Although SEO is a relatively low-cost marketing tactic, some areas represent a significant investment for your business. Good quality content requires time, human resources and money, in a different combination for every business. With all that investment, it needs to work hard to prove worthwhile. It needs to go beyond your pages.

Good content does most of its work for you in SEO returns, but it can do much more. With proper planning, your content should be able to drive up your conversion rates or boost your net-wide reputation. When you want your content to achieve this, you need to sell it with your titles.

Tricky titles for attention and retention

Any time spent working on search engine optimisation is guaranteed to reinforce the importance of a good headline or title for your pages. Titles are also important for the prosperity of your business. Marketers endlessly make use of catchy titles within email campaigns, ad campaigns, pay-per-click and other forms of marketing. A good title can sell your site, your business and your products or services.

Before you put your titles to these excellent uses, you need to determine what you want them to do. This will generally fall into two categories.

Titles that travel

These kinds of titles are designed to be picked up by your site’s users and passed on. Two ways in which well-written content should work harder is in attracting inbound links and providing off-page publicity. It takes exceptional content for this to happen and this quality must be conveyed in the title. It can help to look at popular blogs for hints on the types of titles that travel, as a good blogger knows all the tricks. Lists and statistics usually make for a title that can travel.

You can also craft titles to travel to specific places. If you’re targeting social bookmarking sites, for example, there are usually little quirks that appeal to that particular site’s user group. Read up on site statistics when drawing up a strategy for social bookmarking. It can help to get your SEO company on board as well, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult about social bookmarking approaches.

Titles that sell, subscribe, or otherwise convert

Titles can be a way to increase conversions independently, if you know what sells. Of course, this will change from industry to industry, but there are two things that are almost guaranteed to appeal to any market. These are defined prices and guarantees. For example, the title ‘We can save you money on eyewear’ is less likely to produce conversions than ‘Save $4 on glasses, guaranteed’. Internet users are used to fluffy promises and are therefore tired of them. When it comes to more specific pledges, they tend to react well. It’s important to remember that promises within a title can be legally binding, so don’t offer what you can’t follow through on.

Not all conversions are about money, but a good title can achieve subscriptions as well. It’s a very good idea to look at popular industry blogs for inspiration.

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