SEO

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Simple Tips for Writing Headlines That Attract Readers

Posted on by skulkaew

Crafting high quality headlines that resonate with readers is one of the most deceptively difficult components of writing for several different reasons.

For starters, headlines need to draw attention to your topic and attract the right readers. We could write “Justin Bieber has nervous breakdown on stage” on the Bravo Design, Inc. blog and receive 10,000 hits, but it wouldn’t really help our business. Unless, we missed this huge market that loves both the Beebs and graphic design, but I’m pretty sure I already looked into that. Second, they need to relay context. And third, headlines should assure prospective readers that the time and energy they invest will yield a positive return. All of this is made harder by the fact that all three boxes should be checked in around 10 words.

So with no further ado, here are tips on improving your headlines.

The Mosquito Bite

One method to use is intrigue. By enticing readers to discover more, you provide compelling reasons for them to click on an article then move from the headline to the next line to the next.

“The Information Gap Theory,” was made famous by George Loewenstein, a leader in the field of behavioral economics and professor at Carnegie-Mellon. According to Loewenstein, curiosity is brought about when we feel a gap “between what we know and what we want to know.” Jonah Lehrer of Wired Magazine succinctly summarizes this by writing, “This gap has emotional consequences: it feels like a mental itch, a mosquito bite on the brain. We seek out new knowledge because that’s how we scratch the itch.”

Just remember: if you give up all the pertinent information in the headline, people won’t feel the need to read more so focus on the itch first and the scratch second.

What to Post

e.g., “You have a problem; we want to help you. Here are X, Y and Z solutions.”

People want useful information, especially when it provides solutions to problems or offers tips that improve their lives making them easier and/or better. Lists and how to articles foot the bill here along with pieces that answer the five W’s (who, what, why, when and where) These types of posts are perfect for building your authority and demonstrating your area of expertise which is critical for business blogging.

Incorporating Keywords

Should you utilize keywords in headlines? Yes, absolutely. We probably wouldn’t use the title, “How to find a graphic designer, graphic design studio, graphic design agency Los Angeles,” but who knows? I like a shameless promo plug every now and then. No, I’m kidding.

Write for an audience in their terms using your keyword research. These terms can be related to anything from problems to solutions to brand names to service offerings. It’s a win-win because you’re able to engage readers and attract search based traffic.

What NOT to do + Other Headline Landmines

I’ve said it numerous times in the past, but your products and services won’t appeal to everyone. Bummer, I know. But what’s worse is watering content down for mass appeal. I’ve made this mistake and really encourage you not to do the same.

Other things to avoid are overselling, fear mongering, trickery, desperation, hubris (desperation’s distant cousin) and the obvious ad. All of which are likely to scare prospects away before they go from browser to reader.

Practice Writing Headlines

With print media you don’t get to try multiple headlines for national audiences. You pick one, the material gets shipped, and you hope for the best. But with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, you can test different headlines to see which garners more attention, and it’s very much measurable.

Just keep in mind that with practice, you can only get better (even if all signs point to the contrary), especially if you’re providing useful information with real problem.

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Web Design Update

Posted on by skulkaew

We were contacted by FASteambanners to redesign their website with a Flex application offering that would allow customers to design their own sports team banners.

Bravo Design, Inc. custom developed a Magento e-commerce based site as our Flash/Flex development network partners concurrently created the “Design Your Own Banner” application. We also developed several custom functions and a custom shipping “Time in Transit Estimator” that was integrated with the UPS API, which allowed the client to manually update their ship-out dates by product type.

The main project goal was to allow FASteambanners to have a more robust web presence and to be able to compete with the other banner printing companies that were rolling out their own custom banner builders.  While several of their competitors appeared to use clipart packages, FASteambanners was illustrating each piece of clipart with the same quality that allowed their airbrush business to thrive.

During the project, the client was informed that their current hosting company would no longer be supporting several of the PHP4 scripts, designed 12 years prior, that ran the website.  As a result, our web development team worked strenuously to complete the project in time for the fall sports season, a very busy time for FASteambanners which would average up to 45 custom banner orders a day.

The website launched successfully, and our client is ecstatic that their products are now being listed, on average, a good 30-50 positions higher on Google’s respective search results.

To see more of our web design work, click here.

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Why You Have One Less Reason to Use Google+

Posted on by skulkaew

When “Search Plus Your World,” the feature that ranked Google+ content at the forefront of search engine report pages (SERPs) was initially unveiled in January 2012, Amit Singhal, head of Google’s core ranking team wrote, “Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of web pages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box… We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships” much to the ire of its competing social media networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc.).

Social graphs, a term popularized by Facebook to describe its social network and, essentially, the global mapping of everybody and how they’re related, have worked their way into ranking algorithms having been designated as an attribute based on trust and authority. And though it was expected that G+ would eventually garner more momentum, which would be reflected more heavily in SERPs, Google has announced that results would no longer be prioritized at the expense of the aforementioned rival social networks. This last Sunday, Singhal told Emma Barnett, a technology and digital media correspondent for The Telegraph, that the company had found a “better place” for results linked to G+. In defense of “Search Plus Your World,” Singhal went on to say, “I think it’s a learning process – even for us. We experiment, we learn, we improve – that’s what Google does.”

