Take Troubles With Your Titles
If you don’t give titles much thought, keep reading.
Here’s the situation. Those short, one line things called titles are what your potential visitors see first. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog post or a sales letter page, the first thing that’s going to make the first impression is the title. If that title doesn’t entice your visitor, it’s also the last thing of interest they’ll see before they leave, or never visit at all.
Not only do you need a title that will provoke interest from its viewer, but you don’t have that many words to do it. You have a second or two of reading before someone surfs off to the vast quantity of competing content available on the Internet.
In short, your titles needs some thought. You may even have to test it a time or two.
So what’s to consider when you’re trying to fill a title?
- Yes, spiders are great, but the primary target for the title is your visitor. It takes a human being to act on something they see, so don’t write titles for the spiders.
- You can find examples of titles in other places. Digg in particular is loaded with them, and you’ll find out in a hurry which ones you wish to click and which ones bore you. Find the ones you like and learn from them. The swipe file concept works just as well for title ideas you can adapt to your own purposes.
- Target titles to your desired visitors. Titles written for one specific group of people may not work for another. Furthermore, remember the marketing adage that if you advertise to everyone, you’re advertising to no one.
- Keep it as short as possible. If there’s something you want to say or provoke with a title, don’t drag it out. Fiddle with it until you use the least amount of words to get the desired effect, because the people looking at it won’t take long to make a decision about it.
Titles can make or break a visit to your site or blog. Take the trouble to get them right.
My name is Ryan Ambrose, and I’m one of the co-authors of Can I Make Big Money Online.
Hi Thom
I totally agree!
It’s amazing how many people don’t put any thought into their titles, they concentrate too much on keywords or even try to be clever and use misleading ones to try to attract attention.
I tend to be a ‘scanner’ when I’m reading… titles, subtitles and headings are very important to me as these are what I look at first to help me decide if something is worth reading or not. Misleading or confusing titles just make me click away.
Yes, I agree that keywords are important on your site, but you should always consider the human element first.
Thanks for your tips, I’ll be back.
Collette