The art of writing Blog post titles

I was wondering how to jazz up my personal blog posts and came across some great blog titles written by both established bloggers and non established newbies. I started to notice that a lot of these post titles all followed a pretty similar format. I found a few great posts describing this format on both; www.copyblogger.com and www.contentrobot.com blogs, things such as ask a question, activate the minds eye and start a little controversy seamed to be exactly what I had been noticing on my travels in cyberia.

The most important thing I’ve realized and the one thing that is drilled in, in every SEO post you read is to “keep it simple”. The most proficient titles I came across were short, slick, simple and easy to understand. It seams obvious once you stop and think about it, I mean of course shorter titles are going to be better for Search Engines, they are textual and to the point and they hold key phrases. I liked Gray wolf http://www.wolf-howl.com depiction of the Google bot as a “5 year old niece or nephew” and so I guess it makes sense to help give them “easy to follow” directions to the toilet, especially if you’ve got a lot of pot plants around.

So for example: Say I am the owner of confectionary focused blog called “Sweet’s fa” most people like sweets right, so it should be a winner? .Here are a few examples of me having a go at creating eye-catching blog titles. Enjoy!

1) Activate the imagination -
“Do you remember Anglo Bubble Gum?”

I remember racing off the Ella’s corner shop, and although Ella looked like the love child of Willy wonka and giant haystacks, her range of confectionary was a tweens paradise. These days even images of the traditional sweets available in the 70’s and 80’s getting the nostalgia bubbling and set the thoughts of candy cigarettes, blood skulls and black jacks rustling away in the little white paper bag of my youth
http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/anglo-bubbly-bubble-p-200.html

2) Ask a Question –
“What ever happened to Space Dust?”

My friend always reminds me about space dust and that it exploded in children’s bellies who drank a concoction of fizzy drinks and space dust it huge quantities and i still can't hate it. I used to love this stuff, you’d put half the packet on your tongue and open and close your mouth to realize the wild cracking sound to the great amusement of your friends. Now you play Wii.. and where’s the risk in that huh?
http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/whatever.php

3) Tell how to –
“How to make Coconut Ice”

To achieve the traditional pink and white effect, make two separate batches of coconut ice, colouring the second batch pale pink and pouring it on the set white mixture.Ingredients - 450 Gram Caster sugar (1 lb) - 150 ml Milk ( 1/4 pint) - 150 Gram Desiccated coconut (5 oz) -Red food colouring

Go here for the rest of the recipe: http://www.greatbritishkitchen.co.uk/recipes_result.asp?name=coconutice

4) Add controversy –
“Jesus Christ Crucified in Chocolate”

Being a obsessively self confessed atheist I would pay to see this, a six foot sculpture of gods only begotten son as a mars bar. The artist Cosimo Cavallaro has “obviously” received a lot of negative criticism for this piece that he called “My Sweet Lord” was to be displayed over the Easter period in a Manhatten gallery called the Lab Gallery. Shame if you ask me… check out the rest of the post here…http://www.artnewsblog.com/2007/04/chocolate-christ-crucified.htm

5) Use interesting Stats -
Americans eat (4.5 kg) of chocolate a year

I couldn’t find anything funny about this so this is taken directly from the site and all creadit to them - The average American eats 10-12 pounds (4.5 kg) of chocolate a year. The average Swiss eats 21 pounds (9.9 kg) a year. Despite the fact that the average swiss eats 21 pounds (9.9 kg) of chocolate, they have the lower incidences of obesity and coronary heart disease in Wester Europe. Whereas the United States consumes half less, they have the highest lean body mass index in the Western world
http://www.tea-or-chocolate.com/chocolate-facts.html

That’s a miniature dachshund a year in Chocolate a year for godsake!

6) Use Quotes -
I never met a chocolate I didn't like.

Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) in Star Trek: The Next Generation
Here are a few more chocolate related Quotes for you

Forget love-- I'd rather fall in chocolate!!! - Deanna Troi in
I could give up chocolate but I'm not a quitter - Lora Brody, author of Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/3-24-2005-67582.asp

7) Include Metaphor -
Like a kid in a sweet shop

“He discovered that there's an old-fashioned doorbell that rings as you enter the shop, and an infinite stock of sweets of all colours in jars that crowd the shelves. The store even has its own distinctive smell; the aroma of those sweets you may also remember from the 60s and 70s - Sherbert Dabs, Parma violets and Love Hearts. There's a cash till that rings behind open racks of sweets such as Banana chews individually wrapped in that familiar shiny paper. As he moves around lifting lids off jars, feeling the weight of coins in his pocket, key emotions arise: curiosity, excitement and anticipation http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/

My feelings exactly

I bit like a good poem, always relate the ending to the opening, so here goes.
So with these to be getting on with I’m going to try these title methods out on the Brain Dry blog from now on and see what happens as a result.

It has to be done…. Here it is people. “Chocolate Rain!”

Taming the Fox

I don't know about you, but i am head over heels in love with the FOX. I was sold on the browser around 3 years ago by a Mac obsessed colleague of mine, but never really used it to its full capacity. It was a little clunkier then and i only really used it for tabbed browsing and a couple of SEO features that out performed both I.E and Netscape. Then I.E came out with tabbed browsing and i tried it out for all of 8 hours and then downloaded the lastest FOX. What i love about Firefox is its tireless evolution and ease of use, its a browser that you can really make yours, you can pimp it to your hearts content and i for one am i big fan of
downloading the latest add-ons, testing them out to see if they work for me and getting rid of what i dont need.

If you havent done this before you will firstly need to download Mozilla Firefox. Then from the browser you click on Tools - Add ons, this will then launch the Mozilla Homepage for addons and you can browse all addons from their. You can search for the tools using the titles i have shown below and i have also shown you the image tags for you to recognise them. Have fun with it!

Heres a few of the add-ons i use everyday

For SEO

I.E tab - This is really handy for site testing, you can switch between mozilla and I.E in one click by clicking on the icon in the bottom right had side of the browser screen. It basically lets you check how a site is rendering in engines and for the die hard I.E fans, it gives them the benefits of what Mozilla has to offer.

iWEBTOOL
This is a very handy little tool that gives you instant access to website link popularity-keyword suggestions-density checker-website download speed test-quick optimiser check for meta data etc, alot of if is pretty basic, but it is very handy indeedy.














SEO Quake
This extension is aimed mainly at webmasters and SEO managers, it gives you an instant preveiw of website performance from your search results, this is really handy for making mesurements against client competitor sites ie: inbound links, socail media tags etc. It gives a quick snapshot of how a site is doing and you can also adjust the displayed perameters depending on what work you are doing for a client.


For Search and tagging





Co comment - I started to use this functionality when i was manageing client socail media, its a great way to keep track of any comments you make across the web, blogs or forums anywhere. You can also track replies etc, it is in Beta stage so it does have a few hiccups, but it is a good tracking tool.





ALL in one side bar
Click on the left edge of your browser window to open the sidebar and get easy access to all your panels. I use this in a way that i used to use tabbed browsing, but that had a tendancy to slow things down. I now drop all my clients websites into the bookmark side bar, all my daily blogs, SEO news sites etc and you can arrange it with titles etc to break it all up. It also allows you to flick quickly between your delicious - wikalong and Jeteye accounts without loosing anything your working on.




Image editing

Jet eye - I found this around 2 years ago in its beta stage and loved the ease of it, you simply open an account get a confirmation email and drag and drop any images you want into it, you can also tag these images and share them but i am still only using it to store my jpegs etc instead of littering the harddrive with them.














Themes


Pimpzilla - this is a very funky theme i had running for around a year, its filled with lounge lizard velvet, leopard skin back ground and Glitter and Bling!.





Metal Lion - This is a nice slick design and doesnt deflect from the dashboard. I think this isnt fadish and would more likely be a theme to keep.

This is the the Lion-blue version.

I hope that this was useful and for those that already knew i hope you enjoyed the pictures.

"We Code - Therefore we are!"

