Hi Barbara. I’m not an expert, but doesn’t it make a difference if we change the words in our permalinks; or at least help a bit? That way we could dream up a creative and catchy title to catch the reader’s attention, while the search engine would index the permalink. I don’t always do this but my titles are pretty straightforward. However, a title I used for one of the Quote Effect posts contained the word “naughty” in it and now I have a lot of people land on my blog looking for “naughty quotes”. Sorry folks, nothing “naughty” on my blog.
Check out Davina´s awesome post: On the Edge of Being

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It makes so much more sense to me now. It’s about using the right link bait for the right fish.

Hooking a shark when I’m fishing for Tuna doesn’t benefit me or the shark. It really forces me to know my audience, what they want, and throw the right, relevant bait. The bait should be relevant and compelling, over clever and off-track.

It’s really forcing me to revisit little things like even my tag line. I still haven’t settled. My test is, people can land on the page, know the category and the benefit without having to work too hard. My other test is, search engines send the most relevant traffic.

Flipping back through my old posts, I see a lot where I really should have used better titles. It’s tempting to someday fix that, but meanwhile, I’ll apply what I know going forward, and partially address the old stuff by using better anchor text whenever I like to them.
Check out J.D. Meier´s awesome post: June 2009’s Most Popular Posts

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Hi Barbara

One of my most succesful posts is one about How fat people can start running. It’s a good catchy title because it describes the content and it’s easy people can find that on google. Yet, still I get the wrong traffic. There are people out there who are googling for “funny pics of fat running” or something like that. Which, besides making me questioning their maturity level, made me realize some share of unwanted traffic will always be there. You can’t never know what keywords mean for some people.

Another thing is in my web novel for young readers titled “Slave Prince of Samarkand”. I ended up retiring that novel disgusted at people arriving at it for the wrong reasons. Reasons that your anti-spam filter would not like me to type

I am learning to accept that, so I’m giving that novel a second try, only changing some keywords and having a draconian police on comments. Then if some *·$”"·!! happens to read my novel, I hope he would leave soon enough, and if he wants to comment, he’ll have to get it approved first and I’m grown up enough to handle it, while protecting my younger readers.

Sorry if I strayed a bit out of topic
Check out Miguel de Luis Espinosa´s awesome post: Exercise made fun: the Heroes of Leothendrail

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I’m just getting into this blogging stuff, and your site and all the user comments are of a great help to me!

Look forward to more of your tips and advice. Many thanks.

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I used to do catchy titles, but I don’t too much anymore. I’m not really sure why. I guess the direct approach works better for me and the search engines.
Check out LisaNewton´s awesome post: Free Park and Ride with the Los Angeles Metro

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I agree that niche writers need to keep this in mind.

What about a non-nicher like me, kind of a mish-mash of stuff (often almost naughty — maybe I can get Davina’s crowd.)

I guess for me, I need to pursue traffic on more of a “fan base” level, for lack of a better term, which takes a lot of legwork. But as the French say, “petit a petit, l’oiseau fait son nid,” meaning “little by little, the bird builds his nest.”

And hopefully they’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on…
Check out Jannie Funster´s awesome post: 74% Blogging Addicted, and you?

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I just recently found you through George over at Tumblemoose. I like your “classroom and students” theme — even though I was a teacher for three years, and didn’t much enjoy it! (I taught grade 8 — it’s a tough crowd).

My Quips & Tips blogs are very practical and geared to attract readers who need to solve problems, which is why my blog titles, introductions, and subtitles are (yawn) boring. I’ve learned that you can’t be cute when writing for the web, unless you’re not concerned about increasing your readership or you’re already well-known.

Not only do you attract the “wrong” traffic with misleading titles — you run the risk of building a reputation as not being on target, or being downright misleading. If readers are misled the first time, then they might ignore you totally a second or third time if you appear in a Google search.

Thanks for this post — and I look forward to getting to know you better!

Laurie
Check out Laurie PK´s awesome post: Making Old Blog Posts Popular – Without Rewriting Them

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Let’s just say that as I slowly move from “social blogging” to a blog that relies more on Google traffic, my titles are becoming more and more boring.
Check out Vered – MomGrind´s awesome post: Retouching As An Act Of Kindness

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I sometimes catch myself to stop and look at the title before hitting that publish button. Because I am in a niche, I have a little bit of leverage but I still have to be careful. I still let ‘em fly just for the fun of it.
Check out Linda´s awesome post: ‘Last man standing’ at wake for a toxic town

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Hi Barbara,
I try to write titles to attract the right readers, especially since my self defense blog has yet to come out of the sandbox, but I’ll admit I’ve found some of the best sites when I was looking for something else.
Check out Lori Hoeck´s awesome post: How our intuition warns of danger

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Keywords don’t work for me when I’m looking for an interesting blog.They work when you are researching facts, but I don’t look for facts in blogs. I look for qualities I cannot define in advance, or perhaps simply quality.

By the same token, I wouldn’t expect the visitors who appreciate my blog to find it on a search engine.

