If this is your first time here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on twitter.

Their are many great articles that have been written, yet many of them never reach there full potential or even half of there potential. This could be a result of them submitting there articles to only lower populated article directories, but in most cases writing a bad title for there article is to blame. When you pick up a newspaper and look at the front page, the first thing you will see is a big bold title for each article that was written. Not everyone reads the newspaper front to back, they scan over the titles for each article in the paper to see what looks interesting to read. The same methodology applies to buying a new book at a bookstore. The bookstore has there books broken down by category, just like the newspaper does with world news, local news, sports, lifestyle, money, investing, etc. So now that you have found your book category you start scanning over the titles to see what stands out to you. The book with the most informative and helpful information might not be the one you pick due to a bad title selection. The same thing applies to article marketing, if your title does not stand out, then it will get overlooked by the viewer.

Your title needs to do two things:

1. Grab the viewers attention so they click on your title to read more.
2. Gives the search engines something to show searchers what your article is about.

Your article title must attract the reader’s eye and make them want to click on it to read what your article has to say. At the same time you want your article to be higher up on the SERP’s by using keywords in your article title. You want your title to almost jump out of the viewers monitor, grab them by the neck and have it say “CLICK ME, I HAVE THE ANSWER”.

This may sound easy to do, yet it is more difficult for some people to write a good article title that will do both of the things listed above. For some of you writing good article titles can come naturally, however some of you may find it harder to accomplish. Do you remember the first time you learned how to swim? The first time you got in the water you did not start pulling out full laps, you had to practice to get better at swimming. This applies to writing effective, eye catching article titles, it will take some practice on your part. Before you know it you will be typing out great titles in a matter of seconds instead of sitting there for an hour racking your brain and stressing out about what title to use.

Things To Avoid In Your Article Title

Special Characters - You will want to stay away from using any special characters in your article title like @, #, &, *, etc. A lot of these characters will do you the reader no good and just gives the search engines more junk to filter through. The only time you should need to use characters would be to display a stat like a percentage or price.

Example would be “Stock Market Tips - Why 85% of My Stock Market Picks Are Successful” or “Stock Market Tips - My Stock Market Picks Can Make You $500 This Week”

Keyword Spamming - You never want to stuff keywords in your article title, this does nothing to make the reader click your title and read what you had to write. Having garbage for a title is a sign that your article will be garbage as well. Some article directories will not even approve the article you wrote when your title contains keyword stuffing or spamming. Search engines will penalize your article for trying to game the system by repeat keyword spamming in your article title.

Example would be “Make Money Online, Make Money At Home, Work At Home, Money, Money Online”

Deceptive Article Title - The title you choose should pertain to the article you wrote. If your article is about building model railroads, then the title should revolve around that subject. Some try and deceive the readers by using subject lines like “Free Pictures To Download” Or “Free Home Made Amateur Movies” in an attempt to get more clicks to there article. The clicks could come, but when they see your article is about model railroads, they will simply close the page or hit the back button. Some article directories will also not even approve your article if you are trying to use deceptive subject lines, so you wasted your time writing the article and submitting it.

Things To Include In Your Article Title

Is It Believable - Does your article title sound to good to be true? On the internet if it sounds to good to be true, then chances are it is a load of crap.

Example would be “Make Money Online - This Will Show You How To Make A Million Dollars Online” How many of you would click on that title? Instead why not go with something like “Make Money Online - Money Making Methods That Anyone Can Use Online”. The second article title sounds much more believable and will generate more views for your article then the first one.

Emotions - Article titles that make the reader feel some sort of emotion will show a greater amount of interest. Emotions always peak the interest of the human mind, and that is just what you want your article title to do. If you peak the readers interest, they will click on your title and read your article.

Accurate - You want the title of your article to be accurate to what you wrote about. This goes back to not using deceptive titles, if the story does not pertain to your title, why are they going to read it. You want your title to summarize what your article is about.

Length - You want to keep your article title short and to the point. Using more then 10-12 words is overkill, especially if you are using long words in your title. Some article directories will cut off your title to fit on there page and the search engines will only display so many characters.

