Writing titles to optimize online health articles
April 8, 2009 by health writer
Filed under Write Health Content for Websites
Are your article/page titles unique enough for readers and search engines? Real readers love clever titles, but with all the talk about the importance of keywords, you may end up with every article title sounding the same or at least too similar. If that’s the case with your website, readers may skip several of your articles because they think they’ve already read it. And guess what — so will the search engines.
Without regular readers and crawlers, your site’s page ranking in Google and other search engines will suffer. If you think your titles are unique, take a second look to make sure your title tags are working for you. Sometimes people tweak, edit, and change the article’s title after they’ve cut and pasted the draft into their web page template. So your title may sound unique, but the tag something more generic and familiar.
Once you’ve published the article, you probably shouldn’t go changing your tags. But before you press publish on your next article, check the title tag to make sure it’s working for you. The tag doesn’t need to match the title of the article, but it should say what the article is about and not be easily confused with your other page titles.
For example, let’s say your website is all the health benefits of fish oil. One article is about heart health and fish oil, another is about arthritis and fish oil, and a third is about how to choose one type of fish oil supplement over another. One is good, but if all three drafts started out with working titles like “Healthy Fish Oil,” Fish Oil and Health,” and Heart-Healthy Fish Oil,” you really need to change the titles and the title tags to something more specific and unique.
Write your actual title to attract readers and the title tags to optimize your article in search engines.
Try something like this instead:
Title: 5 Reasons the American Heart Association Recommends Fish Oil
Tag: fish-oil-for-heart-health
Title: Juice Your Joints With Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Tag: joint-pain relief-and-omega-3
Title: What’s in Your Fish Oil Supplement?
Tag: whats-in-your-fish-oil-supplement
Happy Health Writing,
Kathy Summers
