you will have greater success in the campaign.
I like your relevance example. I think that really speaks to keyword level demographics and knowing the interests and "persona" of your customers.
Brilliant Post,
In fact I will be using these points as part of a presentation where obviously I will give credit to you :P.
Just one point though, regarding Ingredient #7 expectations - Its slightly tricky, sometimes we need to have a fine balance between intentions and outcome. If the intention is just to get exposure one wouldn’t really bother about negative or positive responses, however if you want a good outcome one needs to be very vary of the target audience.
Cheers,
- Sajeet
You're exactly right, always take things on a case by case basis - nothing is ever just a cut and paste blueprint, there are many times where you'll want to bend the rules as needed!!
Love this article - can also see you practise what you preach as I am a sucker for "80/20" principle. In fact I have printed "80/20" and put it on our office wall, so certainly brought me in.
I just said to our marketing exec (I'm 32, she's 24) - that for us to both start to write blogs differently overnight is almost impossible as we have been creatures of habit for 30 years.
I tend to read a blog on content (my Delicious bookmarks are full of them) nod along and forget it.
What's great about this piece is that it's not inviting me to change my entire writting style (hopefully this will happen with time) - but giving me concise pointers into how to rewrite 1 sentance - the title. There is no excuse for me not to write punchy titles now.
Also loved Rand Fishkin's recent whiteboard on twitter - always make sure to rename my twitter shortlinks with Bitly now.
Top post. Goal of a blog= make peoples lifes better - you have acheived this!
Goal of a blog= make peoples lifes better - you have acheived this!
Wow, thanks!! But honestly, you're right - and that's why I try to do with posts or clients. And absolutely, just starting with ONE simple thing: the title. Improve upon that and then work from there... you're probably find it flow over to the rest of your work!
Hey Dan,
This is very interesting to see such a post... I still might not agree with the 80/20 ratio but I would be called as ridiculously stupid if I don’t agree with the importance of title tag at all.
I really like the idea that Titles are 50% SEO and 50% for clicks. Especially in terms of trendy topics great title that can catch user/visitor eye ball is the key to success.. Obviously your content should have to have a value to get a link out of it but getting a click in a great investment of time over the title tag.
Great stuff in detail.
Hi and thanks!
The 80/20 principle does have certain controversies and since it is such an abstract concept in a lot of ways, it is easily misinterpreted. I think the main idea is to know its not literally 80% vs 20% - but it just illustrates common imbalances that exist all throughout life. The title or headline of an article has an improportionate (is that a word?) effect on the success of that article for its size compared to the size of the actual body of content.
As advertising legend David Ogilvy said... “On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar". — David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man True back in the 60s, even more relevant today. Nice post Dan!
Yes, conpletely agree, and to confess - *I* read mostly headlines all day - and only dive into the content when something (headline, buzz, who write it) draws me in to check it out.
Thanks :)
Great post. A good practise for testing good titles is making several PPC Ads with different titles. Fast and effective way for picking up a working title for SEO :-)
Completely true!! As I mentioned in another comment above, that's how Tim Ferriss titled his book "The Four Hour Workweek" - it won out of about 12 different PPC ads.
Thanks!
Great write up, I will have to say that You nailed it right on the money with #1, but #2 is one that I would put in there.
I think everyone needs a little conflict in there! People thrive on it!
Thanks, and I agree - apologize if it was easy to miss but "conflict" was basically #1-C (as a sub-bullet to curiosity). But maybe deserving of its own category!
Dan just went through this post again and noticed you replied to each comment (including mine). That's dedication and enthusiasm for sure.
Thanks again!
Yup! As promised :-)
Hopefully my replies were unique enough and didn't just create a lot of extra noise.
GREAT post Dan. Huge fan of the emotional word examples you listed as well. I've had a lot of success with the word "irresistibly" in my titles.
Also, I had no idea you could throw a "+" on the end of bitly links for stats. Nice find! And what an awesome first YouMoz!
Thanks Tommy - I have to credit Rand to mentioning the + for bit.ly URLs, from this post: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-increase-the-odds-of-your-content-going-viral-whiteboard-friday
Perfect !! it cleared lots of doubts on title optimization. this article was recommended by my senior, despite of huge changes in Google updates and Seo trends this articles still help full.
