Order of words in a blog post title - why it matters (Tuesday's Tip)

Image by Stuart Miles, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Does the order of the words in a blog post's title make any difference to how many people read that post?

Probably!

Why?

https://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/ says, 'Search engines put more weight on the early words, so if your keywords are near the start of the page title you are more likely to rank well. People scanning result pages see the early words first. If your keywords are at the start of your listing your page is more likely to get clicked on.'

http://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag says, 'The closer to the start of the title tag a keyword is, the more helpful it will be for ranking ­and the more likely a user will be to click them in search results.'

So...

   Kitty (Catherine) ASHTON: ancestor #1 of 52

is probably a better title than

   52 ancestors in 52 weeks challenge: #1 Kitty (Catherine) ASHTON.

And yes, there really is a blog post about Kitty ASHTON (my great-great-great-grandmother) who married Peter MATTHEW in Yorkshire, England.

(This post first appeared on http://genie-leftovers.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/order-of-words-in-blog-post-title-why.html.)