Blog Post Titles are Super Important for SEO

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl, Spammy Scammers, and Katie James

Ladies!

I just love tweaking copy on websites in those special SEO hot spots, tracking the results, and then blasting to everyone what I find. This tip is an easy one, and we've covered it before: Page Titles are Super Important. I just changed a few little words in one of my blog posts titles, and it moved from page 1 #6 in google to page 1 #2 in google in one week.

This is a GREAT way to try and increase your traffic by little numbers at a time. If you pay attention to your stats, to your comments, to what your readers are saying, you will see how you can change particular blog post titles and double your traffic to that page. If you are getting 10 hits to a post page per month, you could get 20. If you did this to 10 posts, that's 100 extra very relevant hits per month. I measure this for big and little websites - from one that has tens of thousands of users a month, to my own little blog (FashionMista), which is what I'm about to share. On a larger website, you can change your targeted keyword on one page to a better one that you found by doing your keyword research (try Keyword Discovery) and pick up 4,000 per month, up from 1,000. BUT, you could also have the reverse effect, and change what isn't broke, and start to slide down. So always do your research.

Here's what happened for my little blog: I am getting laser hair removal done on my legs, and am blogging about it. The intent (and thus my target keyword) was to blog about "laser hair removal". Therefore, I had that term in all blog post titles, in links where possible, and in any pictures (alt attribute). What I did not intend was to become a voice for/against American Laser Center (ALC), which is where I'm getting it done. But, that is what has happened. My blog posts naturally optimized for "american laser center review". Why? Because some other review type websites linked to my main page, people commented with those words, and I said "american laser center" a lot.

The other day, I got a comment on my main laser landing page from a girl who said something like: "I know this post was done in 2005, but it still comes up number 1 for a search on american laser center reviews, so I'll post a comment to warn..." Unhappy ALC people seem to find my blog, and comment about it. Which is fine. But anyway, I hadn't been following my ratings for this term, and sure enough, I was #1 for "american laser center reviews". I was #6 for the singular version (review). But I wanted to be higher. :) What's an SEO  girl to do? Change the post title.

My blog post title was: "Laser Hair Removal: I Got Lasered" I liked it because it seemed compelling to me, and suggests journal entries. But, after learning that I was #1 for "reviews", and #6 for "review", and wanting to rule in both terms, I changed it to: Laser Hair Removal: My Experiences and Reviews at American Laser Center."

That's it. I just changed the blog title. I actually edited the article to make it more current, explain that it was a work in progress, and did drop in "review" in more places.

The result? Doubled traffic in one week.

Pay attention. You are your own gold mine.  :)

ps: Here is an article on a blog post title with pictures

pps: Rankings mentioned here are subject to change at any time...so I better stay sharp!

Comments

[FatFighter]

Great info - thanks! Makes me want to change A LOT of my titles!

[SEO Checklist]

A good title is very important. More and more people are using RSS feeds. Some of them only show a title. In my case I have lots of feeds and I scan the posts for good titles. A good title makes me click ;-)