Blogging Tips

Your title and introduction paragraph are two of the most important aspects of your article. These are the major opportunities you have to lure the readers, as well as the search engines. Use this to your advantage in order to make the most out of your articles and gain the attention you desire.

When it comes to blogs, your content is likely to be shared on various media websites and aggregation services. Those that frequent these other sites and services will probably only see the title and introductory paragraph, so you need to ensure that these represent your article well enough to get readers to click through to your site.

A useful guideline is to keep your title under twelve words. This is just long enough for the average blog width, and just long enough for most media-sharing sites where your blog link is likely to be posted. Twelve words or less is also the right amount of words to include in a title without potential readers losing interest.

Here are a few places your title and introductory paragraph can be shared across the web:

Social Networks

Sites like Twitter and Facebook are great places for sharing content. When you or others post links to your blog on these sites, there’s often just enough room for your article title and a portion of introductory paragraph. While an image or video clip can sometimes be included along with your title and/or introductory paragraph, you can’t always rely on the visual stimulation of additional media to entice readers.

RSS Readers

Between computers and mobile phones, RSS readers are very effective ways in which readers can receive updates to all the blogs they follow. Yet the efficient use of space with RSS readers limits feeds to article titles and portions of the introductory paragraph. Make sure that your content stands out from the crowd

News Article Aggregators

Sites like Digg and Yahoo Buzz can be great ways in which readers can recommend your article for others to read. When they do so, they often utilize bookmarking tools directly from their browser. As the bookmarking tools pull data about your article from the title and the introductory paragraph, it’s important for you to make these as descriptive as possible.

Search Engines

Search engines like Google can bring a tremendous amount of traffic to your website. Make sure potential readers click on your search result by having a great title and an impacting intro paragraph, as these are the two primary portions of your article to be indexed and displayed for a typical search query. When a search engine indexes your website, the title and intro paragraph are mined and utilized for search query purposes, making these the two most important portions of your blog’s articles.