Writing Headlines/Headings

[Gerry]

There's been a lot of talk about managing your headings (on sites) and headlines (on blog-posts and articles) to be attentive to seo considerations - ie, using keywords in them.

But there's more to think about here. A blog post with a good heading is more likely to be picked up by the Diggers and such - a good headline on an article means it's much more likely to be picked up and distributed - and the main (and subsequent) headings on your web site's pages should also be compelling, if you can manage that.

Here's a great resource with ideas for writing effective headlines.

[Gerry]

And now, a few words about headings and optimization.

1) If each page is used to target two keywords, you'll want the main keyword included in the main heading (h1), and the secondary keyword will need its own h2 somewhere down the page.

2) If you want your h1 to get the proper weight from the se's, make sure it's the only h1 on the page. A bunch of h1's simply looks bad anyway, in most cases.

3) I don't worry if a heading contains MORE than the keyword it's targeting. That is, I would use "Your Tucson Realtor" without flinching, if I thought it worked better than just "Tucson Realtor". I assume that the se's would rank the second one better (all other things being equal), but it's worth it if the headings are less mechanical. I'm sure some people would disagree, especially if they're not overly concerned with what users think after having landed on the page.