Choose Titles Carefully to Improve Search Engine Optimization

By Jim Lisi

In a recent iteration of his humorous newspaper column in The Washington Post, Gene Weingarten grumbled about the ways that the internet has changed the newspaper business. If you read this column in the physical newspaper, it has the title, “A digital salute…to online journalism”.

Although Weingarten portrayed himself as a cranky old-fashioned newspaper reporter, the column shows that he is quite familiar with search engine marketing and what it takes to increase your visibility online. He may prefer the old days, but he is not stuck in the past.

While griping that the internet has stolen away the opportunity for writing creative headlines, he notes:

“…on the Web, headlines aren’t designed to catch readers’ eyes. They are designed for “search engine optimization,” meaning that readers who are looking for information about something will find the story…Putting well-known names in headlines is considered shrewd, even if creativity suffers.”

Later he muses that the online version of the very column he is writing will be altered to contain the name of the very popular singer Lady Gaga because that would be good for website optimization. And of course because the online editors are in on the joke, the online version of the column does contain Lady Gaga’s name.

Ever since launching online versions, newspapers have recognized that they cannot simply transfer that text they would publish in paper form to the web exactly as it is. This should give you some food for thought when you are choosing page titles, titles for blog posts, image descriptions and the other text for your website. As much as you might want to be clever, you need to put vital information and keywords to get the attention you want from search engines.

James Lisi,
President
Increase Visibility