Keywords in Post Titles, Does it really matter?
Keywords, Keywords, Keywords. Everyone blogger is after them. So many of us just fill the title with keywords, it looks like a spammy title. So what do you do?
If you ask a SEO guru, they will say that Keywords are one of the most important aspect of the title. Because the keywords in the title make you rank high. If you rank high you will get traffic from the search engine. So if you don’t use keywords, you will be losing a lot of search engine traffic.
But what if no one reads your article. Then your keywords are peice of crap. So some say you should write and not even think about Search Engines. That way your writing will be pure, and you will attract readers. You have to be a bit naive to say that.
Here is what I think we should do.
Keywords are good and it really matters, but it is not the only thing. You have to pick the RIGHT keyword to get a decent amount of traffic. I mean you can rank high for one of the popular term, but will you get targetted traffic? Most likely not! So you have to pick the right keyword. What is the right keyword?
Right keywords are the keywords that you find in your stats. These keywords are the ones that are bringing you the most traffic. Then you use those keywords and ideas to write another post in that area. Trial and error is the name of the game. So if you don’t experiment, you lose automatically. Most of this keyword search is FREE. So do it. It takes a bit of your time, but it is worth it.
So now if you are picking keywords, I am sure there is a hype that he ranks for the keyword make money online. I want to write as many articles to rank at the top spot for make money online. Who cares about that keyword. It might be a popular keyword. But really and seriously how much traffic can you get from that one keyword? With the time and resources that you will spend to rank high for a popular keyword, It is not worth it. Specially when the user is not even the most targeted user. So the idea here is that you use the keywords that are more specific. More toward the niche that you want to target. Obviously it won’t bring as much traffic individually, but you can rank high for niche terms a lot easier, so rank high for tons of niche terms. Collectively, they will bring more traffic!
So now the idea of writing for people. You have to make your headline attractive to users while using these keywords. This is when your talent really comes in. I have told you guys multiple times, I use Digg main page articles to determine what attracts people. I use my own articles to see what brought me the most traffic. So use these until I come up with a few formula sentences for you guys. You can rank really high for any keyword, but if your title is not interesting, people will not click it. So make sure you write something that attracts people.
Most importantly, what ever your title is make sure that your post relates to that. So people know what is going on. Most search engines rank you with keywords and relevancy. Such as hyperlinks, and keywords they find in the text of your article. So you have to write a decent article to get decent ranking in search engines.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
If you are looking for social traffic, don’t sweat having your keyword in your title. But, if you are looking for SE traffic (which is WAY more valuable)make sure you have your keyword in your title.
I would have to agree that SE traffic is more valuable. I have made over $500 with ONE post, just from the title. That is 100% proof positive!
Well you can always use those SEO plug-ins that allow you to display a title of your choice on the blog’s post, but keeps a separate “SEO optimized” title when searched
I use it to write *hopefully interesting* title on my blog, but has a different filename + search engine’s title
Isn’t that considered black hat by most search engines?
It still amazes how many bloggers obviously do not KW optimize their titles and posts, what a waste of some great SE traffic. Great post, gotta keep beating this point!
Good post. You need to target the exact keywords you need to rank for. Most people try to target a very large competition keyword like “make money online” which isn’t guaranteed to make you money.
great post Syed. I agreed content is the king and title is the crown. so content without a good crown is not king.
post title is one of the main SEO tactic to apply.
Having blogs for hard-core SEO is not such a great idea. But, when you have proper use of keywords in the content that is more likely to be read and pure in nature, then it is more beneficial. Well, I had read recently that if you have proper and unique content, then you don’t even need to do SEO for the same, it may take some time but will surely come up high in the rankings, purely because of the content.
Nice post…..shoot for user experience over pure SEO.
[...] Balkhis – Keywords In Post Titles,Does It Really Matter [...]
I think you can have both social traffic and SE traffic, by simply keeping in mind keywords while still keeping the post relavancy and headline tactics as well. You can have both
Keyword is the most important asset if you are keen about SEO and search engine traffic.Any way great post.
I think that depends of what traffic do you want to get. For social traffic keyword in the title isn’t what are you looking for. Although wit search engines most likely you’ll get targeted traffic if the title is relevant to the article.
