How to Create SEO-Friendly Article Titles

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Categories: How Tos | Internet How Tos

  • The first thing a reader sees when reading an article is the title. It's important for a web content writer to learn how to create SEO-friendly article titles. SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it essentially means that you create your content to achieve maximum efficiency or results with the major search engines, like Google, Bing, Lycos and Excite.

  • Tips

    • Factual, Detailed Titles Work Best
    • Use Main Keywords and / or Keyword Phrases
    • Make Sure Article Titles Show Benefit
    • Ensure the Article Delivers on the Title's Promise
    • Save Catchy and Clever for the Subtitle

  • Introduction

    In order for web content on websites to be found without extensive advertising and word of mouth or directly accessing it, the content must be searchable on the internet through an internet search engine or a search directory. When a search engine finds the content, it indexes it into its search results, and then users can enter in keywords or phrases in order to find web pages that contain related information to their search.

    If an article is properly written and titled on the internet when it's indexed, it will show up in the search results when users surf the internet looking for that topic. The better the keywords and article title, along with a few other factors, the higher the article will return in a keyword search for related topics.

    Knowing how to create SEO-friendly article titles can help your articles in the following ways:

    1. Helps the article index
    2. Helps the article index with the right keywords
    3. Makes the article easy to find
    4. Makes clear what the article is about
    5. Drives traffic to your article or website

    The ultimate goal of an article is to inform or impart information, knowledge or experience, and an article can't do that if it can't be found. One way to ensure it is found is to learn how to create SEO-friendly article titles and use them on every article you write. This guide will show you how.

  • Step 1: Select Keywords

    The most important part about writing SEO-friendly article titles is going to be getting the right keywords. Your article should already be written before you give it a title when writing web content. The reason for this is that you need to see all the potential keywords that your article contains.

    There are two things to look at here: individual keywords and key phrases.

    Keywords are the main words that your article is about. For example, you might be writing a how-to article about how-to cook with jalapeno peppers. The keywords are: cook, jalapeno, peppers. You want to be sure to include those words in your title. A later step will show you how to include these in the title, but to start, you need to recognize the main keywords of your article.

  • Step 2: Find Keyword Phrases

    Now, phrases are a little bit different. While some internet searchers are search-savvy, and they know how to search with keywords, what most users on the internet search for is a phrase. How-to phrases are fairly common, because a lot of people searching on the internet are wanting to learn how-to do something. In our example earlier, How to Cook with Jalapeno Peppers would be the search phrase that just happens to utilize all the main keywords too.

    This is really the ideal situation for coming up with a title. If it's possible to get a search phrase that most people will search for that also includes all your major keywords, that's fantastic and is search engine friendly.

  • Step 3: Factual, Boring, Detailed

    The literary or journalistic styles all teach to use catchy titles with a play on words or something that will grab a reader's attention. This is great for print writing, but for the internet, the main title of the article is often also the main title of the web page upon which the article resides, and as such, the title needs to clearly have the following elements:

    1. State what the article is about
    2. Use main keywords
    3. Use keyword phrase
    4. Be longer than an average print title

    Web content articles need enough information that the title alone will show up in the search engine results and let the user know exactly what the article is about.

    NOTE: Catchy titles aren't a completely lost art. Use your catchy phrases as the subtitle of your article. Once the reader is on your page, a catchy or clever subtitle can entice them to continue reading instead of clicking off to another page.

  • Step 4: Show Benefit / Make a Promise

    The title of the article should show a benefit to the reader while also making a promise to deliver that benefit. For example, if the article title says:

    How to Groom a Giraffe

    And then you get to the article and all you find is information on how to choose the best garden hose for your yard, two things happened here: 1) the reader was promised a benefit. Specifically, that benefit was that they would learn how to groom a giraffe, 2) the writer failed to deliver on the promise to provide the benefit by instead telling the writer about garden hoses.

    If you've ever been searching for something on the internet, found a great title in the search results, clicked on the page only to be disappointed that what the title said didn't exist on that page, then you know the frustration this can cause!

    When choosing your SEO-Friendly, properly keyworded and phrased article titles, be sure that you are clear about what benefit the article will give the reader and that the article actually does deliver on the promise of that benefit.

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