Steven is doing another interesting experiment over at Vaspers the Grate and is looking at Blog Taglines. He’s put 59 blogs with their titles and taglines side by side and is asking for comment on them. He writes:
‘I strongly urge every blogger to use a tagline on your blog. It can give your blog that little extra edge of clarification or intrigue that could prevent a first-time reader from leaving your site, due to not seeing any personal relevance.’
I agree with this statment by Steven completely – a tagline can be a very powerful part of your blog on a number of levels.
Firstly it can convey a strong message to your reader about the content that they’ll find if they decide to explore your blog. We know that readers make very quick decisions about whether they will stay or leave a page and so any way that you can quickly communicate them the benefits of your blog is important to put some thought into.
Secondly your tagline is often one of the first things that search engine spiders look at on your site because it’s usually at the top. We know that words at the top of a site have more weight than words at the bottom in terms of search engine optimization – so if you have a text tagline it might be worth including some keywords in it.
So the take home advice is to see your tagline as an onsite advertisement for your blog. You’re advertising the benefits of them staying to go deeper inside and perhaps even become loyal readers. As a result you want to capture their attention, communicate a message and include some keywords to help the search engines index you well.
To my way of thinking, the blog description (or tag line, if you’d prefer) is even more important than the blog name itself, which is more of a brand name. The blog title attracts the viewer’s eye and then the blog description tells them what’s in store. The blog title appeals to your “inner reptile” whereas the blog description appeals to your intellect.
For some of my blogs I’ve opted to include a short “tag line” as part of the block name, with the blog brand name at the beginning and a vertical bar between them. In these cases, the description itself can be more descriptive since the slogan-like description is already in the title. I’m guessing that those additional keywords used in the title will be ranked a little higher than words in the description.
— Jack Krupansky
I wondered about that, thanks. Still trying to come up with a suitable one for mine, one that includes several likely search words without becoming clunky…
Useful site, will link!
Totally agree. Tag lines are very important for a visitor to get the “feel” for your blog straight away: serious, silly, light-hearteded, ironic etc.,
Still struggling with my own tag line – just seems too boring. Thanks for the link, it’ll rev up my upcoming brainstorming session to finally nail down a good tag line.
I’ve had no luck at all coming up with a tagline for my main site. I guess that means I could stand to do some more thinking about precisely what my site is about.
maybe we can a Tagline competition to spur on ideas
I’ve stuck with my tagline for over a year now… it’s true that more people remember my site beause of the Tagline than for the Title.
Title: The Movie Blog
Tagline: The Official Home of Correct Movie Opinions
John, a better name for your blog might be the tag line: Correct Movie Opinions
Tag: Agree or Argue…I dont’ care a fig.
I’m no SEO expert, but I look at taglines from a web usability background and prior to that, from a direct response copy director background.
And prior to that, poet background.
I posted some material on How To Compose a Blog Title, How to Write Forum Topic Titles, and other “micro-content” writing tips, somewhere on Vaspers the Grate.
I should compile all my writing tips into one post.
See my comment posted to the Business Week Blogspotting blog post on “The Importance of Taglines”, about my article on VTG. I rambled on and on about writing technique. I was coffee drunk at 3:00 AM.
[…] e important. I have read this and learned this over and over. But I was reminded also by a post by Darren to maybe rethink my own. I know he recently upgrade […]
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