Good blog headlines make robots happy

It's tough enough writing good headlines for readers. With blogs, you also need to be concerned about writing for search engines, a tough audience.

Basic newspaper headline style eliminates a lot of search-engine hostile words, such as "the" and "a" and "an." You'll probably find it easy to write heads that way after a lifetime of reading them. Cutting out the small words leaves more room for keywords, which tell the search bots a lot about your blog entry and your blog.

When possible, write blog headlines using one or two of the search terms targeted in your site SEO (search engine optimization) scheme. (You do have a plan, right?) Never let SEO get in the way of writing a headline that makes sense to humans, of course. The readers come first. Copyblogger explores the pros and cons in the post "Do keywords in post titles really matter?"

You should, of course, be using the site's targeted keywords whenever writing for blogs. Never hurts to boldface them, either.