One example both point to is for York Fitness.

As Campbell points out, “Google has presented us with the page title ‘York Fitness: Gym Equipment & Machines | Weights | Boxing’ but the page title that York Fitness has set is ‘Gym Equipment & Machines | Weights | Boxing Equipment | York Fitness’ and truth be told, Google’s version of the page title looks far better.”

They appear to be doing the same thing on a variety of pages.

While it didn’t speak about the brand-specific method of retitling pages, Google has talked about its process for retitling pages in the past.

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far wrote on the Google Webmaster Central Blog over a year ago, “Page titles are an important part of our search results: they’re the first line of each result and they’re the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters has always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets) to describe to searchers what the page is about.”

“We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title> tag if the webmaster specified one,” he continued. “But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.”

“Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML,” he said. “For example, a title using simply the word “Home” is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.”

As far as brands go, brands are associated with trust and identity. We all know how important Google considers identity these days. A brand is the identity of a company or a product. Google seems to be be making sure content is clearly associated with the brand that puts it out.

Pretty weird.

“It looks like having a short, search-friendly title tag has increased in importance – without it, Google could replace your title with just about anything, including part of your URL,” she concludes. “This doesn’t exactly create the user experience we want, and a replaced title tag is a lost opportunity to encourage searchers to click.”

We’ve been unable to reproduce these kinds of results. We’ve had some pretty long title tags, but they don’t seem to be affecting the results in this way.

Here’s an example of a title tag, and the way it shows up in Google:

Google talked about page titles in search results a bit on its Webmaster Central blog earlier this year. I’m not sure it helps to explain much about this exact situation, but it does provide some insight into how Google handles titles:

We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title> tag if the webmaster specified one. But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.

Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML. For example, a title using simply the word “Home” is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.

Matt Cutts talked about snippets in titles in a video a few years ago:

As Barr notes, some of Google’s algorithm changes for the month of May had to do with how Google handles titles as well. These included:

We talked about these a bit in the article: Google Calls Upon Tom Waits and Otis Redding To Help With Your Site’s Titles.

Barr’s advice is to use short, but keyword-rich titles in title tags, even when the titles themselves are longer. She’s even going back on “years of posts” and adding shorter titles.

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far writes on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, “Page titles are an important part of our search results: they’re the first line of each result and they’re the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters has always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets) to describe to searchers what the page is about.”

“We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title> tag if the webmaster specified one,” he continues. “But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.”

“Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML,” he adds. “For example, a title using simply the word “Home” is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.”

Far refers readers to a Google Help Center article about site titles and descriptions, which includes this video from Matt Cutts talking about titles and snippets:

In the help center article, Google says to make sure very page on your stie has a title tag, that they’re descriptive and concise, to avoid keyword stuffing and repeated or boilerplate titles, an to brand your titles (concisely).

“If we’ve detected that a particular result has one of the above issues with its title, we may try to generate an improved title from anchors, on-page text, or other sources,” Google says. “However, sometimes even pages with well-formulated, concise, descriptive titles will end up with different titles in our search results to better indicate their relevance to the query. There’s a simple reason for this: the title tag as specified by a webmaster is limited to being static, fixed regardless of the query. Once we know the user’s query, we can often find alternative text from a page that better explains why that result is relevant. Using this alternative text as a title helps the user, and it also can help your site. Users are scanning for their query terms or other signs of relevance in the results, and a title that is tailored for the query can increase the chances that they will click through.”

If you don’t like the way Google has re-titled your pages, you can let them know in the Webmaster Help Forum.

Google+” src=”http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/article_pics/pierre-far-gplus.jpg” title=”Pierre Far on Google+” class=”aligncenter” width=”616″ height=”263″ />

On Google+, Far highlighted two main takeaways for webmasters from all of this:

1. Our algorithms generate thee alternative titles so that your page is no longer constrained with having just the one title for all the different queries your page ranks for. This has the nice side effect of making the result look more relevant to our searchers and…

2. … On average, the alternative titles increase the clickthrough rate on the results, i.e. more traffic for you.

“The <title> tag is still a primary source for titles we show so all our advice about make them concise and useful and enticing still very much apply,” he says. “Keep an eye on the HTML Suggestions page in the Diagnostics section in Webmaster Tools for title suggestions.”