But i have question after Humming Bird update, still such attractive titles will be effective?
Hi Deep
In this post (which is almost 2 years old now!) I recommend writing titles 50% for SEO and 50% for clicks - and even with all the changes in Google, including Hummingbird, I still stand by that advise.
What this means is, in practical terms - define the main topic or keyword the piece is about - and if it's your goal to rank that page in search engines, include the keyword in your title. But then round it out by being interesting and creative.
It's a challenging balance to achieve but worth the effort!
Very good information for me to digest when creating future posts. Thanks for the help.
You bet, thanks Brian!
OK Dan, I was going to write something along these lines, but your posting absolutely removes any need for anyone to ever to a post on Titles again. IMO, this is truly the "ultimate guide" to writing titles. Great job!
- Ted
Thanks Ted!! You can write one about descriptions ;-)
First of all congratulations Dan on your first Youmoz and also for getting promoted from there to here.
I definitely understand what you mean when you say that you can hear yourself saying the title in your head(although I am not a musician).Getting the correct clickworthy title and a meaningful content descibing the title reduces a lot of SEO work.
I Shurely loved reading the entire post especially since you covered the entire concept of getting the right title including the exceptions to the rules(which was fun to read by the way).No wonder this post got promoted.Great insights!Hats off!
Thanks!!! Glad you liked it!!
excellent!
great read..maybe the best concerning On page
Hi Dan
For a newbie, novice and old folk like me this is treasure!. I am an old school, who is DIYing how to start a blog, get traffic using SEO, eyecatching blogs etc. Having just joined the world of TECH I am so grateful for this insight you have given, I will steadily work through all and come back to give you a feedback on how well it worked or notfor me.
Kudos to you bro!
blessings:)
Angel
Angel
Thanks for the kind words! Truely hope the article helps, definitely let me know!
-Dan
I think I'm going to put a lot of thought on my title for my website. It's title is soley for seo but I like your point on how half of it should be for clicks, I wonder if I'm losing clicks because I don't attract people?
It depends where the title is showing, what type of content it is, and what you're competing with. If its your homepage title ranking in the search engines, I would check out some searches where your hompage ranks and look at the competition objectively. See how your site compares to to others in the SERPs (Google results page) and definitely craft a title that will make people interested in seeing what the site has to offer.
-Dan
Wow, that is a very long and thought-provoking article. I didn't realise that adding + to the end of a bit.ly url showed the stats for the link, that's a hidden gem right there!
I fully agree that titles need to be short and enticing, that's one mistake I made when first starting out in web development.
I'm still shocked at some websites I see online who have either no h1 tags on their sites or (even worse) have 4 or 5 on one page. On the topic of on-page analysis I find the wave toolbar (https://wave.webaim.org) to be very helpful, especially using the outline view of your page.
I'm deviating slightly but as well all know titles and page URL's are only one half of the battle.
Thanks! I've never seen that tool before. For quick on page analysis I've been using Browseo
What an excellent way to start your blogging journey here, Dan. Well done!
I'd like to share another perspective on managing the seventh ingredient - 'Expectation'.Unless the disconnect between the title and content is extremely obvious, it might be tough for a reader to really know if the post lived up to the expectations.
Taking your example, in the "the best burger in town" post, whether the blogger recommended a veggie burger or something else, the definition of 'best' is pretty subjective. 'Best' in terms of what - taste, calories, presentation, the person taking the order?
If the blogger could, in some way, provide the reader with a (virtual) yardstick or framework to judge the blog, that would allow them to decide if the post actually delivered what it promised.
Instead, even if we had a flamboyant title like 'the burger that tastes like a million dollars', and the post goes on to describe a contest where the buyer gets a coupon making him eligible for a million dollar lottery prize, we have established a tangible connection between the title and the content.
Too lame an example or does it make sense?
Not a lame example at all!! Only difference being (and sorry if I wasn't obvious about this) - I was saying if an actual restaurant advertised "Best Burger" but then it was a veggie burger. The restuarant would set up the wrong expectation because they know its understood "burger" usually implies "beef".
But totally know what you mean "best" in a blog post is way too vague, and so its a great example that you need to watch out for those easy adjectives like "best, great, good, awesome" that are empty like air.
