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You might ask yourself what the difference is between articles that hardly get noticed and others that have an unusually high number of views.
Often times, it's simply a matter of grabbing the readers attention with a powerful title that just screams to be read!
Here are the reasons why your article title is critical:
Most of the time, readers will discover your article by either a search engine or when looking through an article directory. In either case, it's the headline, the first few pieces of information that our eyes scan for what might interest us, much like a newspaper.
When a viewer is looking through a long list of articles in a directory or search engine results page, they are simply scanning for titles and so it is this one key element that must grab a readers attention in less than a second.
You really can't take your titles lightly - strive to put serious thought into them and don't be afraid to experiment with what works best.
Looking for headlines that generate more traffic? Try these 5 tips:
1) Short and to the point
Put yourself in the position of the reader - when you're skimming over a long list of article titles, you don't really read each and every title in full. You're really just scanning over each line, attempting to pickup what the article offers so sometimes a catchy, long title can easily be overlooked because it doesn't scan very well.
Short titles tend to be far more direct and focused and this helps search engines to also determine what the article is all about.
This isn't to say that you should never write long and clever titles but if you do, try to avoid them and opt for the short titles with a lot of impact. The key is to experiment with what does or does not work. Your article statistics will tell you this.
2) Be direct
Try to remember, search engines such as Google, do not understand humor or puns, only people do. Search engines will take things at face value. Direct and straightforward article titles will definitely receive a higher page ranking for your keywords.
3) Place your most important keywords at the beginning of your headline
Doing this pays off when both people and search engines are scanning your title headlines. When your most important words are at the beginning of your title, you are making it much easier for readers and search engines to determine the article content.
Not sure how that works?
The beginning words are specific about what the article is all about and the dash gives added information.
4) The title should reflect the topic of the article
While this is fairly obvious, when you become more aware of using keywords, it is tempting to put your keywords in the title even when the keywords are not appropriate for the article.
For instance, your keywords could be "Making Big Money on Wall Street" but to be able to use those keywords in your title, your article would need to be related to Making Big Money on Wall Street. If your article is just about making big money or just about Wall Street then it wouldn't be appropriate or effective once the reader or search engines realized it.
Again, your title should always describe what your article is about and it's not always appropriate to use your keywords in your title.
5) Your title should inspire readers to click through and read the whole article
There is a paradox here in that you need to satisfy and grab the attention of human readers but on the other hand, you need the article to index well.
Just remember the title is the first thing a reader sees when they're introduced to your article and you can drastically improve your article submission success just by paying close attention to how you phrase your article headline. Try these 5 tactics and watch your article stats to see which ones work best for you.
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