WordPress Tip: Writing Customized Post Headlines, Title Tags, And Permalinks

By Mohsin at Blogging Bits

We all know the importance of catchy headlines, clever title tags, and short URLs. Unfortunately, the majority of WordPress bloggers do not utilise the flexibility of WordPress and the power of WordPress Plugins to customize these elements for optimal results.

While your content is what defines your blog, the post/page titles, headlines, and permalinks are the doorways that lead others to your content. An ill-structured headline, for example, is like a door that is stuck and doesn’t let others clearly see what’s behind the door.

So, let’s see how you can optimise post headlines, title tags, and permalinks to get more search engine traffic and to open the doors to all kinds of visitors.

First thing first, install SEO Title Tag WordPress Plugin. SEO Title Tag lets you define custom title tags for your posts.

Writing a headline

Now, write a post and craft a killer headline for it.

Let me give you an example of a post I wrote a few days ago. The headline for that post reads “Overcoming Laziness To Get Things Done“.

This headline is good and all for my readers, it sounds concise and to the point. But, it isn’t too relevant for the searchers who may be Googling for ways to overcome laziness. So, I need a dumbed down version of that headline that appears only in the search engine results and attracts the eye right away. Sounds interesting?

Writing a title tag

This is where SEO Title Tag comes in. If you have installed and activated the SEO Title Tag Plugin, a “Title Tag” field must have appeared just below the Write Post box.

So, here I’ll insert a custom title tag that is targeted to search engine traffic. Let’s insert “5 easy ways to overcome laziness”.

Cool, eh?

Now we have a headline that aims to impress our readers, who are supposed to be more web savvy and clever, and a title tag that catches the eye of casual web surfers using search engines.

Writing a permalink

The Post Slug is a very useful WordPress feature that is rarely put to good use. Again, instead of letting the post headline become its permalink, we can enter custom Post Slug to define a custom permalink. The shorter the permalink, the better. I have noticed that longer permalinks (URLs) in search results confuse me, whereas shorter ones instantly get my attention.

Continuing from the previous example, since the main point of my post is to explain how to “overcome laziness”, I’ll enter overcome-laziness in the Post Slug.

Perfect!

Remember that you can make your posts even more search engine friendly by inserting different related keywords and keyword synonyms in headlines, title tags, and permalinks. I could, for example, write a headline “5 ways to overcome laziness” a title tag “5 tips to beat laziness” and a permalink “5 techniques to help you get rid of laziness” to cover all possible keywords that may be used by the searchers.

If you know of any other ways, tips, tricks, and techniques to improve the post headlines, title tags, and permalinks, please share them in comments.

Recommended reading:

• Tweaking WordPress Permalinks For Best SEO
• Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog
• Creating Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles
• Understanding The WordPress Post Title and Post Slug
• Dissecting the WordPress Post Title Link
• Change the Post Title – Also Change the Post Slug

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I am Mohsin from Blogging Bits. I am an aspiring young blogger, and I write about creating successful blogs over at Blogging Bits. Be sure to drop by my place for a drink!