Great Content + Bad Headline = Mediocre Results

You can spend a few hours researching, structuring, drafting and proofreading a great post, to completely miss it by choosing a really bad title.

I recently submitted a carefully crafted rebuttal to the Seomoz article: Proof Google is Using Behavioral Data in Rankings. The post generated some controversy and some heated discussion as to the validity of the tests and results. I read everything. And, given my technical nature, I decided to dig deeper in myself.

I ended up with slightly different conclusions about the experiments. If you want to find out please read the post at Youmoz.

Now, here’s the bad news.

As Kurt, wisely points out, I tragically missed the mark by poorly choosing an empty title: “Relevance feedback“.

Kurt (86)

Sat (6/16/07) at 05:38 PM

Good post… well thought out and presented… gave it a thumbs up.

Unfortunately, it will most likely get overlooked by most readers due to its title/headline.

Look at the article you’re a referencing, “Proof Google is Using Behavioral Data in Rankings“. You know that headline will bring in some clicks. It was moved to the blog of SEOmoz from the Youmoz section (even with its flawed testing and logic). The mozzers aren’t stupid… they know this type of headline and article will stir up some controversy and bring in some links.

I’m no expert copywriter… far from it. I just hate to see a good post sit on the sidelines because of a bad headline.

The title I chose did not offer the reader any incentive to click or learn more. I guess that I operate in two modes: engineer and marketer and that I forgot to flip the switch while writing this post.

First, let me state that his remarks about the mozzers are valid for most journalists, trade publications, social media sites, etc. It is human nature to judge books by their cover. If the cover is crap, the content must be crap. That is how we normally think.

Again, whether you are writing:

1. A blog post
2. A book
3. An email
4. A fax cover letter
5. An article
6. A Digg submition
7. etc.

Write title/subjects that entice users to read further.

What can you learn from my mistake?

1. Most people scan web pages. They don’t have the time to follow each link. The title must be a call to action: “this is interesting, click to learn more”.
2. Summary/excerpt is very important too. I chose a really bad first paragraph. If you write post as guest for other popular blogs, you want your title and first paragraph to be cliff hangers. You must get people to click further.
3. Content importance is second to title and excerpt! This is sad, but true. While crappy content won’t get the word out, crappy titles won’t even get the word in the first place.

Deceptive titles are not a good idea

Am I suggesting you start writing bait and switch posts? Definitely not.

While controversy draws attention, writing titles that say one thing and when you read the content you find another is the best way to brand yourself as a charlatan.

Ideally, you should spend enough time carefully writing your posts (especially, if they are to be published on other websites), and spend a few minutes carefully writing the titles as well. Be creative!

The power of networking

When I started to blog (now close to three weeks ago) I did not know what to expect. I have to say that I am more than impressed with the power of blogging and networking with popular related blogs.

My topics tend to be too technical and I am well aware that it severely limits my audience. Not everybody understands what I am talking about.

I plan to change this in the coming weeks by adding illustrations to the complex topics. I am also working to move my blog away from wordpress.com to be self hosted on one of our servers. That will give me a lot more flexibility than I have now. One thing I want is the ability to link to my source code, instead of including the code in the posts. I will probably just include a flow diagram in the posts. I also want to make the scripts available for use directly from the blog so that you don’t have to install them.

What have I learned so far?

I have done several things on purpose:

1. I decided to not monetize this blog in any way. My plan is to use it exclusively for branding. You won’t see any ads or affiliate links here.
2. I don’t have any short term plans to advertise the blog in any way.

My plan is to test how well a blog can do by just writing useful and original content and by participating in other blogs and forums with useful feedback. For that I try to keep posting at least one article a day here and write articles to be published in other blogs and popular websites.

I don’t think the results are mind blowing, but compared to what I’ve read in other blogs, my numbers are looking good. My Alexa Rank for this week is around 60 thousand. I checked seobythesea.com that is very heavy on technical content and his traffic rank is 40 thousand.

Things to avoid

While commenting in other popular blogs is one of the most effective ways to get your name or brand out and potentially attract more visitors to your site, doing it wrong can prove to be a waste of time or cause the opposite.

I often see a lot of comments that just say: ‘Nice Post. Keep it up’. This is the best way to waste your time. First of all, it doesn’t help with rankings as most comments are ‘no-followed‘. Furthermore, it will not bring traffic. How many times have you tried to find out who is writing that insightful comment ‘Nice Post’? Unless it gets really annoying, I don’t think you do. I don’t.

