| By :
Steve Shaw
You wouldn't think that a little old title (aka headline) could have any significant impact on your article marketing success, but it does! The common assumption is that the power is all in the article and the resource box. The article and the resource box are important, but it is astounding how much your titles can affect your overall success. Case in point--A friend who had been submitting articles for several months (long enough to see results) came to me in exasperation wondering why he was not seeing the results he was anticipating. I took one look at his collection of articles and could immediately see what the problem was. He had many things going for him: His articles were intelligently written. His topic was very interesting. His resource boxes were pretty good, but they could have been better had he used his keywords as anchor text. Not a bad effort, except for one glaring problem...His titles were awful. Some of them were only one word. Others were extremely cryptic to the point where a reader would not be able to even guess at the topic of the article. Out of a lengthy list of articles, there wasn't one title that would reel in a reader or a search engine. What a waste! Don't let this happen to you. Learning to write titles is an extremely important part of your article marketing success. It is not brain surgery--you can do this! It just takes knowing what to shoot for and taking a few extra minutes to craft a stellar headline. Guidelines For Writing Article Titles 1 - Your headline should indicate the topic of your article. That is the main purpose of the title. The reader uses the title to determine if he would like to read your article. You see, your readers are not just randomly looking for content to read. They have a problem, and they are looking for a solution. Readers are very intentional when looking at articles. Your job is to create helpful content that your readers need while also putting a title on that content that draws a reader in. 2 - Avoid sarcasm, puns, and other vague phrasing in your titles. Google doesn't understand those things, and readers will be confused as well. 3 - Your title must be more than one word! There are some quality publishers that will automatically decline an article with a one-word title. Even two words looks a bit lazy--be generous with your readers in helping them to know what your article is about. If you are targeting keywords in your title (and you should be) your title should be more than just the keyword phrase. Remember, humans are looking at your title as well as search engines. 4 - Do keyword research before writing your article. Create a title that is keyword rich before writing the article. Write the article around the title. 5 - The title must be interesting and attention grabbing. Just because your article is published on an article directory does not mean that it will automatically be read. Your title is the main thing that viewers of the directory will see. They will look at your title and then decide if they want to read your article. Titles also show up on Google's results lists--is your title interesting enough to make a searcher click through to your article? Any improvement you can make to your article titles will improve your overall article marketing success. Your headline plays a crucial role in attracting readers and search engines, so make the most of it!
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