{"id":3279,"date":"2008-06-27T07:47:25","date_gmt":"2008-06-27T14:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=3279"},"modified":"2008-06-27T06:45:21","modified_gmt":"2008-06-27T13:45:21","slug":"project-bloodhound-how-to-write-headlines-for-your-real-estate-weblog-posts-that-deliver-the-goods-and-deliver-google-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3279\/project-bloodhound-how-to-write-headlines-for-your-real-estate-weblog-posts-that-deliver-the-goods-and-deliver-google-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Bloodhound: How to write headlines for your real estate weblog posts that deliver the goods &#8212; and deliver Google results"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A headline on a weblog post is a differentiator &#8212; this entry is different from all the others &#8212; but that&#8217;s not a very useful lens for understanding headlines. A serial number &#8212; A37592x &#8212; is a differentiator, too.<\/p>\n<p>A headline can serve the same purpose as a headline in the newspaper, as a brief summary of the succeeding content &#8212; &#8220;Man kills wife, kids, self.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a useful function, but it&#8217;s not really doing the job we want a headline on a blog post to do.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a better way of understanding the communicative purpose of a weblog entry&#8217;s headline:<\/p>\n<p>A headline is a testament from the writer to the reader than the content described in the headline is accurately reflected <em>by<\/em> that headline and that reading that content will repay the effort it entails.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s still not enough. A headline on a weblog post, and on any persuasive copy, has to ensnare and entice the reader. The headline has to promise a substantive benefit that the reader will realize by pursuing the copy. Writing an effective headline is very much a Direct Marketing problem.<\/p>\n<p>And we&#8217;re not done even yet. In addition to all the jobs it must undertake in the reader&#8217;s behalf, a well-written weblog headline should also engage horizontal search engines in meaningful ways.<\/p>\n<p>So a properly-crafted weblog headline will:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Summarize the content in an interesting way\n<\/li>\n<li>Promise the reader a practical benefit for reading that content\n<\/li>\n<li>Search well on the most-significant keywords in that content<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s a big load to carry, but a good headline can make a post, where a bad one can break it.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to represent myself as a good example, because I will frequently opt for clever rather than good, but the headline of this post is a nice example of a good headline: It tells you what I&#8217;m going to talk about, it tells you how you will gain by reading this post, and it is strong on keywords that are likely to be searched by people who may have an interest in BloodhoundBlog&#8217;s ongoing content.<\/p>\n<p>The latter point is important. It&#8217;s easy to score well on long-tail search terms, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/3279\/project-bloodhound-how-to-write-headlines-for-your-real-estate-weblog-posts-that-deliver-the-goods-and-deliver-google-results\/#more-3279\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A headline on a weblog post is a differentiator &#8212; this entry is different from all the others &#8212; but that&#8217;s not a very useful lens for understanding headlines. A serial number &#8212; A37592x &#8212; is a differentiator, too. A headline can serve the same purpose as a headline in the newspaper, as a brief [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,175,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-project-blooodhound","9":"category-real-estate","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1498,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1498\/do-you-want-your-real-estate-weblog-content-to-be-highly-searchable-on-google-it-helps-to-let-things-go-to-your-head\/","url_meta":{"origin":3279,"position":0},"title":"Do you want your real estate weblog content to be highly searchable on Google? It helps to let things go to your head","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Tom Royce of The Real Estate Bloggers has always been a good friend to BloodhoundBlog. We talked earlier today about the New York Times article I cited this morning. Out of that conversation came an email I shared with all the BloodhoundBlog contributors. Not to hold out on you, I'll\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1224,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1224\/how-to-make-google-your-weblogs-best-friend\/","url_meta":{"origin":3279,"position":1},"title":"Project Bloodhound: How to make Google your weblog&#8217;s best friend","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"[This is one of the all-time most popular posts on BloodhoundBlog. I'm reprising it for Project Bloodhound, first because it's a nice leveraged SEO solution, and second because it's a painless introduction to customizing the PHP in WordPress. --GSS] \u00a0Who can probe all the mysteries of Google? Not me, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1301,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1301\/customizing-your-weblog-with-css-and-php-navigating-from-post-to-post\/","url_meta":{"origin":3279,"position":2},"title":"Customizing your weblog with CSS and PHP: Navigating from post to post","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"If you click on an individual post in BloodhoundBlog, you'll see something like this above the headline: The code for doing this is built into some themes, but not in the theme we're using. The PHP code for making it happen is actually pretty simple, you just have to plug\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1261,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1261\/a-screen-shot-tour-of-zillowcoms-new-feature-set\/","url_meta":{"origin":3279,"position":3},"title":"A screen-shot tour of Zillow.com&#8217;s new feature set","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Amending this: The site is live with Zillow.com founders Richard Barton and Lloyd Frink as the first Q&A links: These are screen shots I captured during a teleconference with Zillow.com Directory of Community Relations, David Gibbons. Everything is scaled to fit the weblog column, so the live pages, when they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Marketing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1222,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1222\/scale-your-locally-focused-real-estate-weblog-down-to-the-size-of-a-good-time-why-because-theres-no-place-like-home\/","url_meta":{"origin":3279,"position":4},"title":"Scale your locally-focused real estate weblog down to the size of a good time. Why? Because there&#8217;s no place like home . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Teri has a weblog. It's just a prototype for now. She's shopping for theme so that we can make something truly unique and Daytonacious. I am by now at the point where I can set up a WordPress weblog in my sleep, which is lucky because, with 23 hosting accounts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=gregswann-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0394720245","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2687,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2687\/speaking-in-tongues-making-professional-looking-craigslist-ads-even-if-you-dont-know-how-to-code-in-html\/","url_meta":{"origin":3279,"position":5},"title":"Speaking in tongues: Making more-professional-looking CraigsList HTML ads &#8212; even if you don&#8217;t know how to code in HTML","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"[I've amended this post somewhat based on our recent experiences with CraigsList, which are discussed in the comments. The point of this post is not CraigsList, but, rather, learning how to extract HTML from existing code, this as a means of learning to write HTML on your own. In the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blogging&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}