I find blogs by following up links on blogs I regularly read. That’s how I found this one.
Check out Vincent´s awesome post: Risk assessment

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If catchy titles represent boldness I use them. I don’t use what doesn’t fit.

Did you ever get that article I sent for guest blogging? If you’re interested either way let me know. I sent it about 3 weeks ago.

And when did the Funster bra slinger learn French?
Check out Tess The Bold Life´s awesome post: A Bold, Bright & Happy Summer

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I do use catchy titles once in a while, like my latest post but I generally refrain from using any words that will be overly accurate to my content. I also avoid using any bad words. Yes, I do care about the type of traffic that comes to my site. I prefer that it is more targeted. I prefer to attract readers who’ll be interested in what I write.
Check out Evelyn Lim´s awesome post: Love The Man In The Mirror

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Gyutae of Winning the Web suggested a two-pronged approach to writing effective headlines. First, if I remember it right, you write a headline catchy enough for the social media. And when the ground swell of eyeballs/traffic has been reached you then modify the headline to make it more relevant for the search engines. What do you think of this? First you catch the attention and then after you tweak the headline for your post to make it more relevant – no disconnect with the core ideas of your post.

It’s always somewhere in the back burner, but I have yet to use this technique. Once I write a headline the best I know how, I then move on. It takes a lot of work to obsess the second time around with headlines. Unless the first one is atrocious and misleading, I’d rather not touch it.

I’d rather have fun commenting in other blogs, investigating what they’re up to this time.
Check out jan geronimo´s awesome post: How Do You Squeeze in the Time for Blogging?

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Barbara says: “How many blogs like yours are being written and not found. It’s sad to think …”

I see it differently. Most of the blogs I read have very few readers and sometimes no comments at all. For all I know they have one reader only, with always the possibility that someone else might stumble along. It’s enough. Why does blogging have to be a popularity contest?
Check out Vincent´s awesome post: Risk assessment

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Since my blog is mostly humor, almost none of my search traffic finds what they are looking for, although I do hope they like what they did find. I tend not to worry too much about search traffic for my own blog.

Can I put a true confession here? On my forums, I’m often itching to change people’s titles to something more search engine friendly!
Check out Tracy´s awesome post: My two favorite emotions are lucky and enthusiastic

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Hi Barbara – That used to happen to me a lot. Nowadays I try to balance between keyword optimized titles and catchy ones. It’s tough though and often I’m just too lazy to optimize my posts.

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Barbara,
Thank you for your encouraging reply – perfect timing…I fell over the curb on my walk this morning…my hands and chin are a mess the knees hurt but no broken skin…made me so embarrassed, but then along came two maybe 13 year old boys and they very kindly helped me get to my feet…snickering and I thanked them…and went on to my home….humbled – thank goodness for ice paks and kind thoughts…
The fellows were such a help and so are you…:)
Check out Patricia´s awesome post: These Shoes Were Made for Walking

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I think the problem is much deeper than just headers. Nowadays, much content even on very serious and respectable sites is created for web spiders and search engines, not for people. When a real human visitor arrives on such page s\he may be disappointed with all that buzzword mix instead of useful information. So, we gain visitors but we lose clients. It’s good that you spotted this important problem Barbara.
Check out Dennis Blood´s awesome post: Zeo, A Personal Sleep Clinic for The Home

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I used to write catchy/goofy titles but now I basically write titles that tell exactly what the article is and use words that someone will be using in a search. “How to …” I didn’t do this intentionally but most of traffic is coming from search engines so it must be working.

I have a article from last year about how to use twitter rss feeds with google spreadsheets to create pie charts that analyze the tweets. Not something that everyone wants to know but it’s useful information. I called it “Green Tweeter Google Pie”. lol – No one is finding that article
Check out Kim Woodbridge´s awesome post:

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how do you define target audience?
we people change every day/week/month/year our habits and interests. if i’m young and every night i’m going to night-clubs, drink alkohol, have fun with guys, how can i be your target? but imagine i’ll be married next year, i get a baby, sit at home and visit your site – oooh yes, i’m now your targeted visitor just b/c i make comments to your posts.
imagine 2 years later i develop my own wonderful blog, find “better” blogs then yours and stop visitsing and commenting your blog. am i stil a targeted visitor?
we have different needs at different times and nobody can cover all of them. that’s why everyone wants to talk and communicate with many people. every single person or blog give us different expressions and feelings.
Check out addicted to life´s awesome post: Favourite pictures from www

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It’s always an interesting debate as to whether one should write topics that are SEO friendly or write topics they feel will catch a reader’s eye. I don’t think there’s one standard to follow specifically, but if one is totally keyed on the SEO aspects then they can write what I’ll call the standard, boring topics that usually end up being standard, boring posts.

Not that sometimes it’s not your only choice,such as if you’re writing about something specific and that’s what it’s called. I just like to shake it up sometimes.
Check out Mitch´s awesome post: Who Is Your Blog For?

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