Dan the Man! First congratulations on your first Blog on Moz & what a follow up to your Distilled post yesterday...
This is a brilliant blog post and will serve as a great source of reference for SEO writers for some time to come. I whole heartedly recommend every writer takes time on their titles and by looking at front covers of magazines in the store can help inspire you when you are looking for a title for your latest article.
Thanks Chris... that's true, everywhere you look there's inspiration for writing not only great titles but great copy.
Even song titles is a big one for me.
As Made to Stick points out, Aesop's Fables are great too.
-Dan :-)
Too right... what's next Dan?
I really think Copy Writing skills are an often over looked SEO skill set.
I agree!! And I'm not sure what's next, do you mean by way of a post? I think video is next. I'm highly interested in doing some speaking.
But more importantly, what's next is for me to do some more serious learning. Always a student, ya know? :-)
Can you say "post of the month"?
Dan, you nailed this one. Totally made me rethink how much time I should invest in Titles. I've written content I'm extremely proud of, but then I forget about Titles and think of something off the top of my head. The amount of traffic and shares I've lost from this are probably too much for me to want to think about :(.
Also, I think Mike King is right. You're making some serious noise in the SEO community and I just wanted to give you some mad props. Hope to see you posting more often; between this and the Distilled guest post, I'm proud to know even get the chance to talk to such a smart guy!
Cheers
Thanks Jon
I've been following your stuff too by the way, nice work man! As I've said on Twitter, you're keeping me on my toes!! Can't believe how much content you're putting out every day!
As John Doherty mentions in his comment above, no reason why you can't re-title some old material and tweet/share it out there again! Its fun practice nonetheless! :-)
Outstanding... especially for a first post! These are great tips that apply to practically any situation. I don't know if you mentioned it (I admit I skimmed the last bit... it was just so massive and intense!), but I was thinking that most of them would be great PPC tips too.
YES, HUGE YES!!!
PPC people are probably really good at this - they deal with this exact challenge pretty much all day :)
Integrating other data with SEO i.e. via using ppc and social media obs data are additional sources we can use to tweak our titles; whether it might be to generate curiosity or encourage action with CTA's.
Excellent article - if only there was a handy to print out quick reference chart I could stick on the wall!
One thing I'd also mention is to think about the longevity of your titles. The awesome words that you use today, may not work in 6 months/next year.
Be wary of referencing current events! This depends on the "life" of the article/post but I've seen it catch people out and undermine the value of some great content.
Hmmmm... that's a good idea for a cheat sheet. Longevity is huge, thanks for bringing it up.
ALSO, I tend to think of how all my titles will appear in sequence too... and try to strike a balance and not over-do one style too much. I think this comes from just having quality diverse content as well.
thhhhhhhhanks!
Great post, commeting cause you said you'd reply - it's a TEST! :P Honestly though I read it once already, going to go home and take another run through it after dinner so more sinks in :)
Thanks! No prob, hopefully I pass the test - and for sure, its a bit of a lengthy one, so take it in pieces!
Congrats on your first submitted and published YouMoz.
If you are reading this comment, make sure to follow Dan on twitter. Seriously, do it now.
*edited to fix link
Thanks very much Anthony :-) Also, everyone should look out for YOUR first YOUmoz, as I hear you may be doing one in due time as well...
Great words to know from ingredient 3 . Thanks !
Thank you for the information... your blog is pretty useful!! :)
Congrats!
Thank you. Nice picture too.
Just started to use these tips for my interal links anchor texts instead of titles to decrease the bounce rate on my site. I am really excited to get to see the results. Thanks for this post!!!
Yep good point, link text is another productive place to optimize for clicks!
For e-commerce the words 'free delivery' are often a great way to increase CTR and, on product pages, being a bit different and quirky is a good place to start. People see the same drivel over and over again so being a bit different is a good way to get noticed.
You're exactly right, we get a bit "conditioned" to the same messages over and over and (like one of the tips says) being a bit unique and unexpected can really help you get noticed. Good point about the e-commerce, as this post doesn't touch upon transational topics as much as informationl and news. Thanks!
I agree. "Free delivery" or "Cheap ..." often works quite well for ecommerce website at gaining interest but like you say its best to use a variety of phrases and techniques to make your site stand out.
