A good title invites. A title is to content what curb appeal is to a house. People want to know what's inside. The right title draws people into the content and can turn an also ran book or article into a bestseller, sometimes by changing a single word. Good titles sell books because they strike a chord, pique a reader's curiosity and invite people to look inside to discover what comes next.
The Internet changes the rules. Good titles need to be found before readers can browse and choose. That's where SEO comes into play. Good Internet titles need duality, a dichotomy between human curiosity and the curiosity of the web crawling bots.
SEO adds the house number to the curb appeal of the title. You need both to succeed on the Internet. A great title that could arouse a reader's interest is useless if it's buried, lost on the Internet. The SEO component puts titles into the search engine results pages (SERP). The best titles get the best page rank, at the top, and like the eye level shelves on a magazine rack, entice a reader to choose.
What if you have the right address and the house is shabby, paint peeling, shutters askew and an unkempt lawn? Not an inviting picture. A house hunter might stop, but it's unlikely they'll bother to get out of their car if the house isn't inviting.
The same holds true for titles. What good is it when a visitor arrives to find a shabby title? A title is an invitation to the dance, an invitation to the visitor to read on, an invitation to the writer to provide content. What if writers pass up the dance because the partners are ugly? What if you invite people to a party and you don't have enough food and drink?
Quality Internet content demands quality titles. SEO alone can't do it. Titles that appeal to readers aren't enough by themselves. You need both to succeed on the Internet.
Good titles aren't clever or cute. That never works. Good titles are searchable and memorable. Searchable because they contain SEO keyword phrases that match what Internet visitors are looking for. Memorable because, once found, a good title must appeal to the human curiosity sitting at their computer.
SEO keywords bring visitors, but without the curb appeal of human curiosity, few visitors will stop to read the content behind the title. A anatomy of a good Internet title finds a careful balance between the need to be found and once found, irresistible enough to stop a visitor in their tracks and compel them to stay and read the content.