Have you noticed Google changing your titles? Are they being improved?

Cutts says Google wants to show the titles that it thinks are most useful. "For example, suppose the title of your page is ‘Untitled’ or if there is no title. If that’s the case, we try to show a relevant, useful title."

"We reserve the right to try to figure out what’s a better title, what’s a more descriptive title or snippet to show the users," he continues.

According to Cutts, if you have a title that’s really long, they may still use that in their scoring, but in the snippet, they might try to find a "better title." This is presumably based on what the user is looking for.

As Cutts has said in the past, sometimes Google will use snippets right from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Sometimes, they’ll simply use snippets from the page or the meta description tag. "We do a bunch of different things to find the best description that we can," he says.

"If you have a bad title or a title that we don’t think helps users as much, we can try to find a better title, and one we think will be an informative result so that users will know whether that’s a good result for them to click on," he says.

Have you noticed Google changing your titles? Did they find better ones? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> Why Your Email Address May Show up in Google Search Results

> Why Your Robots.txt Blocked URLs May Show up in Google

> Does Google Recognize the Name of Your Business?

In the three-media-dimensional old world, headlines on the radio were generally useless; headlines are a visual art, though the late Paul Harvey certainly had a concise, rhythmic poetic aesthetic to his broadcasts very nearly bordering on the visual—as visual as the spoken word gets. It’s mainly textual, though television, specializing in teaser-and-let-down headlining, often adds sound and graphics to widen the fall between oh-that-sounds-interesting and oh-that-wasn’t-very-interesting-at-all-actually-I’ve-been-tricked.

Magazines follow a similar format but without the benefit of motion and sound they use tantalizing photographs and lots of exclamation points to grab the readers attention before sorely disappointing them.

Newspaper headlines, then, are the nearest old-world example to what one wants in a Web headline or title. Newspaper headlines are at once sensational, compact, and informative. They’re built to accommodate the scanner, who has the option of getting details below, but can move forward quickly with the general gist. A newspaper doesn’t care if you read the article or use it for anything other than puppy training; a newspaper only cares if you buy the newspaper, which is what the headlines are designed to convince you to do.  

While similar, the Internet is more complicated. Sure, RSS feeds and aggregators have required headlines to be more traditionally newsy-sounding, often with a twinge of sensationalism, but most importantly they must push on that nerve in a reader compelling them to click (the same nerve that says “buy the paper”). But a key difference is that Web headlines do not have to have static, eternal forms like published ink on paper headlines do. They can be changed to suit audiences, media, and changing needs; Web headlines operate on a time release.

And that’s good because unless you’re very, very good at writing a headline great for all digital media—for the reader, for the search engines, for Twitter, for Digg, etc.—you may need to write one for each target. So without further ado, here are some digital headline tips:

1. Can you scan it and understand what should follow? (Information scent)
2. People ignore what they don’t understand.
3. Is it concise? Will it fit easily in an email subject line, a Twitter post?
4. Would you click it? Is it catchy? Spreadable? If you saw the headline at random in Google Reader/Digg/Reddit, etc., would it get your attention and compel you to click?
5. If possible, load the important keywords at the front. This is good for search engines and human reader/scanners.
6. Is it honest? People don’t like being tricked and won’t trust you again if what follows doesn’t match what was promised.
7. If too difficult to incorporate all elements at once, define immediate and long term goals. Tailor the title for viral, buzzworthiness first so you can grab the social media/click happy crowd. Rework the title later, after everything as settled, so that it’s search engine friendly for future reference and findability.

Searchers are looking for something different in a title or headline than regular website visitors, who are browsing differently than the social network audience.

Writing for a spider is easy: Google Crawls Webpages

Simple, direct, clean. Subject, object, verb. Robots aren’t impressed with your cleverness.

Muhammed Saleem over at CopyBlogger says you need to write three different kinds of headlines, one for search engines, one for regular readers, and one for socially driven sites. Writing for all three is difficult.

He gives some good tips for how to that. If you’re especially good, though, you can write for all three simultaneously, though some might say it’s a bad idea to try. There is a bit of craft to it, and you’ll need an extra boost of creativity.