List Title - If your post makes points, gives informative instructions, opinions, etc. then using a list title would be perfect for your article. These types of titles not only summarize what your article is about, it is a great way to grab the attention of the reader. You are giving them X reason’s to read your article, which is exactly what they are looking for, reasons to read your article. You can read more about this and see examples that Brian gives over at Copyblogger.

Grab There Neck Early - Use the first few words to really grab there attention by using keywords that pertain to exactly what your article is about and what you want the search engines to try and rank that article for.

Writing good, attention grabbing article titles will take time, patience and practice. Just like anything else in the life, the more you do it, the better you will get at it. Write down the first title that comes in your mind, then start writing your article. As you are writing you will probably think of a revision for your title or a new one all together. It is good to experiment with different title styles over time, check your stats to see which ones got more views then others on that same subject matter.

This post was originally made on Internet Marketing Access

Article writing is a great tool to have in your arsenal of marketing techniques, however at times overlooked.  Some people are intimidated by article writing, but I am going to show you some steps to make it an easy process for you.  If you do not like to write articles, then just outsource them and make sure you at least proof read them before submitting them to any article directories.  End of article writing tips…just kidding.

Research - Depending on the type of articles you are trying to write, you may not know everything about the subject.  In this situation it is always a good idea to brush up on your topic by doing a little research first.  During your research, you will want to come up with the main focal points that your article will touch base on.  You do not want your article to be all “fluff”, you want your article to contain a lot of good information to make it useful to the reader.  The more useful the article, the more success it will have for you.

Title - This is one of, if not the most important aspect of your article.  As the viewer browses through different articles, you want your title to stand out to them.  You will also want to include important keywords that you are using in your article.  Things you do not want to do with your article title are:

• Use all caps: A lot of directories will not accept your article if the title is in all caps.
• Misleading: Your title has to match to what the article talks about, you do not want to write a title like “Free vacation cruise” if your article talks about how to properly groom a dog.  People do this to try and get more views to there article, in the end though most articles will not make it past the approval stage with bogus titles.
• Keyword Stuffing: Filling your title full of keywords that relate to your article will also give you problems trying to get past being approved.  Keep it short, use 2 or 3 keywords and have it sound appealing to the readers.
• No characters: Do not use !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, “, etc in your article title.

Write The Article - When writing your article, you will want to take your time and think each paragraph through.  There is no need to rush, the article is not going to grow legs and walk off of your monitor.  You want to make sure that you hit each of your focal points in your article and include the key information to touch base on each of them.  When writing your article it can be easy to go off track of your focal points, so keep to the topic at all times.  The more you go off topic, the longer the article will be.  This is where the length comes into play, you normally want to keep your article between 500-1200 words.  You will find that people are less likely to read an article that is 3,000 words when there is another article that is only 900 words that talks about the same thing.

The layout of your article is crucial to the reader, make it all one big paragraph and it will look like a wall of text.  Break up your focal points into paragraphs, use list’s to emphasize certain things in a clean manner.  In your article you will not want to do the following:

• Repeat your title: You will want to avoid repeating your title at the top of your article, this can be considered spam to the article directories or site publishing them.
• Watch your links:  Some article websites do not allow any links, other’s may allow 4 or 5 depending on there TOS.  Your links cannot go to a download, article sites restrict this due to the potential of the file being a virus.
• No keyword spamming:  This is a given, trying to spam your keywords in the article will prevent it from being approved.
• Make sure you read the article website TOS before submitting as some sites do not allow certain types of content.
• Copyright: If you are taking information straight from another source, make sure to include the original owners information in the article to give them credit.

Proof Read - When you are done writing the article, make sure to run it through a spell checker and proof read it to make sure it reads properly.  If you have the time, have someone else read your article to get there feedback before submitting to any article website for approval.

Author Box - The author box is where you put your information and the all important backlinks to your website or websites.  As some article websites do not allow any links in the article body, you can only include them here.  When linking to one of your websites, be sure to always use a keyword rich (I said rich, not spam) anchor text.  Do not just use “click here” to view my site.  When the search engines roll through your article, they will see the links in your author box and use them as a backlink to your site.

Later this week I will go into greater detail on topics such as tips for writing better title’s and pinpoint techniques to use in the body of your article.  Their are also ways to increase the view count of your articles that some might consider shady, but can put them to the top of some hot lists.

This post was originally made on Internet Marketing Access