Great article – you touched on some very key and important points for optimising article titles in a post.

A couple of other things I would like to add to this is the consistency of style; I have observed often that some headlines have lower case letters and some title case (captialised letters) and some all in caps.
Consistency is very important and as a rule of thumb what works best is title case whereby every word is capitalised with the exception of conjunctions.

Another reason for keeping the headline brief is that it appears in many places other than directly above the article.
For example; in the sidebar text headline links appear under Popular News, Recent News, Commented News and features at the bottom of the article.

If the headline is too long you run the risk of displaying orphans, whereby you have a single word hanging down on the next line on its own. When entering a headline careful consideration needs to be applied to prevent this. Check your post and if you see it has an orphan then go back and edit the title.

If the headline has all capitalised letters (with the exception of anagrams) it makes it much more very difficult for the reader to distinguish the characters and therefore read the text.

Just discovered this example of a headline which is very long and not very appropriate.

UNESCO International Fund for Cultural Diversity (check for eligibility criteria)

The bracketed (check for eligibility criteria) should not be in headline.

Thanks for guidance. Am still not always 100% clear which of examples above you think are best.

For me, it is always important to use the headline to explain the content. The title EU-China cultural cooperation is for me NOT a good title as it can relate to almost all the content articles about China: EU fund, project, article etc. I want to guide the user as to what the content is. But if I see the new site and see that there is also a bit of subtext to explain that… it should be fine.

Thai artist residency grants is NOT a good title for that opportunity: the grant is NOT for Thai artists – it is for artists who want to go to Thailand! Need to aim for maximum clarity, using the fewest words.

Thanks for advice to use capitals In the Headline – Good Advice.

The Unesco fund example: agree it is too long. But again, we have to sort out how we clarify those opps which are only open to certain nationals.

On consistency. Can we agree whether we always use a hypen – or a colon : to separate where required. Same style would be better.

Hi Judith,

Judith: “Am still not always 100% clear which of examples above you think are best.”

Jeff: The examples show the process. Applying the guidelines can produce many different results. Generally, shorter, with important keywords front loaded, limited punctuation, capitals etc. When in doubt look at the BBC!

“EU-China cultural cooperation” example
Judith: “But if I see the new site and see that there is also a bit of subtext to explain that… it should be fine.”

Jeff: The headline should be understandable out of context. Only about 15% of users will view it on the home page. Looking at the original article “EU-China cultural cooperation” conveys enough, I think. Perhaps, “EU-China cultural cooperation report”, would be better.
http://www.culture360.org/inform/news/news-article/itemid/news_20100322_182924.aspx

Judith: “Thai artist residency grants is NOT a good title for that opportunity: the grant is NOT for Thai artists”

Artist residency grants Thailand 2010?

Regards,
Jeff

hi there
reading through this, i think its very important you brought this to our consciousness , Jeff and I understand your idea that even without the context the title should say enough. I do think that Artists Residency Grants 2010 Thailand is SEO wise good, of course when you are already in residency and then have below country: thailand ..it is repetition but as Leane says long titles who also appear under other parts of the website (latest news etc…) is not always good and esthetic,
i guess coming to the miniumum of WHAT, WHEN, WHERE in the title is the best? and then rather use marco (thailand) then Com Peung (specific)…as Comp Peug woud then anyway appear in the text below….

Another point to consider in creating SEO headlines. we are going to be adding the ‘share this’ and ‘facebook’ and ‘twitter’ icons at the top of the article over the next week which will make it easier for readers to forward the article to their facebook page and twitter feeds.
So when the article headline is read out of context, for example, when read as a headline in the newsletter, facebook or twitter feed it is very helpful to mentioned that it is a ‘Residency Grant 2010 Thailand’.
And what you suggested Kat with WHAT, WHEN, WHERE is are really good guidelines to consider.

The formatting of headlines is looking good – nice and consistent.

Unrelated to the headlines is that copy that is directly pasted into the backend of the site from Word brings through a whole lot of break tags with it which results in poor formatting (display) of the article.
I noticed when I returned from Singapore this to be the issue when looking through the site now
I cant find any examples of this – so suspect this has been tidied up.
I know Judith your aware of this and isn’t a problem for your posts as you use the ‘Paste From Word’ which eliminates this.

I do have some comments regarding the images but will follow this up in a separate ‘Images’ thread after we have implemented the changes from the Road Map document as we may be changing the format of the carousel to have a greater focus on the excerpt and not the image.

Google Maps – Event Details – Event Map URL

Don’t think we mentioned this earlier but just want to let all the editors know they now have the ability to add a Google map to an Event.
An Event Map URL has been set up in the back end on the Events Page.
If your uncertain of how to incorporate the Google Map link into your post. I have screen grabs but there is no provision to add to this post otherwise i would have so feel free to email me.

Leanne

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