But as a guide:

1.    Weight the front. In English, we scan from right to left, but the important keywords first to make the instant connection with whomever is reading – whether they’re reading from the search results, on your site, or on Digg.com.

2.    No inside jokes. The headline is funny to you because you know the whole story. If you crack a joke in the headline, make sure it’s readily laughable on its own, or is enticing enough on its own to click.

3.    Announce the topic. No busy searcher is going to guess at what you’ve written about.

4.    Revisit cranky ol’ William Strunk: Omit needless words.

It is a line of thinking that necessitates doing what is optimal: when to balance user experience with "bot experience" to create a site that will harvest any legitimate traffic without detriment to conversions, or without venturing into areas beyond the given risk threshhold for the project.

Technology and marketing were formerly unique disciplines with very different types of people. SEO’s are the folks in between. In my mind, the reason SEO goes well beyond just search marketing into most areas of business is because search engine marketing IMPACTS many of the decisions that are made in a business. Marketing, infrastructure, customer relations, analytics, accounting, human resources can all directly impact search marketing and vice versa. SEO has become more and more of a strategic vision as top rankings become more competitive, and more valuable. SEO is in large part the communication gap between marketing and IT, combined with top level executive strategy (The only good SEO’s that leave the field at this point, do so to become CEO’s – visual illustration).

This is intended to be an "advanced beginner’s guide" – which is a bit of a paradox, but the idea is that even the most proficient of SEO’s often revisit the basics, and that execution on simple solutions can be very elegant and effective. It will also help to cover many of the things that all too often get overlooked. Executing on basics is the most advanced play in the search engine marketing game. A little secret I’ll let you in on – Even the "SEO Pros" go back to basics – content and links. They’re only pros because these two critical elements have become second nature, and nearly every waking thought is based around how to create mo’ betta content, or get some new links in creative ways.

Even if you understand every single technique available – no matter what play you call – you still have to block and tackle to reach the endzone and score your top rankings. The most proficient SEO’s realize that search ranking, branding, marketing strategy, conversions, and postive conversations consist of two major elements – CONTENT and LINKS.

Content

User Experience and content organization

The user experience should be concise, and simple. Simple is elegant. You can have multitudes of functionality locked within a extremely simple streamlined interface. Read Don’t make me think, and the Big Red Fez.

Key tips with site architecture:

1. User architecture and bot architecture don’t need to be identical. A bot will determine the heirarchy of a site through it’s link structure. A user will determine the heirarchy of a site through the placement of the main navigational elements.

2. Search engines are becoming extremely proficient at incorporating semantics into link structure. Keeping a site sectioned into themes is extremely important. The importance of internal anchor text to this factor is rarely over-rated.

3. Internal search is incredible for gathering data on your site.

Resources for understanding information architecture, and balancing the user experience with the bot experience:

• User expectations for common ecommerce elements
• Search engine theme pyramids

Content Creation

Keyword based content

Creating content specifically to rank for keywords. This is a borderline practice, depending on the intelligence level of the content. A thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters could lookup and change content based on a set of words.

User generated content

The beauty of web 2.0 – people decide to connect together to do something. Whether it’s worthwhile or otherwise, two heads are very often better than one, and conversation is the backbone of the web.

How to content

Everyone loves to know how to do something. I really wish I could download things like "how to do your own plumbing", and be able to figure it out. Someday, perhaps a well optimized and informative video will be able to do that.**

**after publishing Rob pointed me to these installation resources on Vintage Bath and Tub (who have some cool clawfoot tubs) – great examples of howto content

Blog content

Write what you know. Talk about a relevant, cohesive topic.

Linkbait content

Make a GREAT idea even better. Be remarkable.

Commodity content

Sometimes cheap content is better than no content. Don’t be lazy.

