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Titles and Headlines: It's Not a Newspaper
by Anthony Stai
What's this? A whole article about titles and headlines? Well, yes.
Titles are some of the most vital parts of your site, especially if it
consists of a series of articles. Yet they're also some of the most
ignored elements of all web pages, and more difficult than you'd think
to do correctly. You have to realise that you're not writing headlines
– it's more interactive than that.
Title Bar, History, Favorites and Searches.
Everything you do with your web titles should be geared towards these
four places that the title can appear: that is, in a web browser's
title bar, history pane, and favorites menu, and in search engine
results. Never forget this. Sure, your titles might look just fine on
your main page, next to a picture, but do they work out of context?
It's even worth looking at the titles in each of these places yourself
(or doing a mockup of it), just to see.
Be Concise, but Explain Everything.
The thing those four places where titles can appear have in common is
this: they're separated from the context of the rest of your page, and
they're limited in space. Each one will cut off over-long titles and
replace it with an ellipsis ('...') – not good if some important
detail goes missing in the process.
What you need, then, is to be concise with your titles: ten words is,
effectively, an absolute maximum. However, what you can't do is cut out
words that tell the reader what to expect from the article, moving them
into a sub-heading or a picture caption or something similar –
this works in print, but on the web the reader won't always be able to
see those things. The challenge, then, is to create a short headline
that tells you what the article is about even if you can't see any
other part of the page.
Useful Words First.
In browser favorites and history, there's usually only room for about
three or four words, not for a whole title. That means that you'd do
well to put the most useful words of the title first. Compare the
following headlines:
Why Web Titles and Headlines are nothing like Newspaper Ones.
Titles and Headlines: It's Not a Newspaper.
What's the difference? Well, if you're looking at it in a browser
history view, the first one would probably read 'Why Web Titles...',
while the second would read as 'Titles and Headlines...'. In effect,
it's useful to have the first three or four words of your title stand
alone as a title themselves, while elaborating in the title's second
half. A colon or dash is especially useful for this, which is why
they're so much more popular in web headlines than they are in print.
Keywords.
When it comes to preparing titles for search engines, don't
underestimate the importance of the keywords in your title. Search
engines consider the title to be one of the most important parts of
your page, not to mention that it's often the only part of your content
that someone doing a search will see entirely intact before they
click-through. You want your titles to be relevant to what your users
are likely to be searching for.
What does that mean in practice? It doesn't mean that you should make
your site's main keywords show up in every title, leading to string of
titles all sharing the same two words: this is the hallmark of a site
that is trying to do nothing more than game search engine rankings, and
the search engines are wiser to it than you'd think. What you should do
instead is simply describe clearly what the article is about as if you
were searching for that specific article.
If you've written a way of doing something, don't be afraid to put 'how
to' in the title (although not first: 'How to Write Better Titles' is
bad, 'Titles: How to Write them Better' is good). If you've interviewed
someone, put the word 'interview' up there. For product comparisons,
don't shy away from the word 'comparison'. This approach will get you
search engine visitors who really want to read your articles, and are
more likely to stay and read more instead of feeling conned into
visiting your site.
About
The Author:
Anthony Stai invites you to
take your
website to the next level. Get one of the best Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) books on the market for Free! Learn the techniques
that differentiate the amateurs from the pros. Get your book at http://www.makemoneyonline4you.com/seo.html
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