I get a lot of traffic from articles that I submit to various article banks, but one thing that I'm not sure about, is the best title strategy. I understand that if there are not good keywords in the title, I won't get much search engine exposure, but some of my articles that bring in the most traffic are the ones that ignore that and have catchy non-optimized titles ("We Bought A House For $17,500" gets the most.). Eventually the others may get more, due to search engine exposure, but I'm not sure - and it isn't always possible to have the catchiest title AND good keywords. Suggestions or thoughts? Steve http://www.TheMoneyMakerSite.com
I would go with the catchy title. The SEO benifit is if alot of people pick up your article and it has a good link back to you, not the title of the articles keywords. I havent really counted on getting much traffic from my articles on other peoples sites, may depend on industry though.
I think the best way to learn to wirte good titles is just to read through lots of news headlines which you do every day anyway and work out what it is that makes you want to read the articel and also how they manage to sum up a 700 word articel in 5 words. Takes a lot of practies, don't beat yourself up over it too much. Then be super critical with yourself when you re-write them. I have worked as both a copywriter and a journalis tby the way at about as high a level as it gets. so if you want a hand then just say so.
Definately go with catchy titles - the articles are hosted on the article bank server / webpage aren't they? So you're not optimising for your site as much anyway. Stick to the optimised links for the resource box.
Yes, I wouldn't optimize (in a seo Way) articles that you send away, You want to do nice articles with catchy titles, and that catches the readers atention so they end up clicking on the link to your site. I would direct the user to the most related page on my site, not the homepage.