With online writing, an article title has to accomplish many things. It has to make it easier for the reader to find the article. It has to tell the reader what the article is about. It has to entice the reader to read the article. It has to be acceptable for submission to article directories. How do you accomplish all this in one title?

Sometimes you can't. Still, you try to include as many elements of a good title as you can. The "best" or "perfect" title will be a different combination of factors for each unique article. Let's look at what makes the title of this article work.

Online Writing is about the Keywords: They won't read your article if they can't find it. How do they find it? Most often now, readers use search engines. If you don't have the keywords they are searching for in the title, it is less likely it will show up in their search results. In this case, there is good traffic for the keyword "online writing." That is why it is in the title and will be repeated in this article a few times as well.

Don’t Fool the reader: You can get cute with article titles, but if you don't also let the reader know what the article is about in the title or description, you'll have problems. A searcher may just pass on your article because he doesn't know what it is about. He may click-through to read the article, then get annoyed when he finds that he was misled. He won't be likely to click over to your website then, will he? This article, by the way, is clearly about online writing.

Titles that grab the attention: Questions involve the reader, and make it more likely they will go beyond the title to the article. They want the answer, of course. That's why I use a question for this article. The fact that you are reading this article hopefully shows that this was a good strategy. There is more than one way to grab someone's attention though. Other good titles include words like "How To," "Top Ten," and "Easy Ways To," as well as "You," "Your," "Free," "New," and "Best."

Formatting issues: Titles for online article-writing need to be acceptable to the owners of the directories, websites, and newsletters where you hope your article will be published. Good keyword optimization helps - you're not the only one hoping to get traffic from that article. They also need to be a reasonable length, so they don't look awkward on a page, or take too much room in a newsletter. Three to seven words is ideal although more words are okay if they are shorter, and perhaps fewer is better if they are longer.

Finally, you should always deliver on the promise of the title. You want the reader to not only read the article, but to feel like they got what they were looking for, and so can trust you. After all, the whole point of online writing is to get that reader to read right through the article to the resource box, where they can click-through to your website.