The issue is that because there are so many websites online all doing pretty much the same thing (Link building, selling products, providing information, portfolio sites, personal/professional blogs etc) its always a challenge to find a method someone else's hasn't already done.
Even if you do find a unique style or a good way of increasing your CTR using titles its very easy for a few people to copy that and then your unique idea stops being unique and starts being a trend among other websites.
This post was a great reminder for me to reread some of the ad copy classics like Scientfic Advertising and Tested Advertising Methods. As an SEO, Inbound Marketer, or w/e I weight optimization above all else this post is a good reminder to find a balance.
Good mentions, I have yet to check out either Scientific Advertising or Tested Advertising Methods - sounds worth looking into though. Balance is the key, knowing what the center is and then choosing to bend the rules when desired.
I thought the comment on on "expectations" was good and that's for the reminder on adding the + to my bit.ly URL's... ;-)
Thanks - I think it goes without saying, but setting the wrong expectation screams of "sleazy". No one likes to feel tricked, thanks for the comment!!
I think I must start the title optimization !haha
Very interesting article, I love how your own title is an example of the concept you are trying to teach.
Yeah... if I had messed that one up, that'd been bad ;)
Thanks for checking it out!
I bet you wern't expecting quite this number of comments when you promised you would respond to every single one!!
Great post by the way ;)
Haha, I wasn't quite sure exactly, but its teriffic to hear all the feedback and suggestions. It'd be like a musician with no audience otherwise, you know? (which I've experienced a few times in my life)... THANKS!
Wow - thanks for the info Dan! I think I need to go revamp some of my titles now :)
Phenomenal post, Dan. Great job! There’s not enough that can be said about the power of a stop-you-in-your-tracks headline/title/subject line. I’ve also gotten a ton of headline inspiration from (dead) marketers like Gary Halbert, Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, and Robert Collier.
Hey thanks a lot for those names! I've heard of a few but will definitly check them all out some more!
It's really vital that your title should compliment or relevant to your content by this process you could create high quality and interesting post. Dan, thanks for your infomrative post.
Dan you have shared very useful post with us. that is actually pointing to how effective titles we can write and use for our blog posts or other platforms like tweets...It is awesome work by you !!Keep it up
That was a hefty post, nice bit about the 80/20 power of a good title.
Excellent post, I'll be trying a few of these techniques.
Phenominal post Dan. I completely agree with your 50/50 split of optimizing title tags for SEO and CTR. I think two few marketers consider the CTR value of their title tags!
Jaime
Completely agree. I've learned this from personal experience, watching a post go live and you just get scilence. You think no one liked the post but then you realize no one SAW the post! The title is at times that magical multiplier that can give life to your content or not.
That was an awesome post and helped me put into perspective how important the title tag actually is. Now I have to go back and re-write a bunch of stuff. Thanks I think. Great article.
Track everything. Optimize everything.Wonderful share.
Great article. I think titles are a most important factor in local SEO.
Title tags are certainly important - which are not always the same as just your title. Thank YA!!
Really valuable post Dan! I like to share two things:
1. I do not agree with 80/20 on the time division between title and content. As Tom Critchlow said that one of this most thumbed-up article has rather week content (I haven't checked that but trust his judgement). And exactly that is the problem. You don't want to lure people in with great titles but then provide only mediocre content. A title is a piece of art, no doubt. But so is writing a compelling story in the body of the content. For really high quality content, you will have to spend 99% of the time on that and then 1% of the time on the title...which can still be 2 hours depending on the depth of the content.
2. There is a tool https://the-article-checker.com that let's you also check some quality metrics of an article. The "cathyness" of a title is one of those. The checks seem to be pattern based, "4 ways to..." scores significantly higher then cut stuff like "Cat in the hat...".
significantly
Hi David
1. The 80/20 application here means that "1% of the content (the title) is responsible for 99% of the results (clicks, traffic, shares). I agree that you should not have an amazing title but mediocre content (see "ingredient 7: setting expectations")
2. Thanks for the tip on the tool!
This is a great post. I've just been told to have a read because my titles aren't that great. Hopefully I'll be able to construct some really good titles now.
