Guide To Search Engine OptimizationGo Back To The Search Engine Optimization Guide ARTICLE 'TITLE' TIPS AND STRATEGIESThree rules to catchy title development... State Your Benefit - Give the viewer a reason to click on your article. Each of these titles tells you what you’re going to gain from reading the article. You’re either going to get web site traffic, learn how to create a masterpiece, learn how to buy land, have stronger relationships, or deal with stress more effectively. Be Specific - Don’t be afraid to state specifically what your article is about. Sometimes people are vague because they think a vague title will pull more traffic because it will have broader appeal. It doesn’t work that way! The land purchase article is a great example. A person who has no desire to buy land will not click on that article. The person who is interested will excitedly click on it! If the article is well written, they’ll most likely click on the author’s site and learn more about his products and services. That’s what you want! You want to reach your target reader. Go for quality, not quantity when you create your title. In the end, you’ll get more clicks than if you were vague. Use Grabbers - “How To” articles are popular. People also seem to like titles with numbers in them – “7 Power Skills that Build Strong Relationships.” Odd numbers in particular tend to be attention-getters. You can also use catchy phrases. I particularly got a chuckle out of “All Stressed Up and No Place to Blow.” It definitely made me want to read the article.
Dynamic Article Titles... Come up with a dynamite title for your article. The title is the single most important factor that determines whether people will read your article. It should be compelling enough to make the reader want to find out more. For example, which has more impact: How to Train Your Dog or How to Train Your Dog to Behave in a Single Afternoon Maybe the second one is a bit long, but it certainly has more impact than the first one. EzineArticles founder, Will Turner, on Article Title Strategy (good stuff)... Most authors are wasting their time producing dozens to hundreds of high quality articles that never reach a fraction of their traffic potential. It's a darn shame. When I review the behind-the-scenes traffic statistics on over 20,000 articles that have produced over 1 million monthly page views in my article marketing lab...ONE thing is clear: All articles are not created equal even when everything about them is identical except for the TITLE. The reason is probably not what you think. If you've been schooled on traditional copywriting, you know that in the offline world, the headline determines as much as 95% of the success of the book or article. This statistic takes into consideration what makes the book title successful: Whether a human buys it or not. Article Marketing on the Internet is a whole different story because of the way your articles reach humans who have an interest in them. MYTH: Most people will read your articles because they came to a website and started browsing just like they do if they were to have gone to a local book store to find a book of personal interest. FACT: Wrong! Most people will search the Internet using one of the major search engines and they will be putting in between 1 to 5 keywords that are related to the topic of the article or information they are looking to locate. The search engines will then deliver results that best match the human's interest. YOUR GOAL: To have your articles show up in the search engine results for the keywords and topics that are most related to the content of your article. HOW? You must embrace this TITLE creation & traffic-building truth: The first 3-5 words of your TITLE determine the success of your article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate back to your website. Success can only be had when you create keyword rich titles for your articles that match the most commonly searched keywords for your topic. How to determine which keywords are rich and the right ones to use for your article? You'll need a keyword research tool. Some are free and some are fee-based. Probably the best free tool to quickly find great relevant keywords is the Google Keyword Tool. Then, once you've got a good list and you want to see the exact traffic that each keyword receives in Google, and the competition involved, to go WordTrackers new Gtrends tool. Whether you use a web-based keyword research tool or invest in one of the more advanced application level software keyword research tools, it's critical that you learn know how to do keyword research. A "Good" vs. "Bad" TITLE Example: Here is an example of the difference between a non-keyword rich TITLE vs. a very keyword rich TITLE that is proven to perform better in terms of traffic creation: Bad TITLE Example: "Top 9 Ways You Can Acquire Fractional Jet Ownership" Excellent Keyword Rich Title Example: Fractional Jet Ownership - 9 Strategies to Help You Acquire Your Private Jet Why is it more effective? Because it does not waste the first 3 words of the title with meaningless garbage words like "top" or the number "9" or "ways"...and gets right to the important words that might be found when someone is using a search engine to research a topic related to your article. You'll also notice in my example that I included the word "Private" Jet. Why? Because my keyword research said that people who search for fractional jet also search for the word "private jet" and therefore I wanted to boost the chances that my title would be found by a larger number of potential visitors to the article. Two recommendations on what NOT to do: 1) Don't include garbage characters in your TITLE such as quotes, tildes, asterisks or anything else that a search engines has to work hard to discard in order to understand the TITLE of your article. 2) Do not engage in any search engine spam technique by having keyword rich TITLES that have nothing to do with the topic of your article. You'll only be hurting yourself as the search engines already aggressively filter out bad behavior like this. YOUR INTELLIGENT KEYWORD RICH TITLE COPYWRITING CONCLUSION: If you want to maximize your results from any article marketing strategy, you must master keyword research so that you can create keyword rich and intelligent article TITLES. Your pay off will be massive amounts of traffic to your articles and website thanks to the search engines who love smart keyword rich TITLES! ARTICLE WRITING TIPS AND STRATEGIES"Write to inform, not to sell. A well written article pre-sells your business product or service." ------------- 10 Do-It-Yourself Article Writing Tips... On the Internet “content is king”, and the real guts of content is the written word. If you are managing a website you need readable text for your onsite articles, for articles in your promotional newsletter or ezine and for promotional articles to be published on other sites or in other ezines. While these writing tasks can be outsourced to professionals, it is also possible for you to do it yourself if you follow a step-by-step process that is outlined in the following ten tips. 1. In the first paragraph clearly state what the article is about. In standard journalism you would tell who, what, why, when and where an event is happening. In web articles you oftentimes state a problem, such as “how to get good written materials for your website”, and then explain how the article is going to solve the problem “by showing a simple step-by-step approach to writing”. 2. Organize your material in a point-wise fashion. Before you begin writing think of the points that your article is going to cover. You may not necessarily show the points, as I am doing in this article (calling them ten tips), however, for your own outline of the article you should know what you are going to say before you begin writing. Write down these points and then make sure you include them as you begin the writing process. 