You may think your blog post titles don’t really matter, but the thing is - they do matter a lot.
How does a random person decide whether to read a blog post or not? It doesn’t matter if the named person found your blog post at the searcher or at his feed, or at any of the social bookmarking websites, or even by simply surfing the web, the first thing the decision whether to read a post or not depends on is the title. Thus the title should be really great, catching and intriguing. There are loads of information at the Net on how to make your post titles prominent and catching, I collected the most reasonable tips to give you a simple yet useful check list. Note that not every of these tips is good for every blog post you write, everything depends on content, thus remember that you blog post title should reveal what your blog post is about, everything else comes later.
* Use keywords
* Hint what your reader will “get” from reading your post.
* Debates and controversy are the powerful tool for attracting readers.
* Use words like ‘free’, ‘discover’, ’stunning’, ‘warning’, ‘easy’, ’secrets’ and other power words.
* Promise something. But don’t forget to back the promises up at the post.
* Reach out to your reader. Using “you” in the title as well as in the post itself makes it more personal, thus more vivid for readers.
* Ask questions. These are good not only in attracting readers but also in stimulating comments.
* Be humorous. Humor is a great tool, but it has to be funny, remember that.
* Always right for your readers, not the search engines first.
* Simplicity is the key. No one likes too complected words and highbrow content.
* Lists are among the most popular posts.
Well, have I missed something? Do share your tips and advice in comments below.
Posts Tagged ‘blogging tips’
11 Tips on Making Your Post Titles Prominent
May 26th, 2009Be a smart blogger
April 16th, 2009
What I like about WordPress most of all is its being constantly improved, thus the system becomes more and more secure. And the errors a blogger faces are more and more frequently the blogger own fault not the CMS.
So, what should you do to avoid the most common WordPress errors?
* Update every time you have a chance to
Upgrading everything on your blog from WordPress itself to plugins makes your blog less vulnerable. Make sure you secured your blog well.
* Don’t do anything if you don’t know how
Don’t try editing your theme if you don’t know how exactly to do that. Messing the code can lead to irreparable consequences and cause the errors that are hard to fix.
* Make sure the plugins you add are up-to-date and safe
The plugins you add to your blog should be compatible with your WordPress version, up-to-date, any modifications have to be noted by the plugin author, there should be installation instructions, license and other documentation. Don’t think that checking these things is a waste of time, waste of time is adding a plugin that won’t be working and will cause errors.
* Learn some coding basics
If you want to modify your themes and change the way your blog is seen by your users you better learn some basics of coding. Knowledge can never be superfluous, read your WordPress help files carefully, ask questions at forums, don’t be afraid to learn new things.
We all once started blogging and I’m pretty sure every one of you faced the issues that baffled you. So share your experiences, what are the WordpPress errors you faced and how did you deal with them?
Promote your WP blog with WordPress directories.
March 19th, 2009You’ve launched your WordPress blog, filled it with numerous seo-oriented plugins, wrote brilliant content and still your blog statistics show you are not as popular as you wish to be? Well, it’s time to promote. Let the world notice you. How?
There are numerous ways, one of them is adding your blog to various blog directories. Directories are great for link building, search engines love them 
Start with the blog directories that include only WordPress powered blogs. Here’s the short list for you:
WordPress Showcase
The Showcase is held by WordPress itself, thus it’s probably the most authoritative directory, at least search engines consider it to be. Being the most powerful WordPress Showcase is quite picky. Make your blog unique and exceptional and you’ll be listed.
We Love WP
We Love WP showcases Wordpress powered websites and blogs with original designs or originally redesigned free or premium themes.
WP Count
Another powerful showcase of WordPress blogs. You can submit your new or redesigned blog.
These are not as authoritative as the above ones, but also very good directories:
Wordpress Garden
A nice showcase of websites build with WordPress. Though not very often updated.
Wordpress Blog Directory
A big archive of WordPress sites and blogs divided into thematic categories.
Wordpress-Directory
Another directory with thematic categorization.
Do you know more WP directories? Please share in comments.
Increase traffic with WordPress Plugins
March 12th, 2009Everyone who creates a blog does it with the hope to become popular, here are some WordPress plugins that will help you increase the number of visitors.
Usually a person searching Google won’t go further than two first pages of the search results, to be successful and have more visitors you have to be at those first pages. So you need to make your weblog SEO friendly. This plugin dynamically optimizes titles for search engines and generates meta tags. Help people find your blog and improve your page ratings.
Post Ratings
Post Ratings plugin adds an AJAX rating system to your blog posts and pages. In this way you’ll get a feedback from your visitors. Seeing what posts and pages they like more you’ll be able to target your posts and make your visitors happy and your traffic increased.
There is quite a number of plugins that allow your visitors to submit your posts to social sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and others. These social bookmarking sites appear to be great in bringing traffic.
It’s easier to give your visitors what they want when you know what they like. StatPress-plugin gathers the info about your visitors, search keywords, browsers, feeds etc. Shows preferred pages, categories and posts. Seeing keywords that your visitors used to get to you via the search engines is also very fruitful. You can use all this info to understand you visitors and their likes and dislikes as a result giving them what they want and becoming popular.
These were some useful plugins I can suggest for bringing your blog more traffic. What plugins do you use?