What happens now is anyone’s guess. It might be safe to say, at least for the time being, that if you had few reasons to use G+ prior to this update, you have even fewer now.

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Sustainable SEO

Posted on by skulkaew

If there’s one thing that’s certain when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), it’s probably the fact that search engines are in a constant state of flux, continually evolving to keep up with users’ needs. PageRank, used by Google, determines a page’s prominence by tallying inbound hyperlinks that act as votes of confidence. High-quality inbound links provide context about the subject matter of a page and serve as an indicator of its quality and popularity. The more votes cast for a page, the higher it rises on a search engine report page (SERP). While it isn’t the only factor used, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google’s web search tools.

As long as this remains so, there will exist a market for purchasing inbound links that artificially inflate page ranking. There has been, and will likely always be, networks geared towards spinning out content and building hundreds, if not thousands, of links for this exact purpose. BuildMyRank.com (BMR), one of the more well known networks that offered thousand of low-quality links at a reasonable price, announced its closure this week after the “overwhelming majority of its networks” were removed from Google’s search index.

If you’re wondering whether using a network like this is in violation of Google’s terms of service, the answer is yes.

Companies seem to not mind or know about the risk/consequence associated with getting caught (e.g., devalued rankings, possible deindexing, etc.) or even acknowledge the fact that the originating site might have nothing to do with their own or, worse, be obscene. In the coming weeks and months, we’re likely to see additional closures as well as the collateral damage for sites that employed companies who peddle similar services. While it may have seemed like a viable strategy to optimize your search engine ranking, beforehand, companies that generate countless numbers of links for this singular purpose really aren’t providing a service of value to anyone. They create artificial online relationships for the sole purpose of optimizing said ranking. So while it may not explicitly be black hat in terms of the quality of the content, it’s definitely not creating value for search engine users. And while that may have worked well in the past, Google is quickly learning to find and remove these networks, their clients and their affiliates from its listings.

A more sustainable SEO strategy centers on using techniques that will survive the test of time regardless as to what criteria search engines change. Afterall, who wants to get delisted from any given SERP?

Develop Quality Content, Build Links and Promote
One of the best ways to improve your ranking, as well as shape your branding and how your audience your audience perceives your company, is to invest in unique and relevant content development. The more useful it is, the greater the chances are that a reader will share it. The easier it is to share, the better. As search engines work to more effectively incorporate an individual’s social graph into SERPs, the more heavily your social back links will weigh in. If you’re creating content in-house, whoever is developing content for the site should have a clear understanding of the business, its target audience and its goals and objectives. Before publishing content, ask, “Is this going to be beneficial for my page’s visitors?”

After publishing, promote it aggressively. Link building through traditional efforts like outreach, guest contributions, social media and leveraging partnerships is a great way to obtain SERP prominence. Focus on a few important social networks, rather than spreading yourself thin over too many, and engage and interact. Share your articles to your community by posting links of your important posts or content but try and avoid overwhelming your followers.

If you prioritize your users before your page ranking, the latter will follow in suit.

Markup Pages for Search Engines
 Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in databases. When this data is rendered into HTML, it becomes difficult to recover the original structured data. Search engines can benefit greatly on-page markups that enable them to more readily decipher information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web.

Schema.org provides a collection of tags that webmasters can use to mark up content elements in ways recognized by major search engines, like Bing, Google and Yahoo!, that rely on markups to improve search results making it easier for people to find the right web pages. Additionally, there are geo-specific schema tags that can be leveraged to further send signals as to which audience the content is intended for including organization names, addresses, contact information, geo-coordinates, etc. Not only does this improve the user experience, but it also helps attract a searcher’s attention to your content and will likely increase click-through rates.

Stay Current and Competitive
This should be the most intuitive point but to be a serious contender, you have to stay current. Current is the minimum. Two steps ahead is better. Know what’s going on in your industry, on your own website and in the SEO community. Because the competitive landscape is constantly shifting, you’ll need to continually monitor and adapt your SEO strategy as problems arise so pay attention to your website metrics. If you’re using Google Analytics, you’ll know how many unique visitors are scoping out your site, how much time they’re spending on it, what content is most frequently being read, what keywords are being used to organically find your page and much, much more. If you’re not, you need to. Agility will help you turn on a dime but only if you can see where you’re going.

Yes, that requires a lot of time and energy or one intern. Just kidding. But there are a countless number of forums, articles and other free resources for SEO professionals to learn about more about the trade. If you’re managing your business’ SEO and marketing campaign(s), there’s no reason to not leverage this.

Lastly, focus on the long haul and decide where you’ll be one, five or ten years from now. Inevitably, there will be goals that can be further broken down into milestones that must be completed along the way to make progress. The purpose isn’t to create a concrete plan that will ensure your company’s passage into the coming century. It’s to address your strengths and weaknesses, so you can leverage and mitigate them respectively. As was the case with BMR, the problem is that short-term decisions have a habit of contaminating long-term success. One of the best ways to not only succeed, but to flourish, is to not shoot yourself in the foot.

Photo Credit: www.searchcowboys.com