Tom Royce of The Real Estate Bloggers has always been a good friend to BloodhoundBlog. We talked earlier today about the New York Times article I cited this morning. Out of that conversation came an email I shared with all the BloodhoundBlog contributors. Not to hold out on you, I’ll post a version of it here.
Headlines make a huge difference in how weblogs entries are indexed. Many times I will write a long headline just because it amuses me, but something like this:
does this — just like that.
The post is insanely short and it doesn’t even mention Redfin in the body copy.
We don’t rank well where we don’t compete, but the single most important Googlegredient in weblogging is a relevant, noun-rich headline.
This holds true for static web pages, too, although they won’t be indexed as often. Expressed as a formula:
relevance ~= (title ~= headline ~= text)
If the title of the page corresponds to the headline, and both correspond to the body text, especially the text near the headline, then the page is going to index well for the keywords in the title. At that point PageRank, etc., are going to matter, but you can completely dominate long tail searches by wisely invoking the formula above in your local market. Like this:
What makes a Scripps Ranch home sell? Price, preparation, presentation — and a buyer
That should slay dragons on “sell a home in Scripps Ranch”. More of the same is better, and the right mix of content can completely kill the category. In other words, write enough about Scripps Ranch and you will score in the first three searches on anything Scripps Ranch-related.
I’m emphasizing headlines here, but my presumption is that the title tag will duplicate the headline. In some — but not all — WordPress templates, it’s done that way by default. If your theme is among the exceptions, I wrote a post in March that tells you how to fix the problem. When you write static web pages, copy the headline into the title tag. All the crap you’ve read about meta tags is probably useless, but making the title tag correspond to the headline is Google gold.
But wait, there’s more. As Tom was gracious enough to point out to the BloodhoundBlog contributors, a good headline is not quite the kick in the head you’ve read about at copywriting sites. I may not be the best tutor on the subject, at least ostensively, because I do a lot to entertain myself when I write, headlines included.
We started the day with this discussion:
Look at this search. Sam Wercinski has worked his whole life to get his name out there, and Russell took him with one post. This is the power of a highly-relevant headline on a highly-relevant post.
Summarizing Tom’s remarks and mine, a highly-searchable headline (and hence title tag) will deploy specific, accurate nouns and verbs, with an eye toward the keywords people might use when searching for that particular content in the future.
Note that I am not saying that you should whore your headlines to Google. But, dull though it may be, “Join Sam Wercinski, the new real estate commissioner” is findable, where something like, “All the dish on the new commish” is not.
I showed you what great real estate weblogging looks like with a great weblog post. In that same spirit, the headline of this entry illustrates how a highly-relevant, highly-searchable weblog headline can still be readable, informative, engaging, entertaining, inviting and fun.
What proof? It got you to the end of the post, didn’t it?
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