When people are searching for the solution to a problem, they typically start by doing a search with an engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. In order to ensure that your paper is found, you need to help search engines find them. One of the most important things you can do is to put keywords in your headline. (While there are other things you can do for SEO, this post will focus strictly on headlines.)
Why Headlines are Critical to Search
Normally, companies post white papers on their own sites, as well as on content-aggregation sites, such as TechTarget and KnowledgeStorm. They post these white papers as PDF files, which people typically access through a Web page that includes a title and an abstract. The title is typically the headline and the abstract is usually the executive summary of the paper.
As with any other Web page, the headline on this introductory page is a vital part of search-engine optimization because it’s the first thing that a search engine sees when it goes to figure out what the page is about. You can’t rank highly in results or get clicks without having keywords in the title.
Why? According to Rick DeJarnette in this post, search engines look for keywords and key phrases where writers use them to emphasize key points. They automatically give words in certain places a higher prioritized value. For example, search engines consider words used in page titles definitive for assessing the contents of that page. Because the title defines page content, those words carry more weight than words found in body text. Words that describe the body text as a whole or even other pages as a whole carry the weight of those pages.
But keywords aren’t only important for inanimate search engines, they work for people too. Keywords are what users type in when they’re looking for something. As such, keywords give you an idea of the problem your potential customer is trying to solve and of the language they use to describe that problem. If you want people to think you understand their problems, you’ll be most effective if you use their own language. And that means including keywords in your titles.
How to Use Keywords in Headlines
The big question people always have is how to balance a headline that grabs people, with one that attracts search engines. The assumption is that this is a dilemma with an “either or” answer. That is, either the headline is interesting to people or it works for search engines. In fact, it’s a balancing act. You can use any of the techniques I’ve been describing as long as you keep in mind a few guidelines:
1. Since search engines pay attention to only a finite number of characters in the title, put your keywords as close to the beginning of your title as possible.
2. Focus on one topic
3. Write for the end user using the techniques described in previous posts but keep keywords in the back of your mind.
4. Balance keyword relevance with eye-catching style. Don’t pack the headline so full of keywords that it’s awkward; avoid something that’s clever but lacks keywords.
How have you used keywords in your headlines?
Keywords are always important. To be seen by people or serach engines, one needs to make sure that they have number in the headline.
For an example: "10 questions to ask before your find a tax expert"
Leon Fangnigbe
www.MLFSolutions.com | www.TaxMamba.com
Posted by: Leon Fangnigbe | February 21, 2010 at 11:41 AM