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
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
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
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
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. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!       |
| 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: 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: 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:
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: What We LearnedLike 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. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!     |
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