Vague language is the arch enemy of SEO. People talk about the importance of blog post titles all the time, but there are different types of titles and different things that are important depending on what type of title you’re talking about.

Types of Blog Post Titles

Post Title Traumatic Stress

Post Title Traumatic Stress

The Title Tag appears at the top of a browser or in a browser tab for a given URL (which for a blog post is referred to as a permalink). Every web page should have one and only one Title Tag, and its content should be relevant to the page, keyword optimized, and never more than 70 characters. On this post, “Blog SEO Tips | Blog Title Optimization | Word Sell, Inc.” is the Title Tag.

The H1 Title Tag appears as the title of a blog post. The H1 Tag is thought to carry a good deal of weight with Google, though not as much as the Title Tag. An H1 Tag should also be relevant to the page content – but also needs to capture the attention of human readers in the same way as a story headline in a newspaper. On this post, “Let’s Clear the Confusion about Blog Post Titles and Optimization” is the H1 Tag.

H2 and H3 Tags are used as subheads (subtitles) and carry more search engine weight than bold text, but less than H1 tags. On this post, “Types of Blog Post Titles” is an H2 Tag.

Learn How Your Blog Handles Titles

My blog runs on the fabulous WordPress theme Thesis. If I do nothing, my blog title defaults to being the Title Tag as well as the H1 tag. However, I can insert a custom Title Tag, as I have done on this post. The post title remains the H1 tag. Your blog setup my handle things differently, or you may need a plugin to give yourself the flexibility to customize.

Why would you want to customize your Title Tag? In this case, I wanted to insert certain keyword phrases for SEO, and add my company name for branding. But my goals for the post title, the H1 Tag, were quite different. I tried to compose the post title not so much for keywords but to (I hope) get people interested in reading the post.

Some SEO specialists feel that a Title Tag should not exactly match an H1 tag, for fear that Google will interpret the page as spam. But considering how many blogs duplicate tag content that way, I don’t think it is a major concern from an SEO standpoint. Just the same, why not enhance SEO with a keyword optimized Title Tag and appeal to human readers with a different, H1 Tag?

Besides being unique to the blog post, the H1 tag needs to balance keyword content with enticing language. I favor keyword rich, informational post titles, but sometimes a provocative, catchy title brings in far more readers than all the keywords in the world. A good balancing technique that was widely discussed several months ago recommended writing an alluring post title upon publication to generate buzz, and then rewriting the title later to incorporate keywords to generate search engine juice.

Title Tags, H1 Tags, and Twitter

If you use Twitter to publicize your blog posts, congratulations! You now have a whole new set of Tag issues to contend with.

I use HootSuite as my Twitter client, which has a feature called Hootlet. Hootlet is a one-click method of Tweeting a web page – and it populates the Tweet content box with a shortened URL and the Title Tag. TweetMeme, another popular Tweeting and reTweeting tool, works the same way. The default Title Tag might look boring to Followers, but it’s more likely to get picked up by Twitter users conducting keyword searches. On the other hand, overriding the Hootlet or TweetMeme default with a slick post title could generate buzz amongst Followers, yet fail badly on keyword searches.

In the case of this post, my Title Tag makes a poor default for Hootlet or TweetMeme – and the H1 Title Tag is more descriptive … but a bit too long.

There’s no clear answer. When I’m linking to posts, I tend to push keywords in my Tweets when I’m trying to reach people outside my network, especially on topics I don’t generally cover.

At this point you are probably crystal clear … or more confused than ever. I hope the former. The point is this, though. If you want to make headway with SEO and your community of readers, you should not approach titles haphazardly. They are arguably the most important pieces of content in a blog post and are therefore worth all the attention you can give them.
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word sell inc chicago online marketing servicesChicago based SEO copywriting, blog consulting, and content strategy consulting.