[...] Keywords in Post Titles, Does it really matter? [...]
i like the way that you simplify the Great Mysterious SEO Keyword Controversy into COMMON SENSE! you make reasonable, actionable suggestions. thank you.
[...] places I visit regularly or have recently found. Syed over at Balkhis recently had a nice post on Keywords in Post Titles which I enjoyed. Then there is an interesting take on search engine traffic over at Lobo Links [...]
I think it matters to a great extent and more so if you are looking to have high rankings and also subsequent traffic, i guess then it’s quite essential.
[...] Keywords in Post Titles, Does it really matter? [...]
[...] great post titles? Damn I used to think this too. A person asked me after I wrote my post about Keywords and their importance in titles. The question was you always suggest that we need to write good titles. But how do we do that. How [...]
A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually.
Nice post. I have always put the keywords in the post title and for me it mattered because, most of my blog traffic is from Search Engine.
You nailed it right on. I spent so much time trying to rank for keyword phrase that I didn’t stand a chance ranking for but I just couldn’t stop myself. I am sure there are many many more people out there just like I was.
I am sure this post will help to open there eyes before they find themselves getting discouraged and dropping out of the game.
[...] Focus on keywords in post title [...]
Keywords in your title is very important for your organic results, simply because of the tags coming into play.
Nice read, really enjoyed it!
TeenProBlogger
It’s really matter for me. I always put my keyword target in the post title and in the first sentence in first paragraph
Here is what I do when it comes to keywords and blogging. I started this experiment about a week ago. It goes something like this, I use a topic in my website that does all sorts of customizable stuff and choose one category and use that as my name, and that is it. I just write in the blog like a normal person and try to leave out the business and its keywords to make my post less spammy.
Thanks
Mr. School Fundraising Ideas
Yes, It’s Really Matter For My Web Site.
Content Is The King And Title Is The Crown, No Value For King Without Crown And Crown Without King.
There Are Two Type Of Traffic For Your Website, One Is Search Engine Traffic And Other Is Social Traffic, If You Want Both Traffic Divert To Your Web Site Then You Has To Use Relevant Keywords On Your Website Title, Meta And Tag’s.
Keywords, URLs, and Tags are all crucial when creating a post, but in all honesty I’ve had posts that I wrote in 5 minutes with no regard for SEO rank higher than articles that I spent time optimizing. Good content will always find a way to get in front of reader’s eyes.
I think it’s really crucially important to have the correct keywords in the title. We are going to start hosting articles on our site – without the most oprtimal keywords in the title of the articles, how else will we drag all important traffic to the site?!
I will have to agree with you and disagree with you at the same time. I agree that focusing on the keywords that brings you consistent traffic is very smart. But at the same time getting top ranking for a high volume keyword is money in the bank. If you choose your keywords wisely. My advice would be to keep using the keywords that brig you traffic….while continuing to build page rank with off site optimization to build your rankings in the search engine for high volume keywords. This is what I have done and it seems to work well.
I always place the keyword in the title and a little optimization with plugin “seo title tags”. I like articles about seo in this blog and was very helpful
Anyone know what this means? A few days ago my URLS’s were 90% indexed. This morning the are no longer indexed when I search by the post URL. If however I search be the title of the post or keywords in the post, I do see them indexed.
Remember to use your target keyword as close as possible to the beginning of your title. Also try to limit the length of your title tag. The longer you make it, the more you dilute your target keyword.
I think cookbooks in general is a very competetive industry, therefore competetive keywords associated with it. Even if you try to market the different types of cookbooks you may have some major competetion.
Picking the right keywords is the most important thing for any title.
Your additional data doesn’t help much to answer your question. It seems you already know how to post ads in different cities, but you don’t like the features of ghosting, or at least the keywords you type in aren’t coming up as you would like.
Posting ads in different cities is easy enough provided you have access to several advertisement agencies in different areas.
Whether they offer your specific keyword feature is something you need to take up with the ad agencies themselves before you invest your time, energy, and money.
I also heard of adding a thing called noslashes or something which is supposed to prevent unwanted SQL queries.
I am trying to optimize my website in multiple places. I’ve been taking photos for weddings for a while now, but I am trying to advertise to a bigger audience, rather than just locally.
I wrote in 5 minutes with no regard for SEO rank higher than articles that I spent time optimizing. Good content will always find a way to get in front of reader’s eyes.