I’m a little late, but I loved this “Earth Day” cartoon over at EzineArticles. The whole point of it is to write more evergreen articles. You know the kind – the ones that can stand the test of time.

In my article title writing series, I discussed what two major things you MUST have in your title to make it truly work. I talked about painless keyword research, and finally I also talked about writing titles that will get prospects in your niche interested enough to click! Go ahead and read them if you haven’t already: Part I | Part II | Part III .

I was working with one of my coaching clients the other day and she had written two articles on a very similar topic. She published them to a  pretty good, niche-related article directory and was getting much more positive feedback on one article over the other. She sent them both to me and asked me – “why?”

Without having to read any further, I saw right away the difference in the two titles of the articles. One posed a question and got right to the point. It also was shorter than the other title and had her major keyword phrase in the title. This title was the winner. What’s my point here?

1. Testing the power of your articles is easy. The first obvious thing to consider when measuring the click factor of your article is the title. If you are getting good feedback on a particular article, then it probably makes sense to make a few more variations of that article with the same type of title.

2. Keep your titles short and sweet. Too many words dilute your keyword juice.

3. Make sure your keywords are in the title though, or else how is anyone going to find your articles during a search?

4. Writing titles that pose a question and raise the interest of the reader are always a good idea.

5. Pay attention to what articles get comments, emails, forwarded, re-published, etc. Those are the articles and article titles you want to keep writing

This is the third part of a series on writing article titles. In Part 1, I discussed who to write your article titles for and in Part 2 I discussed keyword research. In this part, I want to discuss writing titles that appeal to your niche.

While there is much attention given to the technical details of writing article titles such as proper keyword placement and keyword repetition, there is a major detail of title writing that many people seem to forget and that’s making sure that you are writing titles that will appeal and capture the attention of your audience and potential customers and clients.

When I write article titles, I make sure that I write titles that will appeal to my ideal client. People who invest in my information or my coaching, should know exactly what they are getting from me, and that’s what I try to convey in my articles.

For instance, is there any doubt that in this article series I am explaining how to write article titles that will attract traffic to your site? I don’t think so. You know what it’s about, and if you are interested in getting traffic AND writing better titles as a way to getting that traffic, then you will read my articles. There is no guessing about what this is. You’re either on board or you aren’t – and that’s important.

There is no room in article marketing to be “cute”. You’ve got a few seconds to make a first impression, if you’ve even got that long. Appeal to the readers in your niche by writing titles that pull them in with exactly what HOW they will benefit from reading your article.

People know that when they read this article, the benefit will be that they will get more traffic. Period. Take a look at the last article you wrote? Is the BENEFIT of that article clearly stated in your article title? If not, you need to revisit your title. Remember that most folks are completely drawn to information that has something in it for them.

So don’t try to be clever or witty with your titles. That’s for English class. And don’t try to be too cryptic with your titles, wanting to create “mystery” around your articles. That will only encourage people to look somewhere else for their information. No, the key is to draw readers in with benefit loaded titles, and to double check that you are doing this with your titles, just use this quickie checklist…

1. What is your article essentially about? When a reader finishes reading it, what should they have learned? What problem should they be able to solve?

2. Now knowing this, what are the 3 key benefits that a reader will receive from the information in your article? (Three is great, but if you only have two or one, that’s fine too)

3. Take the top 1 or 2 key benefits and weave them into your article title. Using “How To” at the beginning of your title is always an easy way to make this grammatically work.

4. Check to see that your keyword(s) or keyword phrase is in the title.

5. Make sure that the entire title makes sense and is grammatically correct.

6. If you can, try to shorten your title but still making sure that it makes sense. The shorter the better. Longer article titles can dilute the search engine juice of your keyword phrases.

Read Part I and Part II of this Article Title Series

In  Part 1 of my article title writing series, we discussed the often overlooked but quite essential skill of when writing titles to blend both writing for your readers and for the search engines. One cannot be without the other in your title or it just won’t produce good results.

In this segment, we will discuss another essential element of writing article titles that gets you traffic to your site, and that is to make sure you are targeting the “right” keywords and placing them in your titles.

While it may not be your favorite thing to do, it’s really important that you conduct a little keyword research before writing articles in order to truly optimize them for the search engines.

When I first started on the web years ago, I use to write whatever struck me and titled them whatever I thought was an appropriate title based on my “journalism” background and experience. I had no clue just how important it was to properly place the right keywords in my titles to attract more organic traffic then I was receiving.

I happened to accidentally acquire a lot of traffic to many of my articles, because not many people were writing about my topic back then — so I hold many of those top rankings based on the sheer fact that I was there first. BUT if I were to start writing in that niche today, I would have to approach it in a much more calculating way. Much like I do for many of my new niches.

I would have to do my keyword research and try to rank for keywords that I could realistically get the top spots for. Period.

So if you are using article marketing (and I hope that you are:), make sure that you researching keywords using some of the better tools out there: Wordtracker and Google’s Free Keyword Tool are great.

Create a glossary of keywords to use in your niche. Refer to that glossary when writing your articles, and make sure to include one of your keyword phrases in the title of each article.

With a little keyword research and thought into your article titles, you will soon begin to pull double the traffic that you did before because you would have positioned yourself well in search engine results for your articles and your topic.

Read Part 1 of This Series

We all have our own secret styles to writing articles. Some of us like to begin with the title. Others write the article then come up with the title. You also need to be flexible with either approach and realize that your article may evolve as you write it and then will need a new title.

However you come up with titles for your articles, one thing is universally true, we all want people to find them online, read them, and then read the article. That’s a LOT of work our article titles have to do! That’s why I’d like to cover a few tried and true tips for writing articles that will get you traffic and get you read.

Write Your Titles For Both People And Search Engines

I want you to take a second and ask yourself who you write your titles for…

1. Do you write titles that sound clever or witty, or have you learned that titles written that way most assuredly will not get you real traffic.

2. Do you write titles that you believe will appeal to your readers? Are you sure that you have enough insight on the people in your niche to be sure that you are writing articles to them, and can they find them online?

3. Do you write titles for the search engines? Are you writing article titles that are full of keywords but offer no appeal or interest to the readers in your niche?

Remember that the real key to writing traffic generating titles is to combine writing titles for real people WITH adding keywords to your titles for the search engines. Both go hand in hand.

You need for your article titles to make sense and be appealing in order for readers to want to read the rest of the article, but you also need for readers to be able to find that article during a natural search on the web – or else how will they find you?

Creating a marriage of keywords + readability in your titles is the best way to assure loyal readership and organic search engine traffic. All this means a growing following and traffic flow to your articles, which of course is all we want our articles to do. Bring us more traffic!