Content Resources:

• 10 Web Tools to Help Generate Blog Content Ideas
• Adding content pages – 78 possible topics – Jim
• Can your content pass a hand check – Martinibuster_
• Content Planning for Search Engine Optimization – SEO by the SEA
• Content to create links – SEW
• Read Copyblogger through twice
• Directory of Government RSS Feeds _ Threadwatch.org
• Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing – lifehack.org
• Search’s Long Tail
• The Long Tail_ SEO Tips
• When Unique Content Is Not “Unique” – Sugarrae
• Finding Hidden Content – Content idea – RogerD’s notebook
• Editing Press Releases
• Writers’ Block_ Breaking Out With Ten Simple Ideas

WebmasterWorld Supporter’s forum:

• 63 Questions to Ask Prior to Building a Content Site
• Content creation What do you know about writing for the web
• Providing Decent Content vs Providing Crap Content

Content Structure:

Duplicate content thinking

LINKS

The "Bot Experience"

"Create a site with your users in mind" has become an oft-quoted mantra of search engine representives when asked about how to rank better in search engines. While the logic is sound, it is also somewhat incomplete. The "experience" that a bot has when visiting your site will often determine the initial experience that a user has with your site as well. Controlling where the bot enters the site, and how the bot "sees" the site is of paramount importance to determining how users will find and navigate through your site.

Information architecture is one of the most overlooked areas of good search marketing. Mainly because it is one of the most difficult areas to retrofit on a site, and it’s extremely difficult for consultants to demonstrate the value to justify the workload needed to overhaul a site.

Link Development

Old is good – Old sites are trusted. Trustrank is a part of the game, and if you don’t believe it you’ve been sleeping. There is no sandbox, there is only the trustbox, and the trustbox emphasizes old, aged links that are on trusted domains that are relevant to your targeted query.

Link equity is the new brand building. Perhaps I’m a bit wrong – link equity, strategy, and development is the new brand building. Brand building and link building should coexist peacefully. Those folks out there that you’re paying $10 – $20 per hour for link building, are building your brand for the future. Why? because a brand is only a google search away these days. If I want to know how strong McDonald’s brand is – I do a google search. Perhaps I’m ahead of the curve, but even Joe sixpack isn’t that far behind me. He knows that google is a verb, and he’ll soon figure out how to change his default search application from windows live to yahoo or google. New brands don’t underestimate the intelligence of their consumers. Default search doens’t "WOW" anyone. Relevance, and information quality does.

Types of links and how to get them. Learn what they are, and how they apply to you. 12 types of links and how to get them.

Article link development

Write articles – submit to various sites based on automation for quantity or personal contacts for quality.

Press link development

Write articles – see above.

Partner link development

Network at conferences, through IM, or email, and make nice with friends.

Affiliate link development

Start an affiliate program with a service that is in the know. Redirect appropriate pages.

Paid link development

Buy text links on relevant sites

Viral link development

This one is probably among the toughest because it is becoming increasingly difficult to do something remarkable that people talk about.

Try learning what linkbaiting means.

Directory link development

Proceed with caution – you don’t need many.

Reciprocal link development

See above.

Link Development Resources:

• Graywolf’s Linkbuilding roundup on TW
• 10 steps to getting links to your site from M$ employee
• 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 _ SEO Book.com
• 131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies
• A Few Quick Link Building Tips – Jason Hendricks
• Advice_ Increase Email Response Rate _ Justilien.com
• All links are paid – More No-Follow Fallout
• Are You Guilty of Stinkin’ Linkin’ Thinkin’_
• 7 Even More Effective Ways to Build Links SEO Black Hat
• Building an outsourced team of link builders
• Buying Links – O’Reilly In Debate Over Link Selling
• CSS Redesign list – How-to increase your links through a redesign
• Delegating Link Development_ Outsource or In-house_
• Determining the Value of Links from Link Renting
• Does Your Site Have Link Building Potential
• Doing SEO in a Vacuum – natural link development
• Email is Still the Key to a Successful Link Building Campaign – seomoz
• Filthy Linking Rich by Mike Grehan
• Finding Most Relevant Powerful Page for Link from Jim
• Getting Links 1 of 5 – Neil ACSEO
• Google s New Link Filter
• How to Request Links From Picky Sites – mm – seomoz
• Increase Your Link Request Conversion – Don’t Do This!
• Interview of Patrick Gavin
• Jump-start Your Link Building (without Getting Sandboxed) by Andy Hagans
• Link Building 101 – SEW
• Link Building for Blogs Online Marketing Blog
• Link Building Guide – jim westergren
• Link Building Services – How much $$ per link_
• Link Building Strategies – Who To Link To
• Link Building Wiki – Main – Link Building Wiki
• link building with affiliate programs — does it work_
• Link Building with Landing Pages_ a basic guide
• Link Popularity and Link Building Basics-Linking101.com
• LinkHounds – Great Link Building Tips & Link Popularity Tools
• Linking Strategies that work in 2005
• Linking Strategies, items 1 to 50
• List of Searches for Link-Popularity Building
• Natural Backlinks – Getting backlinks without even asking. – Jim Boykin
• Natural link paterns – How “Internet Phenomenon” Gain Links Over Time
• Recommendations on Content to Attract Links
  Secrets from Debra M
• SEOmoz – Unconventional Link-Building Ideas
• SEOmoz Blog _ 5 Rare & Valuable Link BuildingTactics
• SEOmoz Blog _ Long List of Link Searches
• SEOmoz Blog _ What a Good Link Request E-Mail Looks Like
• Seth’s Blog_ What makes an idea viral_
• The Link Building Knowledge Base by Andy Hagans @ www.linkbuilding.info
• Threads of the Web – Linking for Success
• Threadwatch to Build Killer Link Analysis Tool

