Blog Article Title Best Practices
All search engines consider the title of the page to be extremely relevant to what that page is supposedly about. Similarly to how you might choose what articles to read in your morning paper or e-mail to read first by looking at the headline or subject lines, search engines use the title of the page and blog article is a very strong indicator of what that page or blog article is about.
The title of the blog article should be housed in the URL slug – where the extension coming at the end of the blog article URL – as well as in the H1 tag on the page. The title should also be reflected in the HTML header element title. Aligning these three elements with the blog article title will reinforce to the search engine that this blog article is about this specific longtail search query and any relevant keywords that the search engine associates with the keywords in the title. Therefore, it’s extremely important that you put a level of strategic and tactical application of SEO thought into crafting your blog headlines.
The title of a blog article is one of the most important elements for a business blog for its value as a mechanism of search engine optimization. The title should be keyword oriented, often using a specifically targeted longtail keyword phrase (keyword phrase of 3 to 5 words) and focus on a single topic or subject. For example, a bad blog keyword title is one that is not descriptive of the topic and does not use relevant keywords. A common pitfall – especially for new business bloggers whom are extremely knowledgeable within their industry or product vertical – is to create blog article titles that are artsy and imaginative. While you might be tempted to call a blog article about LASIK surgery “The Eyes Are a Window to the Soul”, that is not an effective blog article title. Artsy titles, devoid of targeted keyword phrases, are competing for search engine relevance and placement with content that has absolutely nothing to do with the primary product or service. The example, “The Eyes are a Window to the Soul” as a blog article title will be competing with angsty teen blogs about unrequited love. Most likely not an area a LASIK company will want to compete in. Furthermore, the search engine traffic driven by such a title would not be relevant to people seeking LASIK surgery at all.
A better title for that blog article would be “What Questions Should I Ask Before Having LASIK Surgery?”. This title has several advantages of the first. The primary advantage is that the title is actually relevant to the type of traffic that a LASIK business would want drive – consumers who are interested in LASIK surgery. The title targets a short tail primary keyword – “LASIK surgery” - that any LASIK surgeon would want to rank highly for. LASIK surgery as a short tail keyword is a very competitive keyword, yet this title has the advantage of falling into what is likely a common longtail keyword query. “What questions should I ask before having LASIK surgery” is the long tail keyword phrase that a consumer considering LASIK surgery would likely search for. That is, it’s entirely probable that somebody might Google that exact phrase, making it an optimal title for a business blog article optimized for search traffic.
