DISQUS

centernetworks · 8 months ago

i wrote a script that automatically pumps out the perfect headline to work in all circumstances. i plan to market it for $29.95 per install later this year. you just enter a keyword (e.g. "dog") and it spits out a nicely formatted, top title which will draw attention along with SEO benefits. you can override the length setting to so it formats to the perfect length. **

** i cannot guarantee that the title will make sense to a reader, just that it will be hawt!

Patrick Allmond · 8 months ago

Actually you should be writing them for either. You should be writing them for people.

Eric Rice · 8 months ago

You absolutely nailed it, Patrick. We've lamented for years how mainstream media is driven by headlines and soundbytes, and now, we find ourselves in the exact same mess. We are evolving into a dumbed-down, soundbyte-driven content generation.

We should write to be masters of our language, not our trends.

Louis Gray · 8 months ago

In the post, I mentioned the only changes I make to a headline are to make sure it displays well on the site. I don't change it for where it ends up down stream. I try not to be too catchy, play with too much alliteration, or try to be too clever.

Ari Herzog · 8 months ago

Agreed, Louis. Though... the occasional linkbait title works wonders.

frank barry · 8 months ago

I didn't even think about making Blog posts Twitter friendly. Very good information that will likely make me think much more about my titles. I think people need to take the Twitter 140 char length and the keywords all into account with coming up with post titles now.

http://twitter.com/franswaa

MarinaMartin · 8 months ago

Twitter's great for immediate traffic to a new article, but isn't a source of traffic for posts of a "timeless" nature. It doesn't seem like a good idea to sacrifice your ability to be found via search for months (or years) to come just to fit your title (plus URL) in 140 characters.

Auto-posting blog posts to a Twitter stream is a horribly obnoxious practice, but that aside, it's simple enough to choose a different title to shoot to Twitter as compared to the real post's title. So why not do both?

Marc Gayle · 8 months ago

I actually think that by making headlines for Twitter - not saying you should focus on twitter only - will help your SEO in the long run. Because by using twitter to push people to your content in the short-run, drives up eyeballs on your content in the short-run. That makes people see and link to your content sooner (if they find it valuable). As we know, the more people link to you, the better your Google PageRank. So it's kind of a win/win. Not to mention that Google indexes your Tweets, so Google will associate both your tweet (which includes a link to your article) and the inbound links from your readers with the keywords associated with your post. Another win!

Suzi Dafnis · 8 months ago

I hadn't thought of tweets in relation to headlines. Would being that strategic just squilch the sponteneity of Twitter? Would it feel too much like 'work'? I am writing as authentically as I can - if Google likes it great. Thanks for the piece - will tweet with new awareness.

William Buist · 8 months ago

I don't see these as mutually exclusive. The end game is the same - "real eyes reading the words and being influenced by them."

Great headlines do that - 125 characters is a good contraint - In the UK one of the most memorable hedlines was 'Gotcha' (6 Characters) in the US my guess is many people will know the context of "Ladies and Gentlemen: We got him" (32 Characters)

The reference for the former is still on page one of Google, yet the headline was on Tuesday May 4th 1982. The latter quote is all over page one of Google but is much more recent.

The points made here a re good ones - keeping headlines punchy and short has a big advantage across the whole of the web and in the Societal Web in particular.

Wayne Smallman · 8 months ago

The day people start writing for the Twitter mentality will be the day there's no mentality at all. You can't abridge, truncate, shorten, condense or reduce what really needs to be said in as many words or characters as what is required...

Phil Glockner · 8 months ago

Congrats on the TM front page!

Louis Gray · 8 months ago

How amusing that I butchered the headline on this one. :) Your vs. You. D'oh!

Phil Glockner · 8 months ago

Oh wow, you're right. Weird that I didn't see that before.

Daniel Tunkelang · 8 months ago

140 characters is a lot of room for a headline. For perspective, your headline for this post is only 57 characters long. Is this really an issue?

The bigger question in my mind is whether you're writing headlines to be noticed by search engines or by human beings. To me, writing for Twitter or other social media means trying to catch someone's attention by piquing their interest. SEO for search engines is also an attempt to stand out, but catching a search engine's attention involves different strategies.

labnol · 8 months ago

Good observation Louis.

Forbes too follows a similar approach - see http://twitter.com/ForbesTech

Wayne Sutton · 8 months ago

I try to write headlines that I think will capture a readers eye and has SEO value to it, so I guess I write for Google. I will shorten a post title when posting it to twitter but I won't keep a post title short just for twitter.

Google juice or twitter juice which one you rather have?
W

Ari Herzog · 8 months ago

In the end, people on Twitter create their own headlines. Everything in this post assumes a retweet.

geetarchurchy · 8 months ago

You could write your headlines for Google, Twitter or even Digg, but why not write them for the community that is forming on your blog and evolving into a group that will keep coming back and spread the word about it?

cool · 8 months ago

I try to write for people in the hopes that my headline will be both descriptive (so that they have a sense of what to expect from the post) and catchy enough to draw their attention. The latter is trickier.

In being descriptive I find that I naturally include enough keywords for SEO, but I try not to overthink it - people first, bots 2nd.

I do use Twitterfeed to autotweet new posts, but as long as I include the most important words in the beginning of the headline I find that even the long ones truncate in such a way that they make sense on Twitter. As Ari mentions, when it comes to retweets, people will write their own descriptions, anyway, so I guess what matters most is that the headline makes sense when first delivered.

I think it's worth keeping Twitter in mind when writing headlines, but I wouldn't write for Twitter specifically.

sachxn · 8 months ago

I agree with Patric that should be writing them for people. because misleading or anyways writing headlines purely for twitter or google will attract people only for a short span of time but writing headlines for people attract them for way long time.

Sachin

Eric Stoffle · 8 months ago

This is important information to keep in mind and just shows how techniques evolve to maximize the tools we use. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.