How to Build SEO-Friendly Titles That Also Grab Human Attention

The title of a web page is a major determinant in both how search engines will rank and index the page, and also whether a visitor will decide to read its content. Appealing to both audiences is essential for SEO, and ensuring your web page ranks well.

SEO-friendly titles

First, your title should be keyword-centric, with your primary keywords appearing towards the beginning of the headline. For example, for a web page about learning French:

• “Learn French – Speak Fluently, Learn the Language Naturally”: contains a variety of keyword and keyword phrases, together with words semantically connected to learning languages.
• “Get the 10-day course and learn French this Summer”: most words are not connected with learning French, and the critical phrase – “learn French” – is near the end of the title.

A good title is between 50-70 characters in length. It can definitely be shorter, but most search engines will show a maximum of around 70 characters in their search engine results. Additionally, some engines may ignore titles that are considered too long.

Avoid the temptation to stuff keywords into your title. For example, “French, France, learn French, speaking French, Francais, writing French” as a title will be quickly identified by search engine spiders as an attempt to overload keywords artificially, and the page may be penalized in the rankings as a result.

Human-friendly titles

Titles that appeal to humans tend to be simple and brief. Depending on the nature of the webpage, a good title may address a need of the visitor or the benefit of the product, rather that its features. For example:

• “Speak French With Confidence” or “Imagine Making Friends With Locals in Paris” both evoke an emotional reaction from the visitor without directly addressing the subject of a language course.
• “If you didn’t learn French in school, you can now with our ABC learning method that makes getting to college level certification straightforward”: this is too long and unwieldy to get a reader’s attention.

In many cases, half-formed ideas and questions are also effective in attracting interest, because they drive the reader to learn more:

• “Isaac Newton Didn’t Want You To Know This Secret About Gravity”: prompts the visitor to discover which secret the headline refers to.
• “How can push-ups cut your phone bill by 70%?”: provides an incentive wrapped in a question, inviting further investigation by the reader.

SEO and Human-Friendly Titles

Combining these two audiences into a title takes effort, but can significantly increase a web page’s ranking in search engines and attract more clicks from human visitors. In additional to brain-storming alternatives, you should also:

• Check search engines for high-ranking webpages on the same topic, and examine their page titles.
• Test your candidate headlines on friends and co-workers to gage their level of interest.
• Read newspaper and magazine headlines to learn techniques for producing attention-grabbing copy.

Tags: blogging, seo, titles, webcopy