Would this hack work? - human-readability-optimized headline -> keyword-optmized headline
-
Hi Moz-ians, I need your insight.
I am thinking of the following hack:
1. Writing the headline of a blogpost as human-readable & catchy as possible and publish on content voting communities like Hacker News. (basically serving human readers the best)
2. After the influx of large traffic, change the title based on the target keywords of the blogpost. (basically serving Google Search Engine the best)
I would like to know whether making such a change after publishing a post would nullify any positive impact I will earn by publishing the post in terms of the search ranking of the page? (=whether it would be a sound strategy.)
I am worried a sudden change in the headline (e.g.,
or
element) would damage the increase in page authority I've gotten through the incoming traffic from, say, Hacker News, which makes this hack not worthwhile to explore.
-
Thanks Kane for sharing the article. There seem to be some communities which have very distinct taste, like Hacker News—I did need a different headline to make it appealing to folks there...
Thanks.
-
Thanks Peter. It's just sometimes very hard to kill two birds with a stone.
-
Seems fine to me. I generally try to avoid doing things like changing a <title>tag and nothing else on the post, but if you do this shortly after posting then I don't think it'll affect much. Of course, it's better if you can find a happy midpoint between the two options.</p> <p>Make sure the URL is done well from the start - you definitely don't want to have to change that.</p> <p>Jason Acidre has a good post on a similar concept: <a href="http://kaiserthesage.com/increase-search-traffic/">http://kaiserthesage.com/increase-search-traffic/</a> and seems to have worked fine for him when just changing the title tag.</p></title>
-
Hi, I cannot see that this would benefit your site. If you want to attract people to your site then give the people visiting Hacker News the catchy title as the anchor text to the Google friendly title on your site. Then you can do both from the outset.
But in truth whilst smart headlines may increase clickthrough what both human and search engine visitors want is smart content.
Hope that helps
Peter
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Help optimizing website for speed
Hello, My website is www.likechimp.com and is a University project. I need to optimise the website for speed as the bounce rate is fairly quick - I feel this could be due to how long it takes web site to load? Any tips in increasing internet speed. I am willing to higher someone if they feel they can help! Thanks, L
On-Page Optimization | | xlucax0 -
Optimizing a large mess
An agency referred me to a client who wants a proposal for SEO. The website has been recently completed, but it a complete train wreck. I just ran a Moz crawl and I'm looking at 303 issues to fix out of a site with 377 pages. I just downloaded an xml sitemap, hoping to prioritize what needs to be done, however I'm not getting a clear sense of the hierarchy. In your opinion, what is the best way to attack a project of this size? I am clear on the client's business goals, so I can work on the most crucial pages first, but I can't leave the rest of the site a mess. Should I start by gathering for links that have no user value and plan to block them with meta tags? I'm used to optimizing much smaller sites, so any advice on how to approach this proposal would be much appreciated. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | ptdodge0 -
How do I create multiple page URLs that are optimized for location and keywords that may be overlapping or the same?
Hi guys, I am attempting to create unique URLs for several different pages on a website. Let's say hypothetically that this is a website for a chain of Ice Cream Shops in Missouri. Let's say they have 15 locations in Springfield, Missouri. I would ideally like to optimize our Ice Cream Shop's in Springfield, Missouri with the main keyword (ice cream) but also the geo-specific location (Springfield), but we obviously can't have duplicate URLs for these 15 locations. We also have several secondary keywords, think things like: frozen yogurt or waffle cone that we can also use, although it would most likely be more powerful if we use the primary keyword. Any suggestions for how to go about doing this most effectively? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | GreenStone0 -
Multiple keywords over multiple domains - am I missing the point?
This I think, is a conceptual question related to Moz/ KeywordTracking in general. Q: What is a "good" way to setup tracking for keywords across many pages, potentially multiple domains? At present I've identified some keywords that are relevant to our products. That leads me to want to track not just for a specific page, but for their rankings across multiple pages, and potentially at least two domains. One site is our main product site, the other a blog/info site. This is I suppose mostly discovery at this point. Working out what, if any, of our pages are ranking for a full set of keywords that we believe are related to our products. It may be that I'm completely missing the point of tracking, that I'm not using it as intended. I want to learn how our pages track currently (for a bunch of keywords), see that change over time as we make changes, and also visualise what we're strong in and what we're not. To me, this would let me see just where the holes are in our SEO easily. The reason I ask is that it seems I have to manually enter a keyword plus a webpage in Moz. Given I've 20-30 keywords I want to track many pages, this is going to take me "quite some time" (tm). Is there a better way to do what I describe here? Am I missing the point of keyword tracking?
On-Page Optimization | | shinywhitebox0 -
Are Meta-keywords coming back?
I'm currently doing some benchmarking for a big realtor site here in México, while looking at the biggest players in the US I noticed most if not all are using the Keywords meta tag in their detail listings. I've been really open to my client about not using this tag at all given the current common knowledge but when sites like: Trulia.com, Realtor.com, appartments.com and the like, are using them I'm second guessing their utility. Does anyone have any insights on this? Should or should not we use meta-keywords? On a side note, there is some interesting microdata going on, in those sites.
On-Page Optimization | | makote1 -
Onpage optimization different outcomes for keyword with or without accent
I am a little bit confused with the results of the onpage analysis. I am trying onpage optimization for a spanish word which has an accent.. The results differ from Grade A, if i use the keyword with an accent, e.g. ropa premamá (the spanish word for maternity wear) to Grade C if I run the report without the accent ropa premama. I assume that most users will rather search for the keyword without accent. Would this mean that I need to change my keyword to non-accent or doesn´t it matter?
On-Page Optimization | | svenmu0 -
Is it wise to target different keywords for each page?
I am running a dating site, I am trying to focus on 5 keywords on the index page. My Search page is one of the 4 other pages on the site. My question, is it wise to target different keywords on these pages or am I better off focussing on the same 5 keywords as the index page? Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | debeenus0 -
Does keyword density on a landing page effect SEO?
I'm relitavely new to SEO, and I just wondered how keyword dense the homepage to our businesses site should be? Is there any value in loading the frontpage at the potential expense of readibility, or should our content elsewhere be responsible for our yield in search engine results? Look forward to any responses. Thanks, Mark
On-Page Optimization | | RobertHill0