I like this photo comparing AOL, Google and Yahoo. Microsoft is like Yahoo and AOL.
It is an perhaps so obvious that we don’t even notice the beauty and calness of simplicity. I couldn’t stand to have a Yahoo type home page. There are too many things flashing and distracting the eye.
For many of my commercial sites, I have no advertising on my home page. e.g. Economics Help. The reason is that the home page is the page people are most likely to link to. By taking away advertising, you may lose the odd cent, but the increase in links is definitely worth it.
When choosing the best title, it is first important to know our target audience. For social media and attracting the interest of potential readers it is vital to choose an engaging title which creates interest and offers something unique. It is vital to choose a title that gives the impression the article is actually worth reading. To get an idea of powerful titles just have a look at the delicious popular page. Successful titles have the ability to draw in a reader.
Off the top of my head I can think of various headline templates such as
- Effective ways to Captivate a Reader
- Are you making these mistakes…. ?
- Why the belief in … is mistaken
- 10 Powerful ways to…. (10 is the most popular number, followed by 7)
- Secrets of the successful ….
- Why you should … To…
- How to …
- More Eye Catching Titles
The other strategy for titles is to choose keyword rich titles that attract search engine titles. The problem is that these are often quite generic and ‘boring’ For example on a finance blog. Good keyword titles include: ‘Best Money tips’ However, ‘best money tips’ is hardly likely to set the social media alight. This article is currently Ten Effective ways to make the most of your money but, I will change it later.
Best of Both Worlds
If you really put your heart and soul into an article, you could make the best of both worlds. Start off with choosing an effective title for the social media. Take advantage of potential stumble and delicious traffic. After a month, you can revert the title back to the search engine friendly title.
It is best to use the post slug option to keep the original url compatible
