Blogs should follow the many newspapers and magazines who modify their content to ensure greater traffic from search engines.
Too many bloggers are selling themselves short by failing to understand how to make the internet work for them.
We must consider how every word we write relates to the wider structure of the net and take into account how people navigate cyberspace.
This ties in well with good journalistic writing because text which is short, concise and accurate will almost always be more optimised than that which is not.
The most obvious example of this can be found in the headline as you’ve only got 10 words in which to grab an audience with the essence of the story
…so why go with headlines such as these:
A Tribute to George Costanza
Palavers with a community of ghosts
Do you remember the first time?
As you can see, optimised headlines has not been a strength of mine.
But I’m turning over a new leaf, I can see the error of my ways.
There’s a number of things wrong with these headlines.
- they’re practically unsearchable
- they’re trying to be something they’re not: funny, clever, cool…
- they assume to much from the reader.
That’s not to be patronising, it’s just all four of them are references which may well leave a reader totally cold.
On the internet it is wrong to rely too greatly on a prior knowledge because the potential audience is to large to assume a basis of common understanding.
Instead we pick up a scattered knowledge, based on pieces of information we stumble across or are directed to, often via social networking sites.
I say this not as criticism but rather to share a consideration which I hope will shape my writing in the future.
Because I see the real challenge as trying to draw together scattered knowledge and bridge the gaps in understanding so as to provide a comprehensive and authoritative voice.
Hack Baton 
You’re right about picking a sexy title tag. One that stands out by being short ‘n’ snappy, while also containing your target keywords will get clicked on more than a long, unexciting headline for the same article (in a little thought experiment where both versions are occupying the same result slot in the search results page).
The problem is getting your blog and it’s amazing (or shitty titles) into the top results in the first place. Having your target keyword in the title will definitely help, but by far the biggest factor determining where you’ll rank is how many links from other websites point to your blog as a whole, or more importantly, how many external links link to the blog post in question. Those links are also a great deal more beneficial if their anchor text (the actual text that’s clickable) is your keyword.
If you can get a shitload of popular, authoritative sites to link to your blog post on “Widgets”, where the word widgets is linked, then you’ll rank highly when people search “widgets”. You’d rank higher if “widgets” was in the post title, all things being equal, but with enough links pointing to it, it wouldn’t be necessary.
So, in general, the more links you get to point to you, the better you’ll do in the search engines, but links are by no means equal. Links from better sites (that have lots links pointing to them already, and so more authority with the search engines) will help more than someone linking to you in a post on an obscure forum, for example. Each link also gains weight (does you more good) the longer it’s been there, so for each link you gain today, you’ll begin to properly reap the rewards 3 months or so down the line.
Obviously, that’s a rough general idea and there are lots of other factors that affect it one way or another, but anyone serious about “cutting a figure” on the internet should look into link building.