Thanks for stressing the importance of titles for the success of a blog post or any other piece of text, Dan. I'm a content manager and day after day I'm confronted with blog titles that are agonisingly boring, so I made also post similar to your one in order to make the blogosphere a better place. As I know that many German SEOs love MOZ blog, I think it's certainly worth mentioning it here:
By the way: The best ideas for irresistibly blog titles come to my mind when I go shopping or when l'm in the shower. In short, when I'm not under pressure to be creative!
Great post and one that will be required reading for my staff! If I may, I'll add another point.
I instruct my team that when they're writing titles to not forget WHO we really want to click and what THEIR needs are.
In many or most cases, isn't it our customer prospects we're trying to attract? So, with your titles, be sure to awaken curiosity in your CUSTOMER prospects, elicit emotion in THEM, state the benefit for THEM, etc.
In short, if it's customers you're trying to attract, don't chase clicks and rank in lieu of.
I know that was all implied here, but lest it get overlooked, thought I'd throw it in.
Again, great post. Thank you.
Simply superb! I used a few of your tips to make my headlines juicy!!!
Thanks for sharing...
Great, glad to see you putting it into action already!!
Great post Dan! My most-thumbed post of all time is pretty weak content-wise but has an amazing title. I think this proves your point :)
I left a wicked long comment here but Roger ate it. I'll have to turn it into another blog post I guess!!
But you're right. If you scan the posts on SEOmoz or Reddit etc, sometimes you needn't look further than the titles to see why certain ones "win"!
Hey, don't beat up sweet little Roger over your eaten content. That was clearly Casey's fault. :)
Hey Jen... no problem... I was typing it out full screen and switched back, may have been user error! In any case, may be best to save what I did for a separate post :-)
It’s not quite like this. Hahaped had different information.
?
great post Dan! I really like the musical part of this post, and I totally agree! I'm always writing and working listening to music, so lyrics and title of songs are huge inspirations.
and I enjoyed it a lot and I can understand this because this morning I used some of your tips to experiment a bit with titles I had to make.
thanks for sharing, and congrats for your first post on SEOmoz. keep rockin!
Do share any title ideas if you'd like! I always listen to music too while working...
Thanks Alessio, and I appreciate your tweets :-)
The 80/20 rule is very powerful and I remind myself of it everyday. Its not a rule per se but I'd say its a great principle to abide by without complicating the tremendous amount of data, workload of features and changes people want.
In the end, its the 20% that pull the weight and makes the different. Like a program application like Photoshop is infinitely difficult to master but you can get away with using 20% of its features.
Great initial post and love the examples and sources you provide. Look forward to reading more quality writing from you.
You are EXACTLY right about 80/20. The trick is figuring out what the 20% is to focus on to begin with. This is what trips most people up, its a matter of prioritization. Once you know the important stuff maiking the big difference, just focus on that. In this case, titles make a HUGE difference.
Your photoshop example is perfect - 20% of the features are used 80% of the time. This, in fact is what I find separates novices from experts, and thus why people learn from role models. We TEACH ourselves the actual skills, but it takes an EXPERT to help point us towards the things needing the most focus to begin with. We "don't know what we don't know".
And ironically, is was last May 2011, when I spent the whole month, literally reading the 80/20 Priniciple over and over, filling an entire notebook with my thoughts about it, that I made the decision to essentially change careers and do SEO full time. Best choice I ever made, its been a real interesting ride so far!!
But to the point, when you apply 80/20 to your life you identify what's worked for you in the past, isolate it and repeat it. I began just as someone making websites for friends and family members 5 years ago, and yet every time someone asked me to help them rank their site, I always was about to do it with success. Plus I love doing the work in every way. So this is why I decided to move towards doing SEO full time.
Some of you know this, but the rest aren't going to believe this... I still teach piano lessons 20 hours a week! Its my old "career" really, and I've maintained it part time while the SEO work gets going. But its basically at the point where I can't do both. So if you know anyone who wants teach 40 piano lessons a week in Massachusetts, let me know!
I guess that was a long comment - whoops! :-)
I thoroughly enjoyed your article. It has provided great insight for my site optimization
Thank ya "1099" !!
Glad this post made it to the main blog - otherwise I probably missed it!!
Great examples and statements!
