If you’ve read the Blogging Tips series, you’re surely aware of a part of it called The Importance of Titles. Titles (meaning what ends up between the <title> </title> tags) are one of the most important, and most ignored, parts of SEO, these days. Not only do search engines use them to rank pages, but they’re also what actually appears in search results, and a bad title is much less likely to be clicked on… even if the content is exactly what the user wants.
In case of blogs, the blogging software, typically, inserts the blog’s name and post title automatically, which is a start. But can it be improved? That’s what I wanted (and still want) to investigate.
By default, WordPress uses the common Blog title - Post title format. Which, as any “serious” blogger should know, is a pretty bad idea. People are interested in the post, not in the blog, at least at first. The blog’s name will be the same for every single one of your posts, and if it appears first, people will probably ignore that entry in the search results.
Again, nobody searches for blogs. They search for posts.
Which, of course, suggests that reversing the order is a good idea… and it certainly is. Themes like K2 do it automatically (though that one inserts an “at” between post title and blog name, which I don’t like — though it’s easy to change, of course), and there are also plugins like Optimal Title to do it.
But is this the best we can do? It’s what I’ve been doing until now, but… can we go a little further? What about removing the blog’s name from individual posts (not from the front page, of course)?
Not only should this be better in terms of SEO, but it should make search results more appealing. After all, hopefully, the post’s title should be — and be just — what the user is looking for.
I’m trying it now on Way of the Mind, where I seem to be doing most of my experiments these days. 
Of course, it will take a few weeks for Google and others to re-index every page and show them with the reduced title, but hopefully the results will be good.
I’m pretty optimistic about this one, so it will probably happen to my other blogs soon.
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Good info on titles but just a note. WordPress does not automatically or by default use anything to create the title of the blog in the title tag of the head. It is the WordPress Theme chosen by the user that uses whatever methodology the Theme designer choose. A WordPress Theme designer can use “Blog Title - Post Title” or “Post Title - Blog Title” or “This is an article called Post Title from the Blog Title Blog”. It’s up to the designer, and then to the user who wants to edit the title tag to say whatever they want to say in their title.
You can learn more about this from my article series on Creating Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles.
Lorelle: hmm, good point. I guess the culprit was the default WordPress theme (and most themes are based on that) all along. Thanks.
That an obvious conclusion… even better is replacing all post titles with “Free sex”, “Ana Malhoa”, “Free money”, “Floribella”, etc. It’s just a question of “bloging” or “bloging to be crawled by Google and people ending up here by mistake and clicking on my ads that are all over the place”.
But then, people have blogs for all sort of diferent reasons.
Carlos: you’re being unfair. It’s the typical Portuguese view: it’s “unethical” to be paid to do something you like. If you like something, then you can’t ever make money with it. You can only be paid for a 9-to-6 job.
Why must “enjoyment” and “making money” always be separate?
Anyway, what I want is readers, not hits. Spammy titles like those would only get the latter.
P.S. - aren’t there ads on Destakes?
P.P.S. - will those title examples in your comment get me hits from people searching for those?
You are missing the hole point of my argument. I’m not against ‘making money’. Making money is NICE.
I just don’t think filling up a personal blog with ads and “optimizing” it’s title to the point a *removing it* is the best one can do. After all, it’s a personal site or a ‘making money’ site ? Like I said, people make personal blogs with diferent reasons in mind.
As for other sites ? Sure, place ads on them, porn ads, whatever. I’m just talking about personal sites, blogs. One add or so, no problem… messing it all up just to make 0.50 cents/day… don’t think so.
Pro bloggers ? Sure, but they are blogs with a theme in mind.
But hey, it’s just me. Some years ago I was against adds on personal blogs, and now I have two on mine. I just think some over do it…
Carlos: but I wasn’t talking about personal sites at all (though there’s nothing wrong with making money with them either). In fact, what separates a personal site from another? If I create a blog about computer games, is that so different from a “personal blog” where, I, as a gamer, talk about games often? Why is it OK to make money with one, but “unethical” to do so with the other?
I understand that you hate “splogs”. I do, too. But I don’t think anyone would call any of my blogs such a thing.
As to optimizing titles for SEO… what’s wrong with it? I’m not talking about deceiving anyone (which I’d be doing, if I used titles like your examples). I’m just talking about making it clearer. People aren’t interested in what my blog is called, but they may be interested in an article I wrote. Why not make it simpler for them? If Google also ranks it higher them, even better!
Even in the case of a personal blog, is someone a “sellout” because they try to use more attractive titles?
Personally I think that you should do everything you can to make your blog search engine friendly. The better you do in the search engines the more readers you get.
With Word Press you can use plugins like SEO tags to change your tags. Doing the little things will make a huge difference over time and whether you monetize or not you do get more readers.