A Good Blog Title is Like Wrapping Paper on a Present

I always loved Christmas as a child and love it today as an adult. It is filled with family, great food, and presents. As a child I liked the family and presents; as an adult I love all three. The difference is as a child I liked to receive presents and as an adult I like to give them. While I probably didn’t care much about the wrapping paper as a child, I do as an adult. I think the wrapping paper and presentation should be as good as the present itself. Gifts for adults need perfect corners, while gifts for children need lots of ribbon and a piece of candy on top to peak interest and make the receiver want to rip it open.

This week I was preparing my slide deck for a webinar I’m presenting on Tuesday for my friends over at Lurn. The webinar is titled “Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic”. The preparation for this webinar reminded me of wrapping paper and my ultimate love for Christmas. Yes you read that correctly, in my mind I think of titles and meta as wrapping paper.

Here is why. Line up two presents of equal size and cost. One is wrapped in a brown paper bag (earth day was this week so let’s recycle) and the other is wrapped in beautiful shiny paper with perfect corners and exquisite ribbon to match. Which one do you want to open? Unless you have mental issues, you’re going for the one I wrapped. That would be the pretty one. Blog entries and website pages are the same. Visitors and search engines lunge at the page or post that is wrapped perfectly. This means well-written content that is accompanied by a fabulous title, concise meta description, and relevant keywords (if you are targeting search engines other than Google). These three elements are the teasers that make you want more. Just like the perfectly wrapped present.

Unfortunately, blogger and “wanna be” webmasters are a dime a dozen these days and everyone thinks they are the next great publisher of content on the Internet. They are not. I am thankful the folks over at Lurn feel the same as I do and they are trying desperately to education these up and coming Internet moguls with some good old fashion SEO expertise. Once you get past Lurn’s glitzy landing pages, you’ll see they have great content on SEO and Internet marketing. So much so that I wish they’d been around seven years ago when I entered into the world of SEO and website design. This isn’t a push for Lurn, it is an education. I 100% believe they provide great content for the SEO newbie. Below is a list of best practices I’ll be discussing Tuesday. Lurn believes in these just as I do, which is why I believe in Lurn.

Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic

1. Write an eye-catching, well-written headline
2. Use your headline, descriptions, and tags to gain traction
3. Use your keywords in the title
4. Build keywords into your alt tags
5. Include headlines and descriptions that will resonate with those readers
6. Include information you want your visitors to see when they see your link in search engines
7. Watch your character limit
8. Don’t overdo it
9. Utilize the H1 tag so it helps both the reader and the search engine
10. Pick the right header for the job

So my SEO friends, I will leave you with this thought. When crafting your next blog entry or web page, ask yourself this – is your wrapping job good enough to give to your mother (aka Google)? If you aren’t pleased to attach your name to it, rewrap it and make sure the presentation is as good as the page content itself.