I'm glad too :-)
Awesome post, work of art as your first post.
There is so much info, wow, thanks for all that. Your post was really intersting and worth the little time I have in my day. Thanks alot and keep it up!!!
Thank you, its good to hear the time put in is appreciated :-)
There are a lot of great thoughts, ideas, and examples here. I am still trying to absorb it all :-) I really like the whole concept of writing the title tag 50% for search engines and 50% for CTR. This makes a lot of sense and truthfully I never really thought about that too much in that manner. I have done similar things, but never really took the time to actually analyze what I was doing and why and how truly great it is. Furthermore, you are not supposed to keyword stuff and if you do, it usually doesn't benefit you, so you may as well do 50% SEO and 50% CTR.
Great Post, thanks.
Glad it helped! Makes it so worthwhile to hear from people that it helped in any way, really appreciate the feedback.
SO MUCH focus is still on rankings. This may be in part because its historically been a WAY easier number to get. Its EASY to just search Google and see where you stand, especially for the business owner. CTR is so abstract. You can't just pop open your browser and see you're click through rate! Even with some measure of sophistication its hard to measure CTR!!
Point being, we focus on rankings because its the easy number to get. Yet CTR may be more important.
Another reason to get your author tags and rich snippets happening!!!
Great post. Using Mechanical Turk to test titles is an interesting idea. Someday maybe the Google gods will give us accurate organic search impression numbers so we can run stricter title tests!
Yup! Test in whatever way you can, its better than no testing at all!!
Google seem to taketh more than giveth these days, unfortunately... but that just means we can get real creative to work around that :)
Great post! I could tell you really put a lot of time and effort into this, so kuddos!
Coming up with titles can be one of the hardest parts of my writing. I tend to be an over thinker (which isn't always good!) Thanks for giving so many relavant tips that people can use right away.
I'm also going to be checking out the resourcses you mentioned in this post.
Thanks again.
No problem! I'm so glad it helped! With anything, it takes some practice and also analyzing the titles and text you come across everyday! :-)
Nice Post Dan! I really enjoyed reading this one. Posts like this keep me coming back to the SEOmoz Blog.
George... that's great! Until today, I was a reader just like you (this was my first post here)... so that's why I always come back here as well, some of the best SEO content on the entire net. Feel lucky I was able to contribute something.
Killer post Dan ;) Congrats for your first post... really nice . I have shared it with our content writers also :). Please post about "descripition or summary of your article, blog or webpage" also. It is also an important factor of CTR. I saw some weired descriptions in SERP.. Most of the descripitions are from e-Commerce sites. So kindly share your views about how we can increase CTR through descriptions.
Thanks! In the description I usually look for a few things myself (this is just me personally when searching)
1. Some sort of hint that the content on the page answers my query - relevence.
2. An indication as to how well the content might answer my question - quality.
You see, pscyhologically the description comes acorss as a sample of actual text on the page (and often is an exact sample, as Google chooses) or should be an awefully good summary of the content that's on the page.
So the key here again is;
1. Having a clear understanding of what the information is on your page
2. Having a description that's in harmony with that, and motivates viewers to understand what's on the page quickly.
3. Provide the best incentive out of all the other choices, that YOUR result is the one they should click.
-- So I suggest for ecommerce especially to know how you're differentiating yourself from the competetion both in the SERPs and on-page, which goes right down to the core of knowing your business really well, and knowing why you exist and what you stand for!!
- - - - -
But technically speaking...
I think the first line of defense for so many ecommerce sites should be to actually have a meta description filled out within the appropriate amount of characters to begin with!
Some of it is due in large part to poor CMS setups that plug in all kinds of weird stuff into the description tag. So just getting something in there that's within 156 characters would be the first step I think. or if you're working in WordPress, be sure you don't have an SEO plugin that's conflicting with your theme, and that only one part of the WP setup is trying to handle descriptions.
Add into that it seems like Google is choosing the description snippet more and more these days, especially if you don't have one written thats within the required guidelines.
Dan,
I absolutely believe no matter what angle you take for writing an effective title, you must create a scent with the intent of taking your users to your sites desired outcome, which start's with your title.
