O is for Optimize Headlines: A to Z Guide for Increasing Pageviews

One of the hardest concepts to grasp when a writer enters the world of web writing is how to make an article and a headline "searchable," and to employ Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques.

Even the seasoned print writer or fiction writer may grapple with this #1 rule of web writing.

There are companies and entrepreneurs who will sell you products, ideas, services to help make your content searchable and teach you Search Engine Optimization. Don't waste your money. I have managed to make my web content searchable by following some very basic rules for writing web content.

I have come these SEO tips through personal experience, experimentation, and research. I have also culled tips from others in the past year, since my writing efforts have become focused on making money online by writing web content.

These are the tips that have worked for me. You can learn in one article what it took me one year to fully learn and test.

Search Engine Optimization for Headlines

I have written about the importance of headlines before. These short headlines need to do a lot of work and please a lot of people and machines in very few words. Which is why web writers who want to make money online need to....

1. Make Every Word Count to Maximize SEO

In the days of print media (oh, is print media still around?)....due to the constraints of the printed page, a very specific and limited number of characters could be used to create articles, and to print the headlines.

Just because the web gives us unlimited space, does not mean we should use it, especially when it comes to headlines. A headline should the least amount of words needed to convey the message.

Make every word in a headline count.

2. The Headline Must Be Searchable

The headline of your article needs to appeal to the reader, selling the promise of some substantive content. It also needs to be searchable by the search engines, and recognized as searchable by web editors or their equivalents.

Practice good SEO when writing headlines. How? Feed the hungry search engines the juicy snacks they seek, in the form of keywords and derivatives.

The headline must contain one keyword that also appears in the article. Two keywords are even better than one keyword, for Search Engine Optimization.

Tip: Save the "cute" headline for the sub-head.

3. Increase the article's searchability even more, and use a keyword phrase, not just a keyword.

One way to increase pageviews exponentially is to use more than one keyword phrase in the headline.

Using more than on keyword phrase in an article can be the difference between getting paid and getting rejected.

For example, an article about stress relieving bath and beauty products which was originally headlined as "Bath and Beauty Stress Relief Products" was rejected for payment because the topic was considered to be too common.

After a little keyword research using Overture, I added some important and popular keywords to the headline, and to the article itself.

The article became "Stress Relief Products as Baby Shower Gifts for the Pregnant Woman."

The headline contains three popular keyword phrases for which web users search:

-stress relief
-pregnant woman
-baby shower

RED FLAG: If you have already written the article, and you cannot identify five keywords or keyword phrases in order to write a headline, then the article is not yet suitable for the web. It must be re-written with keywords or keyword phrases.

4. The Headline Must Contain Popular Topics

In addition to containing keywords or keyword phrases, the headline also needs to use popular words and phrases.

When writers new to SEO writing hear the term "popular" they sometimes go screaming in the corner, and become defensive. You do not have to write news articles, celebrity articles, or article about Apple, although they are all popular topics on the web.

The key here is using popular words. Think of SEO for headlines this way, every word or phrase has a popular equivalent on the web. For example, I wrote an article about wedding venues recently. Had I not done my research, I would have used wedding reception halls, which is a far less popular term than wedding venues.

I started with the concept of writing about local wedding reception halls. Then I looked up wedding reception halls using a free keyword selector tool. It did not produce promising results.

From there I decided to do a more general search, to see what would come up. I simply did a search for wedding. Sure enough there in the top five lists of popular web searches was the phrase "wedding venues."

Finding the term wedding venues in the top of the list confirmed that I had a popular topic at hand.

Learning to write searchable headlines just takes a little practice, and some practical advice.