I often see brilliant writers with some gem-unique content that would surely drive them traffic and impress their first-time visitors, yet they get no SE traffic at all. This is caused by the fact their post/page headlines are not SEOed (Search Engine Optimization) at all.

I often see people with crappy content that would surely turn off any visitor that gets to these pages. They still get decent SE traffic because they have made some good SEO, but fail to keep any of the coming visitors as regular readers.

The key is to balance both SEO and catchy titling style, this way you will both benefit from SE traffic and will get to keep your visitors satisfied and coming back. I have been looking into moderate SEO lately, and i think i had a noticeable success with SEOing blog posts. I am no black hat or SE expert, but i think I’ve learned enough, enough to share.

Wait, what kind of SEO are we talking about?

There are different kinds of SEO, surely too many to detail in this post. The kind I’ve been looking into is with post titling - using SE effective post titles and similar text in the post text to drive more organic traffic to your blog. Those of you who use Wordpress already receive a push forward with search engines, add some effective post titling and you may harvest some traffic and revenue from Google, MSN, or Yahoo. (hundreds of % growth in my case)

How to balance between SEO & Catchy writing

» Every blog is a separate case: The level of post title SEOing depends a lot on your niche, your audience. If your blog is geared towards product reviewing and showcasing then you have more space for SEOing (”i82 Phone Reviewed”), however - if you have a blog on something like fashion or celebrities, titles like “Britney Spears divorced from K-Fed” may sound boring to the readers that are looking for some snarky, witty writing.

» Every blog post is a separate case: The first question to be asked is whether there will be decent Google search volume for the item you’re posting about. There is no worth in trying to heavily SEO a title for a term that you know isn’t currently or will never really have a lot of searches. Examples: “Britney Spears bikini pictures” will surely have more searches than “George Bush shoe brand”. Although sometimes non-popular terms become popular after sometime, i don’t believe you want to put your bet on that in most cases.

Second question to be asked: is it SEO-able?? In most cases the answer is yes, but there are some tricky ones, example: “Pamela Anderson nude pictures” may have high search volume and is considered a nicely SEOed post title, but there are literally tens of thousands of websites that already mention this term, so why let your reader think your posts are lifeless and boring?

» Do both: In some cases there is place for both catchy and well SEOed title, let’s say you found a nice gallery of supermodel Adriana Lima, now, you might go super catchy and title your post “You don’t wanna miss her pictures”, or super SEO with “Adriana Lima Pictures”, the first won’t get you any SE traffic, the latter is not really an attractive title (maybe it is with Adriana Lima, but not if you’re writing about a digi-cam :)). Why not go with “Spicy Adriana Lima pictures” - this way you have the “Adriana Lima pictures” in your title for good SE results, but you also got your reader’s attention.

» Don’t do either too much: Somewhat related to the clause above. The key is to balance between the the two, and combine them when possible. Don’t write 5 posts with boring titles, even if it’s SE beneficial, and don’t exchange too much catchy writing for your spot in search engine ranking.

» Calculate the risk vs. benefit: How much traffic can a specific SEOed post bring you, is it worth the risk you are taking to achieve it? you might be giggling now, reading how i call one boring post title a risk, but loose researches showed that it takes 37 seconds for a reader to build his impression regarding your website, and you know people are hard to impress nowadays, so you surely don’t want your first read element of the post to be boring.

» Don’t sound robotic, ever: No matter how much traffic you might receive, don’t trade it for your reader’s good impression on your blog. Never title your posts only to attract search engine traffic. People don’t like the feeling that they are being sold, they don’t read blogs with titles for robots to read.

» Will your blog rank high anyway?: If your blog is brand new you should concentrate a lot more on writing quality content that would build you a good readership base and most importantly linkage to your posts, resulting in higher PR. There is no benefit in search-engine optimizing your post title if it’s only your 3rd.