Linkbaiting

• 21 KEYS TO LINK BAIT SUCCESS
• Blogger Relations 101 – Lee – How to pitch a blogger
• How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic The Ultimate Guide
• I Just Hired A Billion Linkbuilders _ Scoreboard
• Link Bait – jim westergren
• Linkbaiting or Link Baiting Strategies – Aaron Wall
• Linkbaiting or Link Baiting
• Linking The Unlinkable_ When Digg Won’t Work
• Viral Marketing With Blogs _ Copyblogger
• What is Linkbait

Webmasterworld Link Development Threads

• Bad Webmaster – No Donut for You!
• Basic Link Dev Strategies
• Buying text links
• Confessions of a Link Building Casanova
• Explaining to Clients How to Get Links
• How can I get inbound links
• How much to quote for link building_
• It’s time to get some new links!
• Link Development in the Blogosphere
• Link Development Persona_ Male Versus Female
• Link Development Post Toolbar PR
• Link Development Strategies In the Age of Sandbox
• Link Development vs. Traffic Development and Staying with the Times
• Link Strategies To Build Presence and Gain Exposure
• New Link Spamming Technique
• Promoting deep linking
• Quality Content as Passive Link Development
• Research your Competition
• The Art Of Persuasion in Link Exhange Requests
• The Dark Side of Exchanging Reciprocal Links
• Buying Links – ‘Staying under the Radar’

Supporter’s Forum (worth every penny of membership)

• How many new links per month to be on the safe side
• Things to watch out for when outsourcing link development
• Tips For Attaining One Way Inbound Links
• If I was a search engine, part 1…
• "Triangular" link exchange
• Brainstorm On How To Get One Way I.B. Links
• Employing Link hunters
• Hints from Search Engine Engineers about Links
• Link Patterns
• The text link market
• They Handy Dandy [Sponsoredy] Linky Getting Guidy
• Paid Links – Is it time to take it seriously_
• Part 2 Explaining to Clients How to Get Links

Welcome to the Rabbit Hole Alice – Resources for those figuring out what SEO really is.

You can take the blue pill or the red pill. The blue pill will take you back to your cozy desk job coding for the man, and the red pill might lead you to insomnia induced by ideas of how to turn your startup into a real company using only your laptop combined with some technical and marketing skills, and a realistic gameplan to pull it off. Or you might end up going from self employed to unemployed real quickly.

The first converstation I have with folks generally consists of them asking some questions about what SEO is. If they are REALLY interested, and get beyond thinking about the fact that I tell them meta tags generally don’t matter much, I would guess it feels a bit like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I am still overwhelmed with information overload on a daily basis, and this is after over about 6 years of studying and experimenting with SEO techniques on a daily basis. I think the information overload stems from having so many opportunities to apply the information, as well as trying to keep up and evolve process with emerging opportunities. Digesting, managing, and even thriving on the information overload is extremely important in a business built on timely, relevant information.

