SEO Basics: Do Your Headlines Grab Attention And Draw Traffic To Your Website?

Creating titles and headlines that grab the attention of Internet skimmers is a critical component of the SEO basics used by website and blog owners to draw traffic.

When you stand in line at the supermarket checkout, what catches your eye? Magazines are experts when it comes to using headlines to grab your attention and interest you in reading the full story within. Of course, there isn’t time to read the full story before it is your turn at the checkout, so into the purchase pile it goes.

Just as the customer waiting in line at the checkout is skimming over the headlines of the magazines, so too do the surfers on the Internet skim over the material they find as they search for something of interest. When your headlines grab the attention of these skimmers, they stop to take a closer look.

Good Titles and Headlines

Some people give their content headlines that are more reminiscent of the way they would title a file folder. The title lacks any attempt to be interesting when it could work harder for you with just a little bit of optimization.

Let’s take chocolate as an example. If your content is about chocolate, chances are it is also about more than chocolate. It might be how to make the most mouth watering chocolate mousse that is so light you’ll lose weight when you eat it.

Or, here is another example taken from an infomercial product headline of the past. “The Ginsu Knife – Slice tomatoes so thin that your in-laws will never come back.” I know that one caught my attention, and even many years later, it is still remembered.

Choosing Good Title Names

Coming up with a good title name may take a bit of thought. Not only does it need to grab the attention of your reader, but it will also include some or all of the following to ensure it also grabs the attention of the search engine bots and spiders.

Include Your Main Keywords

I know it seems like everything you read is saying this, but that should only serve to bring home to you the importance of keywords and keyword phrases in everything you do on your website or blog.

Find a good keyword phrase that relates to your content, you have a chance of ranking for, and of course, one that your readers and targeted audience will be looking for. Then, make sure you include it in your title or headline.

Determine Your Attention Grabbing Hook

The words you use in the title that skimmers see are not unlike a hook cast into a body of water. It is probably more visually correct to say that your keywords are the hook and the wording used to present those keywords are the bait that make the hook more attractive to those skimming (swimming) by. Sweeten up the response to your chocolate information with a mouth watering description of what your readers can expect if they stop by.

Maintain Your Focus

Keep your titles as short as is possible while including your keywords and letting the readers know what they will find in your article or post. This is sometimes easier said than done. Another quick tip is that when using numbers in the title, try to use odd numbers. For some reason the numbers 3, 5 and 7 are more attractive than 2, 4 and 6.

Format Your Page For Easy Reading

Now this may be one of those areas where you will need to determine just who your audience really is. If you are catering to the teenage crowd, black or funky colored backgrounds may be just the thing to grab their attention. An older crowd on the other hand, may find it far too distracting, and as their eyes age, it may be difficult for them to read. If they can not read your information easily, they probably won’t be coming back again.

Hi-light titles and sub-titles with h1 and h2 tags and bolding to make them stand out from the regular text and allow the reader to skim over the material for a complete index.

Ensure that the overall font used is easy to read. There is nothing wrong with asking a few people to check out your website and give you some feedback.

Websites, particularly ones that are hand coded, should be reviewed in a few different browsers as well. Many of your readers will still be using IE 6, while others may use newer versions or different browsers all together such as Firefox or opera. There are often small tweaks that can be found and added to the CSS for that page which will allow it to display properly in a multitude of browsers.

Format links so that they stand out from the regular text and so that people can see them. You may also want to decide on what your link policy will be for internal and external links. Here at WBOBR, a policy of opening an internal link on the same page and opening external links on a new page or tab is used.

The thinking behind this policy is to keep folks connected to your site while giving them the option of additional information. If a new tab or page is opened, they will not lose the page they found it on. After all, you made all that effort to hook them and draw them in, right?

Despite what many say, SEO is not dead and until the search engine bots and spiders are blessed with the ability to read and comprehend content as we do, SEO basics will have a role in all that your do on your website or blog. Ensuring that your headlines grab attention and draw traffic to your website is an important tool in your SEO toolkit.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com