SEO, isn’t all technical, there’s SMO for starters. And just in case a few people in the back didn’t know, "there is no one answer to solve it all, no flick of a switch that will crack all your search marketing ills and get you a ranking of 6. Sorry!". A visit from the Web design/SEO fairy will not grant you thousands of inbound relevant links over night, left in a tiny pink purse beneath your pillow, and Doug can’t help you get dug as much as Doug thinks he knows how to digg. It’s a hard slog and I tell this to my clients day after day, just how much work needs to go into a full long term campaign, if the best results wish to be achieved is a HELLOFALOT.
Ok, so there is the technical part, the start up ... and I for one admit that this is the absolute nuts of the campaign and I know how important getting this bit right is, if the site is to have any hopes of future growth. Sing aloud....

Inspiring content - meta data - optimised key words in content and navigation - textual navigation - breadcrumb trail - site map - 301 re-directs - less than 3 parameters and no ID= if it has to be dynamic URL - header tags - bolded text - hyperlinks - internal links in navigation - bookmark button - hosted in country served - User centricity

But this is like a brand new car sitting on the forecourt waiting all shiny and new for its owners to arrive... the off the page stuff is what drives it, social media plays a mammoth part in getting a brand, web presence and I don't know the exact figures of on page vs. off but I know if I were to buy shares in anything, it'd be in Social Mediums (forums, optimized article submissions, blog comments, blogs). The time, sweat and tears it takes to construct a memetic brand, an interactive proposition that people are willing to submit to is an art. And SM is as much an unsung hero as CSS once was.

So please, web designers of the world, next time you propose to a client that you'll take on their SEO, consider this - "can you honestly offer a complete interactive online proposition that works both on and off the page and that can change and compete in an evolutionary user driven tornado". It's just a thought?"

5 Tips on feeding wild Google Popularity Algorithms

1) Try basic link Food:

Previous observations of the wild Google Popularity Algorithm will give you an idea of its feeding habits; feeding directories are a good place to start. Place some nice fresh links from your website on these directories, making sure that they don’t carry any nasty link spam as these delicate creatures hate spam and will most likely run and hide from any future food offerings.

2) Use specialist Food sources:

There are a number of Wild GPA trackers and experienced handlers about, it’s a good idea to communicate with these enthusiast’s and ask them for some of their GPA food until yours ripens, if you are genuine about your passion for the GPA and friendly they will help you, and may even invite you into their society and you can feed the wild GPA’s together. Make sure you get all kinds of specialist food on your site and open all the windows, very soon the wild GPA will smell this and come and have a taste.

3) Join a Google Popularity Algorithm Club:

Another way is to join an organised society and get them to place your food around to entice the GPA’s for you, since they know where they hide this is easy for them. They will only do this if they find your food interesting and if they do not, they will keep all the GPA’s for themselves.

4) Check your bait:

A way of checking if the wild GPA’s like the food you have placed around is to check for bites or clicks. This isn’t an accurate measurement and would probably have to be used in conjunction with other things.

5) Search in the Blog Grass:

A recent enthusiast has noticed that the wild GPA’s tend to show a great interest in areas of Cyberia called blogs, they seam to trust the blogs and spend time their feeding and its rumoured that they like human interaction.

Astronauts to Twitter from the moon

Nasa is planning another exciting mission to the Moon and It seams that along with gathering samples of rock from earth’s only natural satellite they will be doing something else there.

Imagine visiting the moon, it is thought to be over 3 billion years old and has shone in our skies since we were children, igniting our imagination. It is the very thing that affects our tides and in the year 1969 it is apon its surface we stepped and forever classed it amongst humanities greatest ever achievements.

This time however, The Nasa astronauts will not only be staring back through the void of space towards the wordless splendour that is our planet with tears in their eyes. They will be Twittering once they arrive. Imagine what would have happened if “Neil Armstrong” had stepped out of the Eagle module onto the moons surface, and as the world held its breath gathering around their radios and black and white TV’s they heard, from the timeless depth of space the imortal words, "Thats one small step for man, one giant leap for… lucky bugger, my mate Brain bought the latest Jefferson Airplane album”.

Sorry to be sceptical, I’m all for social media 24/7, but some things are sacrosanct and “awe inspiring moments” should remain "awesome". Twittering from the Moon... what next, Mothers giving birth and logging into Facebook or checking into Myspace whilst saying “I do” or missing a Grey whale break the surface of the water because you’re too busy adjusting your Skype profile.

But it’s just my opinion now I’m off to find out more about Sprite Yard