 |
A Publisher’s Rant – Why I Hate Your Article Headlines |
|
|
Submitted by Jason Edwards
| RSS Feed
| Add Comment
| Bookmark Me!
I’m a publisher for numerous sites. I HATE many of your articles. Here’s why I hate your headline and what you can do about it.
The Headline
There is a school of thought out there that your headline should be designed to captivate readers. In the real world, this is probably true. When I am looking for articles, it is not.
I want keywords front and center in an article headline. This may come as a shock, but I am using your articles as part of a search engine optimization effort on sites. With seo, the keywords always come first. ALWAYS!
Consider the following examples:
1. California Real Estate – The Secret to Making a Bundle
2. The Secret to Making a Bundle in California Real Estate
The first headline is by far the best. The keywords are front and center. I can easily turn this headline into a meta title for site page. More importantly, this tells me that you may be a writer that understands what I want. I am going to click through to your article and read it. If the rest of the article is done in the correct format, I am going to publish this article on my site AND I am going to add you name to my worthy authors list. When I need new articles, I will go out of my way to see if you have published anything new.
The second headline is a disaster. The keywords are at the end of the headline, which is terrible for search engine optimization purposes. This is a waste of my time and tells me to avoid your articles. If I can’t find enough articles with the proper headline, I may come back and read yours. Then again, I may not.
Captivating Headlines
Now you may be thinking you need a captivating headline because you want to capture as many readers as possible. You DO NOT. I’ve already done the job for you. My sites already have traffic. I am delivering the readers to your article. They will read it if it is on the site. Of course, you’ll have to put the keywords first to get my attention.
Writing a headline is a fairly simple process. So do it!
|
|
|
|
|
LinkedIn Recommendation:
 Scott Dunn - Helping Clients Create Brands and Communications that Build Know, Like and Trust with Their Target Market. - Teo is a true professional. He is very detailed driven and has the ability to provide solutions to problems when others have given up. He knows the value of research and if he does not know an answer, he will do the research to find it. - February 11, 2008, Scott was with another company when working with Teo at Net-Teams, Inc.
|
|
Featured [articles] Articles:
|
|