Here’s where to start with your SEO Training if you’d prefer the red pill:

• SEO Glossary
• SEO Beginner’s Guide
• Google hot topics (Tedster is truly amazing)
• Search Engine Ranking Factors V.2
• SEO Tools
• SEO Tools 2
• SEO Manifesto
• Jim Boykin’s best posts

If that’s not enough, check out Lee’s list of SEO/SEM blogs, or Search through them. 

More resources on site strategy: 18 questions your CEO forgot to ask when building your website

Practice your blocking and tackling every day. Read these long enough, focus on refining tactics, and experimentation, and you’ll always have a team to play for; your clients, vendors, employer, or partners will be dumping the gatorade all over you for being the one that "made it rain".

What resources do you use for your SEO Playbook or your SEO blocking and tackling?

Comments

Tag:

Well….the ad continues with 2 guys, the first talking about how he loves his old tools. The second guy mentions an instant discount on tools going on now at the store. The conversation switches instantly back to the first guy who then says he hates his old tools.

So what did you learn?

Zilch. Me too.

Teach me something if you say you are going to. If you say you’re going to teach me something, then just give me a blurp about your sale, I’m going to turn off (I might even blog about how much I dislike your ad).

On the web there are many places where we only get one small sentence or “intro” to get a click, mainly page titles and text PPC ads. Your visitor expects you to deliver on the page or ad title, and if you don’t…your reader will quickly use that back button. If you have something lackluster to deliver, you may want to think twice about overpromising on the page or ad title.

Underpromise, over deliver is the old adage of sales. This holds partly true, except for when marketing you need to dazzle them, lure them in, pique their interest. You will lose customers if you then under deliver on the landing page, but if you deliver and then some you might just have yourself a sale (or a reader, or a friend, or a …. ).

A recent article featured on CopyBlogger.com also discusses the importance of not going overboard with your title to the point that what you promise to deliver isn’t even believable.

Why Your Best Headline Could Be Too Powerful

Essentially, your headline itself can be so unbelievable you don’t even get a click in the first place. Headlines not only need to deliver the content they promise, but they need to be believable so you at least get the first click.

Comments

I think part of the reason of the increased link bait promotion difficulty is people have caught on to the sensational titles that were the critical component of a successful link bait. Its becoming more and more rare to see an “ultimate guide”, or “12 tips you never knew”, on the much sought after front pages of the big time social sites. I think as a general rule these are great copy writing techniques that really spark the readers’ interest, but with the communities link bait radars now on high alert these are now a sure-fire way to get your story buried.

The next logical question becomes “So how do I make my story stand out without a sensational title?” Quite honestly, I’m not exactly sure. I think comes down to several things:

• High quality domain name. People are now giving an extra look at the domain the story appears on. If you happen to own freedebtconsolidation.info I think you maybe in real trouble.
• High quality site design. Kill anything that can be construed as ’spammy’: ads or misaligned text and images, or just a crappy all around design.
• High quality content. Its more important now than ever to create actual valuable content. Take your time, and make your writing as perfect as possible.

The long and short of it is: make a quality website … I know, I know, we all hate doing it. I have always defined link bait as creating quality content that adds value and then promoting that content. With the promotion vehicles wising up, the quality content part becomes all the more important, or, maybe you just have to just get used to a lower successful link bait average. If that ends up being the case, I wouldn’t worry, some other link building method will come along shortly.

Comments

Tag:

People spam everything though – media creating biased news, misquoting interviewees, blending ads in content, ads as content, free votes driving communities, deceptive article titles, spinning numbers from small sample sets, bogus posturing formated as research studies, etc.

Look at how much Google had to clean their PPC ads. Yet we don’t associate PPC service providers as people pushing thin content arbitrage sites, fraudulent search engine submission services, and off target cookie stuffing offer spams. Should we?

If spam is hosted by Google, ranked by Google, and displays Google ads, then why the need for outsourcing that fault? Why can’t we just call those people Google affiliates and leave it at what it is, Google = spam?

Some people claim that Google is out for the best interest of their users, but why the need for cost per action ads that are only labeled as ads on a scroll over? Ads cloaked as content are what is best for users? In a couple years we will see:

The game is now to manipulate consumers not only to click, but to take some further action. And I don’t use the word “manipulate” arbitrarily. This is about turning the web into one big pile of junk mail, aimed at getting you to sign up, buy, or commit to something that you hadn’t necessarily wanted.

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