Three Simple Strategies for Optimizing Blog Titles

1. Put keywords first.  I appreciate catchy titles as much as the next guy, but the fact is that search engines tend to rank higher pages with titles that contain keywords early in the title.  Here’s an example of two article titles that essentially say the same thing, but one is more favorably viewed by search engines.  Keyword Target:  envelope budget system

• Envelope Budget System Saves Time and Money

• How to Use an Envelope Budget System To Save Time and Money

Which one do you think ranks higher in the search engines? That’s right; the first one, because the keyword phrase used throughout the article also appears right up front.

2. Get rid of “stop” words. There are two places to consider removing “stop” words:  the article title and the post slug (what makes up the unique URL for your site).

In the example above, you can see that the second title reads well, but has a number of words not related to the article topic.  The words how, to, use, an, to, and don’t really add any value to the title for the topic “envelope budget system.”  In the first title the words saves, time, and, money have some relationship to the topic (besides and), and they do not break up the keyword phrase.

3. Clean up the post slug.  If you cannot easily come up with an article title that avoids “stop” words, at least remove them from the post slug.  If using an editor like WordPress you should see an editable “Permalink” field just below the title.  This field, by default, includes all words from your post title, separated by a dash (you can change what post information displays here in the Settings/Permalinks area of WordPress).

Remove “stop” words from the permalink, leaving only words relevant to your topic.  So using the same example again, the post slug for the second article title would read “/envelope-budget-system” without the other words.

If you are like me and neglected these title optimization tips early in blogging, you can go back and optimize your article titles.  However, it is advisable that you do not manipulate the post slug after it is published because search engines listings and individual site referral links to your post will no longer be valid.

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After blogging for a while you get a pretty good idea of the types of articles that will be popular with various audiences.  For instance, social media love lists, how-to posts, and articles with a catchy title.  A rush of traffic from StumbleUpon or Digg can be good for stats, but it usually wears off pretty quickly.  To build traffic for the long term you need to also consider search engines, and optimize blog titles accordingly.

Most commercial blog templates (even free ones) are optimized for search engines, and typically rank well in search engine result pages (SERPs).  But bloggers can improve their blog’s search engine optimization by writing titles that do well in search engines.  As a new blogger, this was a foreign concept to me.  I tried to write every title imagining it on the cover of a magazine, or as a newspaper headline.  Occasionally, that worked well for the search engines, but usually it included too many off-topic words that diluted my ranking for related keywords.

So after blogging for about six months I decided it would be a good time to go back and retitle my first couple hundred posts in a manner that made them more search engine friendly.  I almost immediately saw a bump in traffic as the old articles floated higher towards the top of search results.  Some changes were minor, such as rearranging the title so relevant keywords appeared first.  Other changes took more time.

Here are some tips I used to make my old posts achieve a higher ranking in the search engines.

• List keyword phrases first.  Search engines tend to give higher ranking to titles with keywords listed first. Here is an example targeting “online banks” as the keyword phrase.  Old title:  “Your Money Is Safer At Online Banks.”  New Title:  “Online Banks Offer Safety With Higher Returns.”

• Try to minimize “stop” words.  When you search for a keyword phrase in Google you will notice that the matching keywords from the title and exerpt appear in bold.  The more bold words in your title, the higher you will rank (all other factors being equal).  Try to work your titles so that you do not have to use many “stop” words, such as the, and, if, but, etc. Here is another example. Old title: “What Are The Best Green Jobs For 2009.”  New Title: “Best Green Jobs For 2009.”  Short and sweet usually wins out.

• Warning, do not change your post slugs (permalinks) for older, indexed articles. Post slugs typically appear just below the title when editing your article in blogging software, such as WordPress. If you go back and update titles to existing articles leave the permalink structure alone.  If you change the structure, users will have to be redirected to your new article URL or they will receive the dreaded 404 – Page Not Found Error.

Like most writers, I like to think I got better as time went on (some would argue this point).  If you are like me, you probably can point to a specific post and say, “Yes, this is where I really hit my stride.”  Don’t abandon everything up to that point, because those old posts can still be optimized to bring you additional search traffic.

Photo courtesy of PhillipC

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