How To Create Both an SEO- and Reader-Friendly Post Title

“Title tags,” the title of a post, matter when it comes to the search engines. But often in our titles, we focus on keywords. And when we do that, the title we choose can be boring. It just doesn’t grab the reader’s attention.

The custom title tag or alt title tag, can be a solution. Below you will see a title for a post that we created.

Alt Title

I wanted it to catch my readers’ eyes. But, at the same time, I wanted to include the keywords “child theme” and “WordPress” to satisfy the SEO gods. But adding “WordPress” to the title seemed overkill for my readers because they already know what this site is about. It would also make an already long title longer.

The solution? I used a feature many premium themes have. It is located below your post or page and looks like this. (This is from the Headway theme).

Alt Title SEO

This option gives you an extra SEO boost for the particular post (or page). But best of all, you can now create a title tag for the search engines. My readers will see the title “What is a Child Theme? Can We Play With Them?”

But Google and other search engines will see “What is a Child Theme for WordPress?”

As I mentioned, many premium themes, including Headway and Genesis, have this already built in. But if your theme doesn’t, and you are self-hosted, just install the plugin “All In One SEO,” which will add this option to all of your pages and posts.

The beauty of this feature is that you can have an appealing, fun, reader-friendly title on the front end of your post and get this keywords and search terms in there for Google on the back need.

Do you use the title tags feature?

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BruceSallan 227 pts

One more question? Will you do this for me? PLEASE!?

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Marya | Writing Happiness 59 pts

Bob, I did that for a few of my posts (I use SEO by Yoast as well) but then there was this problem. When I shared the post on my facebook page, or tweeted it, it came up with the SEO title rather than the one that readers were supposed to see. This still baffles me. What was I doing wrong?

Marya

SarahArrow 208 pts

Marya | Writing Happiness Facebook draws the title from the Meta Description but you can edit that by clicking on the title on Facebook. Google Plus does the same but it's not yet editable. Twitter pulls the reader friendly titles, so if you update your Facebook page via Hootsuite it will get the reader friendly title. Hope that helps :)

My latest conversation: What is a Swipe file and should a blogger have one?

bobWP 121 pts

SarahArrowMarya | Writing Happiness Hey Sarah, thanks for clarifying that with Marya... there's no perfect world when it comes to SEO : )

My latest conversation: Headway Theme 3.0: WordPress Just Got Easier, Again

Thanks Sarah. I'll try what you suggest. :) Cheers

bloggersethics 11 pts

well, i use SEO by Yoast and it also provides the same functionality

bloggersethics yes, I had meant to list that one as well, it's a great plugin!

My latest conversation: Don't Let the Wrong Theme Choice Ruin Your New WordPress Site

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