The Organ Grinder’s Monkey

This is Part 4 of my field test of the Blogger’s Guide to SEO. During this series, I’ll be starting at the beginning of this guide and working my way down, trying out the advice (or noting why I’m not going to). In the end, my hope is to wind up with a more optimized blog while demonstrating the why’s and how’s of blog SEO.

In this short, but very important, section, BGTSEO covers the importance of writing really good headlines.

Advice: This section consists almost entirely of an embedded YouTube video of an interview, in which uber-blogger Cory Doctorow’s is quoted as saying, “Write headlines as though you are a wire service writer.” They also include a link to Copyblogger’s Magnetic Headlines blog series.

(Note: the embedded video link they have is broken, so I’ve embedded the video below so you can get to it without having to comb YouTube looking for it.)

The bottom line? In people terms, writing concise, descriptive headlines that are front-loaded with keywords increases readership. In SEO terms, search engines give greater weight to title text, headlines (as demarcated by various < h > tags) and other emphasized copy than to the main content.

Creating keyword-rich, descriptive headlines means that people are more likely to click through on your blog and in the feeds. And when someone is searching the sort of stuff you’re writing about, your postings will turn up more often and higher in the search results and your clear headlines will make it easier for searchers to see at a glance that your post has the information they need.

Monkey Status: This one is hard for me. I have a writer’s love for the “creative” headlines. Sticking to journalistically strong, straight-to-the-point, keyword-focussed headlines feels boring, clinical and, basically, no fun. Like a gift-giver who likes to get creative with giftwrap and presentation, I want to entice, tease or even puzzle the reader (but in a fun, mysterious way, not a bad, “wtf” way) before pulling back the curtain and revealing the main event.

However, for a commercial or business blog, this is a poor way to build SEO brownie points, nor is it particularly conducive to attracting and retaining readers. People are too busy to futz around with cutesy or vague headlines. They want to be able to scan your blog, their RSS reader’s feed or their search results and pick out the stuff that will be interesting to them - without having to play “guess the content.” Artistic, mysterious or misleading headlines create more work for your reader and causes search bots to overlook or mis-categorize your content, therefore decreasing your traffic, readership and search engine ranking.

This is a habit I’m trying very hard to break. So far, I’ve managed to keep my “artistic” tendencies more or less in check, mostly by promising myself that I can be as creative, mysterious and silly as I want on my personal blog. And I’ve been trying out a few different ways to format headlines so that they work best for me, so if you’ve seen any weird headline changes or inconsistencies, that’s probably what’s going on.

But it’s worth fighting my personal leanings on, because I know this advice is so completely dead-on.

Comments: Take Cory’s advice. The man knows what he’s talking about - BoingBoing hasn’t gotten to be one of the world’s most read blogs by being coy and hiding it’s light under a bushel of fuzzy headlines. Hear what he has to say on the subject in the video below - he says it all far better than I can.

cory doctorow, headline, keyword, SEO

Tags: Blogs and Blogging //