Sunday, October 14, 2007

Titles of blog posts

One big way people find you is by typing in search terms in a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, so it is important that you set up your site in such a manner as to facilitate the search engines not only finding you, but in accurately defining your site’s subject matter.

People used to get very inventive in this regard, to the point of being deceptive. Running a blog, on the other hand, helps take care of this important function almost automatically. Over time, the many, many words you write in your blog help the search engine robots understand what you are all about more and more accurately. This is because key words and key phrases are repeated naturally in the flow of writing, without you having to contrive awkward sentences that contain keywords.

But you can still refine this. One way is to pay attention to the titles of your posts. Make them short and pithy and descriptive of what your post is about. I have a tendency to get cute, as if I were writing chapter titles in a book. When you are dealing with a robot, don’t get cute. Be simple and straightforward.

There are whole industries which have sprung up on the subject of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM.) That’s how important it is. If you are in business on the internet, keep the search engine robots always in your mind as you work on your site. Make working with search engines second nature.

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