More Tips for Good Article Titles
Continuation of Lesson 6 from You Can Make Money
Writing
We continue with one of the most important elements of good
article titles...
4. Have Good Keywords in the Title
Many experts will tell you that this is the single most important
part of article titles. There is some logic to this. As mentioned,
no one is searching for the more interesting keyword "robbed
on a bus," while there is search traffic for "travel
safety tips." Searchers for the latter may never find an
article which is titled "Robbed on a Bus." Lesson 17
will have some tips on how to get the best of both approaches.
It is also a good idea to have the primary keyword in the
first few words of the title. Suppose your keyword is "writing
articles." The title "Six Mistakes People Make When
Writing Articles" would be okay, but "Writing Articles
- Six Mistakes to Avoid" might be better. It is more likely
to be found in the search engine results, and if the reader can't
find it, it doesn't matter how good the article is, right?
Note: This seems to be the consensus at the moment, but search
engines are always evolving, so placement of the keywords may
not be as important in the future, But in any case, It seems
likely that those articles will always be found more easily if
the right keyword is somewhere in the title.
I have had good luck following these rules. I have also had
good luck breaking these rules. An article that has brought a
lot of traffic to my site Houses Under Fifty Thousand .com has
no good keywords in it. The title is "We Bought A House
For $17,500." Apparently even though there is little chance
of this being found in the search engines, it grabs enough attention
when people are browsing the article directories where it is
found.
It also has been used by many other websites. This is unusual,
though, because website owners generally want to use articles
which are keyword-optimized, so they'll bring in new visitors.
That's something to keep in mind if you want your article to
spread out across the internet.
Good Article Titles - A Strategy
Not sure when to follow and when to break the rules? Why not
do both. Try it one way and then rewrite the article another
way. My article, "We Bought A House For $17,500," had
no good keywords, but was rewritten as "Cheap Homes - Where
To Find Them," because there is good search traffic for
"cheap homes." There is also traffic for "cheap
houses," so I could rewrite it again using that keyword
in the title and the article.
Will this create problems with the directories? Yes - if you
don't do it right. They don't want "duplicate content,"
and just changing every occurrence of "cheap homes"
in the article into "cheap houses" isn't enough to
call it a new article. You don't want to be banned from a directory
for too many duplicate submissions (although they'll usually
just reject that particular article if it doesn't happen often).
You may not like the idea of having essentially the same article
twice in a directory. Consider the following scenario, however.
I write an article based on "cheap homes," and rewrite
it based on the keyword "inexpensive houses." How many
readers will stumble across both and feel like they have been
"tricked" into reading the same thing again? Almost
none, because they probably each search using one keyword or
the other, but not both.
In other words, those who search "cheap homes" will
never see the other version in the results, and vice-versa. I
am actually giving the searchers for "inexpensive houses"
a chance to read a relevant article they would have otherwise
missed. This is why the directories generally have no problem
with rewritten articles if they are truly rewritten and targeting
new keywords.
Always change more than just the article titles, though. I'll
cover how to rewrite an article to make it a "new"
one in Lesson 17.
Book continues here... Article
Descriptions
Note: This is part of the book, You Can Make Money
Writing. There are links to all the all the lessons/chapters
on the home page.
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