Carefully read what the post is about, reflect on it, and try to find out something to say that adds to the conversation. It could be confirming the post or taking an opposing view, but you need to add something. You can also ask clarifying questions, but visitors will most likely click on your site if you are adding something of value.

Blogging is informal, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t carefully research your posts. Citing other blogs and authority sources not only gives more credibility, but also the pingbacks to other popular blogs will be more likely accepted. Even if they are ‘not-followed’, the traffic is good. You also get the opportunity of getting picked by other blogs as well.

The power of sharing

While most developers and technical people are used to sharing useful information, most entrepreneurs and consultants do not, or share very little. The logic is: “why share information if you can charge for it?”

Let me give you my thoughts on this, as I’ve been on both sides of the camp and therefore, I can offer an unique perspective.

Right after college, back in 1996, I landed a job as a Windows c++ software developer. I remember that I used to spend 20-30% of my time reading news groups, looking for other developers facing the same compiler errors that I was facing. This was far easier and less time consuming than trying to figure out the problem myself. Occasionally, I did have to solve some difficult problems on my own, however, the newsgroups proved to be a very valuable resource.

I met Linux while at college and I immediately felt in love with all things open source. I remember downloading “Slackware” over a 28kb/s line and copying it to 700 floppy disks! worried that they might remove it and I wouldn’t be able to download it later. I did not think this free OS would last long. I’m glad I was wrong.

I’ve came across colleagues that protected their knowledge with iron claws. They felt that having their knowledge out in the open would make them replaceable. They did this to protect their job.

Benefits of Sharing

On my next job, I worked as a Solaris/Linux system administrator and I was surprised to learn that the senior administrator was not sharing information with others. His reasoning was that if he shared, others would take his place. Paradoxically, I became the senior admin by doing exactly the opposite. As I was willing to share, others listened to my opinions, I gained more responsibility, and obtained better and higher paying positions.

Before I started my first company, I was very comfortable with sharing. Being a Linux/Open source fan, there was no point in keeping things to myself. Later, when I started to learn marketing I realized that while developers and technical people are more prone to share, marketers were not so altruistic. The affiliate marketer, that inspired me to move my young company in the right direction, would not share a single bit of information for competitive reasons. I’m glad that the few words he did say were enough for me to find the right path (you can find them in my about page).

Why would I tell a potential customer how to solve their problem? The customer can pretty much do it on his or her own after learning how to do it.

My basic principle is that there are other things to earn besides money. Branding is one of them.

I firmly believe that the easiest way to receive is to give. Try to share as much as you can, but first try to have a sustainable business model.

I think that now it is easier and cheaper than ever to create a start-up with no external funding. Even if you have the money to spend, it is wiser to go low budget. What you are trying to build with a lot of money has probably been built by somebody else. Probably using open source software and free content that provides the same value.

Now, coming up with a viable business model is increasingly difficult. Some experts offer advice for free and make your buy their e-books, others offer e-books for free and sell the tools, others offer tools and e-books for free and sell advice or ads. How can you come up with a winning formula in such a market? Over-delivering and offering unique value is one way to achieve this.

Every rule has it’s exception, so sharing your information is NOT always a good idea.

One of my developers faced this predicament while doing some after-hours freelance work for one of the companies I used to work for. They tried multiple times to squeeze that information out of him, in order to avoid having to pay him for his services. I recommended him to not tell them how to solve their problem. Sharing this information with them would not be “economically sustainable”.

Find out what you can share and what you can’t, but please, start sharing!

 

What?, How? and Work!

One of the first lessons I’ve learned from life, is that many people achieve success by taking completely different routes.

For me, every time I want to pursue a new venture I ask myself:  What is the great opportunity most people are overlooking?  How can I take advantage of it and do it better?

When I have a clear answer to these questions, and believe I can do it and feel passionate about it, I set out to work on it!

Opportunities are everywhere.  You only need to listen to what your potential customers need and how you can efficiently solve their problems.

One thing that I do to come up with new ideas, is to look at the problems my potential customers are having, the solutions my future competitors are giving, and try to find a better, smarter, faster or cheaper way to achieve the same.

Sadly, a lot of smart people know what their goals are and how to achieve them, but are too lazy or too afraid to actually work on them.