It's all about understanding your target audience behaviour and the stage they are in for your site's funnel. As you mentioned testing and finding available sources and tracking will help you develop that "straight shooting" decision making still in terms of the type of content and title you end up going with. From a CRO point of view tweaking the content to reflect the language used on the title, can help improve overall engagement and conversions of your site.
Thanks for the creative direction you took with this post. I'm not saying you are not smart (as I think we have you have to be a genius to create something new) but you clearly understand what your readers want. Very intelligent and practical post indeed Dan.
Cheers,
Vahe
you must create a scent with the intent of taking your users to your sites desired outcome, which start's with your title.
Agree!! The "conversion" begins with the title. Just like you wouldn't want to look like a pizza shop on the outside and a Mexican restaurant on the inside. The outside and inside must be in harmony.
Dan,
Thank you SO much for leaving "awesome" off your list of interest-provoking headline words. You came very close to including "amazing" in "amazingly," but I'm so happy to lose one A word I will forgive you the almost-inclusion of the other one. Now if we could all manage to speak as well as we write!
Yes, there are certainly words which can be overdone. Not too sure if I should admit this, but I spent about 30 minutes deciding on an adverb, and finally settled with "Irresistibly" - there's always some second guessing going on but overworking a title too much is also something I can work on. Eventually you just have to pick something and go with it! Thanks!!
I...uh...could not resist clicking on this damn title. I feel used. ;)
Lol... hopefully the article met your expectations too :)
Great post, definitely timely for me personally. Great points and great examples. Congrats on your first Youmoz!
Thanks! I'm glad it was timed well, totally planned that for you, no worries. Just kidding... thanks again :-)
Great post Dan. I'm diggin the highway analogy. In my opinion, ingredients 2 & 3 are most important. Anyone agree/disagree?
I agree. Another thing not listed but very important: make sure to use commonly understood nouns.
Matt, I think I would alter that slightly to: make sure to use your nouns with intention - meaning that you can use a strange word if its completely on purpose and you know exactly what the desired effect will be for the reader. But in most cases, you're absolutely right, a noun which quickly gives the reader an image they are familiar with is important!
Thanks, for sure, 2 & 3 are important, yet I'd find it hard to do away with curiousity... I'd have to list 1, 2 & 3 as essential :-)
Content is king so is title queen?
Haha... content is the castle. title is the king. content is what people come to see. king is what draws them in :-) Just playing... I like yours too!
Looks like you saved your best blog for first. Criss cross, thank you Dan for helping me turn my titles in to awesome sauce.
Thanks John! Glad it helped ya brew up some awesome!!
Fantastic first article. Being fairly new to SEO, this was an eye opening read! Thanks!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! (Being said objectively as an outsider) SEOmoz has so many resources! Its one of the ways I started to learn SEO as a beginner ~4 years ago!!
Lots of great ideas here. Thanks for posting!
Yoooooouuuuuuuurrr welcome!
Great post -- I think a lot of times people mistakenly group benefits and features together. It is a simple marketing concept that should not be overlooked.
That's exactly right - it's one HUGE advantage I find being an outside consultant. I'm not "too close" to the businesses I help and can see it from the customer's point of view better, and can thus see the benefits better. Great point.
Nice post, I afree making a title which is CTR worthy is a big factor. You really need to test all titles too see what works and what does not work =)
I have tested some titles on big niches which get huge traffic it is amazing how you can change one word and see an uplift in traffic ;)
Definitly right - TEST TEST TEST whenever possible!! Even A/B testing headlines on-site is another form of this...
Some must know the story of how Tim Ferriss named his book "The Four Hour Work Week"?? He placed about 12 PPC ads which led to blank pages... each ad was a different title and subtitle. The one with the highest CTR was "The Four Hour Work Week" and that's how he named the book. I'm absolutely convinced this ONE test he ran possibly contributed more to the success of the book than anything else. Titles matter!
I'm liking 1 and 2 the most right now, I think. Most people are inherantly curious (or nosy, even), and we always want to know "What's in it for me?"
Fantastic article, thank you for sharing!
Sure thing Amy - yeah, curiousity is really wired right in us!!
Brilliant article, a great read.
Thanks man!
2 words.... "AWESOME POST"Thank you!
"Awesome comment!" heh :)
Great post Dan.
Ur Researched r Mind Blowing