Recently an experiment was done in writing catchy titles for an online article submission website. One-hundred articles were written which started out with the title; “Read This Article if…” The experiment was to see what type of people read articles online and also to do a trial close on the reader. Commanding them to read the article if they were this thing or the other.
An expert author “Fred” asked if he should write articles with this title if he specializes in background checks for employees and driving records. This is a very good question indeed. Here are some of my thoughts on this great question. In theory Fred might consider these facts:
The practice of titling informational articles starting with “Read This Article if…” is not preferable for search engine ranking because the words “Read” and “Article” are not key word rich. Most search engines do not count “this” or “if” so actually for search engine use, this is not preferable and chances are your current articles are fine the way they are and probably better. Additionally if you wrote an article and titled it; Read This Article if You Would Like to Lose Weight. You also have non-key rich words such as “would,” “like” and “You” before the words which you need to help in search engine ranking; “Lose + Weight.”
This experiment was performed due to a theory I had that when people were searching, they might run across my article and it says to them; “Read Me” and then they would click on it. It does seem to work a little, not significantly, but it does work. These articles out perform other articles, but do not out perform more strategic key word rich titles with main subject coming in the first two or three words in the article.
The title in this experiment is selling something; “a click.” But it is not helping those who are looking to buy or searching a specific thing, because it will get rapidly buried in the search engines you see? There has been success in this experimental campaign with the articles, which are on people’s minds already when they run across the article. For instance the articles, which have worked best are; Read this if…you want to be skinny, you want to be wealthy? etc?
Fred with his specialty might try a few articles such as; “Read This Article if You Want the Best Employees” or “Read this Article to Be Sure Your Company Has Safe Drivers.” But I would only do it if Fred is going to write many articles. What could be better is to title his articles this way; “Employee Background Check; read this article to learn how” or “Employee Driving Records; read this article if you want to know the truth.”
Try these types of titles first. If you are an online writer you may Email me if you need more ideas. You will do fine, luckily you have chosen EzineArticles to post your articles and this means you already have a head start. Try to write one to two article a day until January 1, 2006 and see how well you do. Work on “key word” rich titles that grab the reader, writing titles is a skill, even newspapers are careful to have people who can write those catchy titles so people buy the newspapers in the news paper racks. Think on this.
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