3. Put the reader at ease. You are not writing for a scientific or literary society, but to your peers on the Internet. Write in a simple style and if you introduce new terms, define them for your readers. 4. Explain your points in short paragraphs. Short paragraphs are easier for the reader to follow. No one likes to look at a long block of solid text. Three, four or five sentences are usually enough for one paragraph. 5. Don’t be afraid to spill all the beans! Tell your trade secrets! No, I am not crazy, the more you tell, the more the demand you will create for your goods and services. I once hesitated to write an article on “Tips for Optimizing Your Inner Pages ” thinking, who will need my search engine optimization services if they read the article? I was wrong, the article was widely published and generated several orders for my services. If you give more information, people will understand that you really are an authority on the subject that you are speaking about. 6. Give concrete examples and personal experiences to back up your points. Tell how you faced a problem and how you solved it. Or give hypothetical examples of the California Widget Company and how its website would, for example need a title tag of “Widgets: electronic widgets from the California Widget Company” 7. Emphasize the benefits of your product or service (this applies to the Main Article). When it comes to selling, it is the benefits that sell, rather than the features. Sure, you are selling garden supplies, home décor, clothing, gifts and jewelry on your website. These are features. But the benefits are that people can get these items in one place without shopping around, that they can save time and money, etc. The gurus of Internet marketing, such as Ken Evoy all say that you should constantly mention the benefits that you offer to your potential customer. 8. Give resource information to your readers. Give the addresses of websites where your readers can get more information on the subject that you are talking about. These may be your own websites or they can be other resources. In case you are worrying about losing customers, good outgoing links from your website are also helpful to your site’s page ranking and positioning in search engines. 9. Get another opinion on your article. Show it to your friends and colleagues, and don’t worry if they criticize you, it is better that your friends find the mistakes than your clientele. Always remember, a good editor is a writer’s best friend 10. Keep your most important information near the beginning of the article and summarize what you want to say at the end. Editors usually cut things near the end, so keep your most important points and ideas in the beginning of the article. At the very end of the article you can summarize what you set out to accomplish in your opening paragraph. You may not win a literary prize, but if you follow the steps that outlined above you will be able to produce effective written content for your website and for your promotional outreach via your own newsletters and through articles published on other websites. These articles could become the key to success in your Internet endeavors. ---------------- Use examples and stories - Many talked about the power of using stories in your writing to engage the audience. ---------------- Good Article Writing Ideas... Make a brief outline of what you want to cover in your article. This will ensure that your article flows well and that you don't leave out any important points. A few minutes spent producing an outline will save you time when you finally start to write. Write in a fun and entertaining manner. Let your voice and personality come through loud and clear. Don't bore your reader by just reciting facts they can find in an encyclopedia. Tell stories and give vivid examples. Your unique viewpoint is what makes your article special and ultimately what sells. Do keyword research before writing your article in order to get good search engine placement. Focus on a single keyword and use it in your title and periodically throughout your article. Also include your designated keyword it in your article conclusion. A prominent search engine listing will bring you lots of readers who may be interesting in purchasing the product you're promoting. Make sure your last paragraph summarizes what you've covered in the article. Let the reader know what you've told them and what they need to do next. -------------- The Simple Article Writing Approach... Step 1 - List seven pieces of information you would want to share with your ideal client. Step 2 - Pick one of those seven pieces of information and add a few lines of explanation. Step 3 - Then do the same thing for the other six pieces of information. Step 4 - Write a brief introduction to your seven pieces of information. Step 5 - Do it again - this one tip will lift you above most of the article writers and article marketers on the internet. Most people write one article and then stop. Don't do that. Keep writing. -------------- More Advice from EzineArticles Will Turner "First and most importantly, remember that an article is news. So of course, it needs to be newsworthy. Not a fast-breaking story. But it has to be informative or instructive or both to be of any real value to the reader. Don't forget, the publisher kind enough to present your work is not doing this for you. They're doing it for their readers. They have a responsibility to the reader to provide good, fresh content. Of course, for every one great article they get, there are fifty junk pieces for the trash. Best of all, the better your article, the better your reputation will become. And your calendar will fill with new business meetings and speaking engagements before you know it. It happens fast once you get the right piece published! Second, write in a natural voice as if you were speaking to a good friend. You can go back later and edit to your heart's content. For now, just focus on telling the story that will best assist the reader." 'MAIN' ARTICLE WRITING TIPS All of the above information applies to both Intro and Main articles for content network article formats, but for Main articles, you have the ability to control more of the content, which is why I wanted to add this additional section. When writing Main articles it is important that you still make your articles attractive to readers as it is very likely that these will be picked up by the search engines and rank because of the number of topically related links pointing to them. However, you do have the added benefit of gearing these articles more toward your products or services or main keywords, where you can't very effectively with Intro articles. Now, make sure you don't confuse focusing with advertising, because Main articles that blatantly advertise will be rejected. The best advice here is the golden rule. If you do write about specific products or services in your articles, make it informative and engaging. Focus on educating the reader rather than selling the reader. You might even add a link or two to other helpful information (nofollowed of course). Bottom line, there are many ways to write about your products and services without blantantly selling. And while it's important to write good quality articles for article directories, it is just as important to write good quality, informative articles for content network blogs. This is a good template of how articles can be created and structured for our syndicated content network. By following these guidelines they are sure to be accepted in the network. Read about how to write better articles with Title Tips and Strategies: To learn about the formating of the template for our content network, please view our format of articles for our content network.
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