by Aldrin A Wilding-West

Created on: February 12, 2010

How to optimise article titles and key words to attract readers and boost visibility to search engines

Whichever publishing site you are using, the consideration you give to your title and key words/phrases or tags options is paramount if you’re to get traffic to your article.  People want to find what they are looking for.  If your title does not describe this, or the words and phrases you use in your submission poorly match the intended readers search text or question, they’ll either not even come across your article, or they’ll simply pass it by or discard it.

I wonder how many of you there make the same mistakes I did.  You finish your masterpiece, spell check it, grammar check it, read it through one more time for luck, maybe you’ve added a good picture or two or linked to a video to accompany your piece, or even had a relative or friend proof read it for you, then, in your haste to see it published, you quickly scan your title again, slap in a few search phrases or words without much thought and then hit the submit button......This is a sure fire way to completely let down a possibly informative, useful and knowledgeable article.

Through learning the power of title and key words or phrases options on various writing submission sites, I have recently begun the task of going through all of my early articles and thoroughly checking and optimising their titles and key words/phrases.  This relatively simple yet effective effort has begun to yield me a fair percentage more success in leading readers to my work, even for those articles where I really couldn’t understand why they were performing quite so badly.

Remember, if someone is searching online, they will either type in a direct question or type in phrases or a words specific to the information they are looking for, or a combination of both.  As we all know, the world is full of very different people with very different ways of searching for or researching information.

A simple example might be an article I wrote on how rainbows are formed.  Some people may simply enter ‘rainbow’ in the search field, others may enter ‘how do rainbows form’, others still might search for ‘how is a rainbow made’ or ‘what makes a rainbow’.

Similarly, how about someone who is searching for information on the speed of light?  One may search for ‘speed of light’ or ‘how fast is light’, another may search for ‘what is the speed of light’, or ‘how fast does light travel’, or others asking related questions may ask ‘how fast is Mach 1’ or ‘what is a sonic boom’.....etc. etc.  Wouldn’t it be great if all of these people could see YOUR article?

Give full consideration to your title.  Use it to answer a question that might be asked in many different ways, but be concise and to the point.  While writing your article, use phrases that might match other ways that this information is searched for.  Finally, when you’re happy and ready to submit, fully utilise the key work or key phrase options available to you.  Research how many words or phrases each site allows and use the available space to its maximum potential.

As with looking for a book in a library, title and relevance are immeasurably important.  Make sure your articles are up to the mark or you will lose valuable views.

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