miercuri, 27 iunie 2012

Headsmacking Tip #21: Write Better Headlines Than Anyone Else

Headsmacking Tip #21: Write Better Headlines Than Anyone Else

Headsmacking Tip #21: Write Better Headlines Than Anyone Else

Posted: 26 Jun 2012 08:07 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

This tactic is so simple and obvious, it's probably illegal somewhere.

Every day, the web produces millions of pieces of content. Several thousand are almost certainly of interest to folks in your niche - those who might be reading your blog or sharing the content you produce. Creating unique stories requires creativity, research and time that many in the field don't have. But... writing the best piece, or even just a decent piece of content about an interesting topic and giving it a fantastic headline? Well, let's just say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but this one costs just pennies.

Here's how it works:

Step 1: Get Informed

  • Follow the right accounts of Twitter for your niche (those that share a lot of good stuff)
  • Set up some smart Google Alerts (particularly "news" and "blog" alerts)
  • Subsrcibe to Google News' subsections if there's an appropriate one
  • Use aggregation services like Reddit's subreddits, PopURLs, Topsy, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Metafilter, Alltop, etc.

E.g. The other day I found a research paper from Cambridge (via Reddit) on how negative thinking adversely impacts problem-solving ability.

Step 2: Choose the Best Pieces Each Day/Week

  • Find stories that have high overlap with your audience's interests
  • Don't exclude things that aren't "on topic!" Your goal isn't to only talk about your exact niche; it's to provide value to those who might be potential customers (big difference, probably deserving of its own blog post and illustration at some point)

E.g. That research paper had been written up in some small press pieces (as seen via this Google News query), but had yet to receive any major writeups, suggesting it's a perfect target.

Step 3: Rewrite the Headline Phenomenally Well

  • Get two solid writers in a room and have them brainstorm 10 ideas and angles for the headline
  • Have those two folks hash through and come up with the top three
  • Share with a wider group and get feedback about which will earn a click
  • OR if you have time, you can A/B test by sending an email to a small group with click tracking on each one and see which performs best (make sure to control for or randomize position in the email, as the first link often gets the click)

E.g. "Stay Away from Negative Thoughts to Improve Problem-Solving Ability" could be transformed into headlines like "Scientific research suggests haters really are harming your productivity," or "Is distraction a better problem-solving technique than deep thought?"

Step 4: Cover the Story from Your Angle

  • Relate the story back to your audience, but cover it accurately and be sure to cite your sources (linking out to these folks can have positive benefits all its own from trackbacks, traffic driven, future reciprocity, etc)
  • Include a graphic or image if at all possible (but stay far, far away from most stock imagery)
  • If possible, gather input from folks in your field via social channels or email; a few well-placed quotes can help the reach get wider and creates incentivized sharers

E.g. If I were writing for the marketing world, I might take an angle focusing on what gets marketers stuck in ruts, provide suggestions for distraction and draw on some of my own experiences (like those frequent ideas in the shower moments).

Many folks will presume this only works for news-focused sites or news-focused content. False! You can relate news and events to nearly anything you desire and make it function with the brand and voice you're trying to craft. E.g. "How the Facebook IPO Will Change Commuting Patterns in the Bay Area," "Will Rising Sea Levels Affect Your Favorite Beach Getaway?" "Dental Implants May Be a Thing of the Past Thanks to Gene Therapy," "The Privatization of Space Flight Will Come at a Cost for Floridian Home Owners." I'm not suggesting any of these are particularly excellent, but hopefully you can imagine how to extend the concept of headline-writing into your field.

p.s. If you're looking for some headline advice, I particularly liked this piece on Why Gawker's Writing Better Headlines Than the Rest of the Web and this section on Copyblogger.


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Watch Out for Long Title Tags - An SEOmoz Case Study

Posted: 20 Jun 2012 01:53 PM PDT

Posted by RuthBurr

Here is the all-true story of some intriguing events that have transpired at the MozPlex in the last couple of weeks.

It all started when Jamie wanted to look up his fantastic post from last year, "Custom Reporting Using Google Analytics and Google Docs - The Ultimate Analytics Mashup." Not having the URL committed to memory, he did what any of us might do: he Googled it.

Imagine his surprise (and my consternation) when instead of a useful, keyword-rich, call-to-actiony title, he saw this:

URL displaying in title tag

For some reason, Google was displaying the text from the unique part of the post URL, rather than the title. A quick survey of Mozzers found that several of us had seen similar results when Googling old blog posts:

wrong title tag text

But it definitely was NOT happening on all blog posts!

I'm gonna be honest with you guys: I could NOT figure this out. I checked various factors for correlation. Could rel=author be causing this? Was something happening with the way title tags were being generated on the back end of the blog? Nothing seemed to match up.

One factor that I considered, but almost dismissed, was a change in how titles are truncated. The Google Inside Search blog had just released their monthly list of algorithmic tweaks for May, including these 3 that specifically had to do with how titles display:

  • "Trigger alt title when HTML title is truncated. [launch codename "tomwaits", project codename "Snippets"] We have algorithms designed to present the best possible result titles. This change will show a more succinct title for results where the current title is so long that it gets truncated. We'll only do this when the new, shorter title is just as accurate as the old one."
  • "Efficiency improvements in alternative title generation. [launch codename "TopOfTheRock", project codename "Snippets"] With this change we've improved the efficiency of title generation systems, leading to significant savings in cpu usage and a more focused set of titles actually shown in search results."
  • "Better demotion of boilerplate anchors in alternate title generation. [launch codename "otisredding", project codename "Snippets"] When presenting titles in search results, we want to avoid boilerplate copy that doesn't describe the page accurately, such as "Go Back." This change helps improve titles by avoiding these less useful bits of text."

In short: When your title tag is too long, instead of simply truncating it and adding an ellipsis to the end the way they used to, Google is trying to algorithmically determine a better title for the post.

But surely, I thought, SURELY this wasn't what was happening here. How could a string of words separated by dashes and pulled from the URL be a better title than the actual title? Even a shortened version of the actual title?

My mistake in my initial round of sleuthing was that I ignored Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. I tried shortening the title tags and it worked like gangbusters:

Shorter title tag

What We Learned

Like many blogging platforms, the SEOmoz blog has an option to include a custom title tag. If no custom tag is created, the title tag is generated from the title of the post. We've got some pretty long titles of posts in our library, but many of them had no custom, shorter title - post authors were relying on Google to truncate as needed and focusing more on writing a great headline.

It looks like having a short, search-friendly title tag has increased in importance - without it, Google could replace your title with just about anything, including part of your URL. This doesn't exactly create the user experience we want, and a replaced title tag is a lost opportunity to encourage searchers to click.

How Long Should My Title Tag Be?

There's a great post that just went up on SEOMofo about how long title tags can be and still be displayed in the SERPs. To sum up: the old rule of "70 characters or less" is no longer as hard-and-fast as it used to be. SEOMofo's experiments show that now Google is truncating title tags based not only on number of characters, but also on the pixel width of your title tag. So title tags rich in wide letters like W and A won't be able to fit as many characters in before getting truncated, when compared to title tags rich in narrow letters like i and t.

We'll need to experiment further to figure out exactly where the limit is on title length/width. In the meantime, make sure your pages with long headlines have shorter (still keyword-rich) titles in the title tags, and be aware of your use of wide characters. In my spare time recently, I've been slogging through years of posts and adding shorter titles as needed; I recommend you do the same.

Update: AJ Kohn has more on this topic - including other reasons Google may replace the title tag, such as relevance to the query - over here.


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