How to Title your Pages or Posts
The title of your blog post can be the life thread of the entire post itself. It's what the search engines see as the entire topic of the post and generate the searches around that title. Yes, the meta title still helps but it is typically the same as the title anyway. If you make it completely different Google may have a hard time deciphering what the page is actually about and therefore not index it accordingly.
When titling a page you need to be specific. You don't want a broad search title such as Ardmore real estate because there may be so many searches for this that your site may end up on the bottom. But if you title is more specific such as Home inspections in Ardmore then you may have more of a chance of that page coming up in the search engines. The goal is not to get a million hits on the page but to have a more solid lead hit the page with something they are really looking for. Titling the page with these "long-tail searches" can really help gain better leads over just a high number of hits.
A "long-tail search" is a person that types in a longer version of something specific. When you may get a lot of hits from Vancouver real estate you might get better hits from Battle Ground WA Information and Stats. Although it's in the same area you may be more likely to get a more specific client that's actually searching for this term and keyword over the thousands that may blindly type in Vancouver real estate. This is considered a long tail search.
How many times have you typed a "how to" question in the search engines? Those can get pretty specific. It's these folks we want to target and hone in on. We want to help those and be upfront for those that type in searches such as Do I need a Buyer's Agent in Fairbanks Alaska? These types of searches actually end in results and actual leads provided you direct them to a page that actually has the information the client wants. Too many times spammers and storefront sites just pose various questions just to get ahead in the search engines and are really nothing about what the person originally typed in. What you want to do is make sure your titles are specific enough for those actually searching for the exact topic that your page is about. Search Engines like Google will notice and will crawl the site and determine is truly is about buyers agents in Fairbanks real estate and cache the site accordingly.
So the next time you casually title a blog post or page something with a witty comeback or catchy title remember that no one is probably searching for that subject exactly. Be intentional with your titles and you will see results.