Changing Titles To Get More Traffic

A few months ago, I set up a gardening blog, with my father - Gardeners Tips. We have done all the right things for a new blog

• Got some good links.
• Created 300 posts.
• Reasonable design and good logo.

Although, it is still a fairly new blog I was a little disappointed with traffic levels, given the number of posts and inbound links. I had a look at the posts, and decided the problem was in the titles chosen. My father had chosen good titles, the kind of titles you would get in a gardening magazine or newspaper, but, they are not optimised for  search engines. This is how I changed the titles, to hopefully get more traffic.

Note: The first thing I did was to look in the statistics to see which kind of keywords were bring traffic.

The top 3 were:

• 21.15% growing sunflowers
• growing lupins
• growing sweet peas

Straight away, we are given a simple idea. ‘Growing’ and ‘plant name’ make a good combination.

Examples of Old Titles and New titles

1. Big Cuttings for Big Shrubs - “How To Take Cuttings of  Shrubs” I didn’t feel anyone would search the first title, but, people do search questions, how to do something.
2. Asparagus Cultivation UK Style - “Growing Asparagus in UK” - Generally, it is best to use the most common words. Growing will be more common than cultivation.
3. A Pair of Decorative Herbs - “Decorative Herbs for The Garden” - The second will be searched more frequently
4. Apple Rootstock - “Types of Apple Rootstock” - Two words is very difficult to rank for; competition is too intense. Here my choice of the extra word Types was because this is what the post is about. Important to remember, the title should reflect the post!
5. Weedy Ponds - “Dealing With Weeds in Ponds”
6. Easy Rhubarb in Yorkshire - “Simple Tips for Growing Rhubarb in Yorkshire”

By now, you probably get the idea of how you can make more search engine friendly titles. You may feel it becomes repeitive. But, also don’t forget, it is good to be descriptive and say exactly what it is about. It will make it more likely people will actually click on the link when they see it in search engine results.