4 ms·

When writing blog post titles, forget about SEO

19 points by stritar 14y ago

halo18 14y ago
"Search engine rankings are influenced mostly by (social media) backlinks." Hilarious. Also - cramming a keyword you want into a title tag that doesn't fit the content is shitty SEO. There's a difference between that, and doing it well.
- stritar 14y ago
  I once wrote a post about Apple having more cash than Slovenia's GDP. Without much optimization, no strong backlinks, but with a lot of social virality - the post was on the first page for Google "Apple Slovenia" for at least a year.
- stritar 14y ago
  Currently, if I search Google for "writing blog post titles SEO", this specific post is on the first page. I think this proves social media links matter a lot.
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    Any number of factors could cause that. It's not on the first page for me. "A followed B, so B must have caused A" is how most miracle cure, weight loss, marketing, and money making products are born. Most are bogus or fail in the long term.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- xpose2000 14y ago
  Completely agree with you. If this post had a downvote button I would surely use it. Very very bad advice in his post that is just flat out wrong.
  - stritar 14y ago
    http://www.searchprosystems.com/social-media%E2%80%99s-impact-on-google-search-rankings http://www.searchprosystems.com/social-media%E2%80%99s-impac...
  - regal 14y ago
    Despite dispensing SEO advice so freely, the site's current SEM Rush daily traffic is 0 visitors / day. And the author's been blogging on this site for over 3 years; it's not a new site.
danso 14y ago
>> " But I've chosen the wrong title for it, since the core of every UX analysis are the problems and goals each solution is trying to solve and achieve. By thinking about SEO, I've devalued the content of the story by presenting it as something it is not." So the OP is not saying ditch SEO in favor of verbosity/cleverly-punny-vague titles, he's saying, don't write blog titles full of bullshit buzzwords. Thanks for the insight.
petecampbell 14y ago
I'm sorry but you have a few details wrong in this post. If you're concerned about referencing keywords, you could do it in body copy as opposed to the post title. Also, rankings are largely influenced by the number of sites linking to a post, alongside on-page keyword references, well-built sites and user experience. Social signals are just a catalyst - not a direct factor.
- pknight 14y ago
  I'm sorry, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Stay current with what is going on, SEOMOZ and SearchEngineLand are good sources. And btw, the core message in his post is very good one. Lots of people are convinced they need to optimize their titles to death for greater SEO success. Tools like Yoast's SEO plugin for WordPress and WP Scribe encourage that kind of boxed idea of SEO. Especially newcomers just get confused by this. If you create content people want to read and share, they will increase the ranking factors of your page. It starts with a good title. I'd say the social factor is a direct a factor can get when it comes to raising search engine visibility.
  - stritar 14y ago
    Thank you very much sir, that was what just I wanted to say. :)
  - WillyF 14y ago
    What about the parent comment indicates that he doesn't know what he's talking about? Here are some Matt Cutts quotes from two weeks ago: "Over time, Google will care more about identity and social reputation." "Links still have many, many good years ahead of them." "We like standards that are available on the open web. If we’re not able to crawl something – like Facebook or like the time we temporarily ran into problems with Twitter – we don’t want to depend on that data." It's pretty obvious that Google is taking a very slow approach to mixing in social signals. They want Google+ to be THE social signal, and that isn't close to happening yet. Social can be a great way to build links, but calling I definitely would not call it a direct factor at this point.
TomAnthony 14y ago
Site struggling. Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:stritar.net%2FPost%2FNote-to-self-when-writing-blog-post-titles-forget-about-SEO.aspx http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:stritar...
salvadors 13y ago
>> it's every blogger's dream his / her work will once be self-sustainable. Traffic without active (social media) involvement. I do the writing, Google does its magic, the readers to the rest. Weird writing/typos aside, I find this concept confusing. What does it mean for writing to be self-sustainable?

19 points by stritar 14y ago

"Search engine rankings are influenced mostly by (social media) backlinks." Hilarious. Also - cramming a keyword you want into a title tag that doesn't fit the content is shitty SEO. There's a difference between that, and doing it well.

stritar 14y ago
I once wrote a post about Apple having more cash than Slovenia's GDP. Without much optimization, no strong backlinks, but with a lot of social virality - the post was on the first page for Google "Apple Slovenia" for at least a year.
stritar 14y ago
Currently, if I search Google for "writing blog post titles SEO", this specific post is on the first page. I think this proves social media links matter a lot.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Any number of factors could cause that. It's not on the first page for me. "A followed B, so B must have caused A" is how most miracle cure, weight loss, marketing, and money making products are born. Most are bogus or fail in the long term.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
xpose2000 14y ago
Completely agree with you. If this post had a downvote button I would surely use it. Very very bad advice in his post that is just flat out wrong.
- stritar 14y ago
  http://www.searchprosystems.com/social-media%E2%80%99s-impact-on-google-search-rankings http://www.searchprosystems.com/social-media%E2%80%99s-impac...
- regal 14y ago
  Despite dispensing SEO advice so freely, the site's current SEM Rush daily traffic is 0 visitors / day. And the author's been blogging on this site for over 3 years; it's not a new site.

danso 14y ago

>> " But I've chosen the wrong title for it, since the core of every UX analysis are the problems and goals each solution is trying to solve and achieve. By thinking about SEO, I've devalued the content of the story by presenting it as something it is not." So the OP is not saying ditch SEO in favor of verbosity/cleverly-punny-vague titles, he's saying, don't write blog titles full of bullshit buzzwords. Thanks for the insight.

petecampbell 14y ago

I'm sorry but you have a few details wrong in this post. If you're concerned about referencing keywords, you could do it in body copy as opposed to the post title. Also, rankings are largely influenced by the number of sites linking to a post, alongside on-page keyword references, well-built sites and user experience. Social signals are just a catalyst - not a direct factor.

pknight 14y ago
I'm sorry, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Stay current with what is going on, SEOMOZ and SearchEngineLand are good sources. And btw, the core message in his post is very good one. Lots of people are convinced they need to optimize their titles to death for greater SEO success. Tools like Yoast's SEO plugin for WordPress and WP Scribe encourage that kind of boxed idea of SEO. Especially newcomers just get confused by this. If you create content people want to read and share, they will increase the ranking factors of your page. It starts with a good title. I'd say the social factor is a direct a factor can get when it comes to raising search engine visibility.
- stritar 14y ago
  Thank you very much sir, that was what just I wanted to say. :)
- WillyF 14y ago
  What about the parent comment indicates that he doesn't know what he's talking about? Here are some Matt Cutts quotes from two weeks ago: "Over time, Google will care more about identity and social reputation." "Links still have many, many good years ahead of them." "We like standards that are available on the open web. If we’re not able to crawl something – like Facebook or like the time we temporarily ran into problems with Twitter – we don’t want to depend on that data." It's pretty obvious that Google is taking a very slow approach to mixing in social signals. They want Google+ to be THE social signal, and that isn't close to happening yet. Social can be a great way to build links, but calling I definitely would not call it a direct factor at this point.

TomAnthony 14y ago

Site struggling. Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:stritar.net%2FPost%2FNote-to-self-when-writing-blog-post-titles-forget-about-SEO.aspx http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:stritar...

salvadors 13y ago

>> it's every blogger's dream his / her work will once be self-sustainable. Traffic without active (social media) involvement. I do the writing, Google does its magic, the readers to the rest. Weird writing/typos aside, I find this concept confusing. What does it mean for writing to be self-sustainable?