Help with a new title?

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   DrMark1961posted 7 years ago

   The majority of my titles work pretty well but I wrote a hub about the best way to get your dog to lose weight and cannot find a title that attracts any viewers. I have tried several, but the current title of the article is "7 Ways To Help Your Dog Lose Weight And How Many Calories He Will Burn". I published the hub in May of last year but have only attracted a few hundred readers. I think the information is valuable for all of those families out there with obese dogs, but I am obviously not getting that information across.
   Anyone able to help?

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      theraggededgeposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      How about '7 Fat Dog Diet Tips'
      
      'Fat dog' keyword attracts a lot of monthly searches, with a good Adsense rate of $3.05.
      
      or
      
      '7 Overweight Dog Tips'
      
      Overweight dog gets a good search volume too with a similar Adsense rate.

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         DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I guess I could change it to "7 Fat Dog Exercise TIps". Do you think that the word "fat" has too many negatives? Will dog owners be turned off from that word?

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   2. 95

      gerimcclymposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I could use some of your advice for my dog, as he is getting a bit chunky.
      
      I read through your article and noticed that some of the 7 tips you list are described, in so many words, as not being very effective for helping overweight dogs lose weight. In fact, some of these are listed at the top of your list.
      
      I recommend mentioning the tips that don't work very well towards the beginning of your article, along with the reasons why they're not effective.
      
      Then, for the meat of your article, list the tips that DO work and explicitly highlight WHY they work. 
      
      This way readers can jump straight to the tips that DO work, which is the information they want and what your title promises to deliver.
      
      Along the same lines, I recommend listing the most effective tips at the top of your chart, ranging from most effective at the top to least effective at the bottom.

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         DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for those suggestions. It is great to have a readers input. I guess what I wanted to emphasize was that the exercises by themselves are just not enough, but looking at it from a readers viewpoint I can understand why it seems too negative.
         I think your idea to rearrange the exercises on the table and the list will help a lot, but I do not want people going away from this feeling that it is going to be easy. I have read so many articles on the internet, both for humans and for pets, stating that "all you need to do is..." and the weight will be gone. It does not happen that way.

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         DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I went ahead and revised it this morning and put the more effective exercises at the top. I also moved the info on how I obtained the calorie info down lower, since I do not think many readers will care. If you have a chance take a look at it and give me your opinion.

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            gerimcclymposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Looks good!
            
            I noticed that although the longest section in your article appears to be the section with the 7 tips, you have given a considerable amount of attention to "Health Problems from Obesity" and "A Fat Dog's Diet", among other related topics. For this reason, I recommend changing your title to include all of these topics, which could be tricky. Another option is to create a separate article for each of these topics.
            
            Long day, hope this was helpful.

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               DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

               I think a dietary change is most important, since it is almost impossible to get a dog to lose weight with exercise alone. However, I am not sure if I can address all of that in the title. I have tried several others before this one, and none of them have drawn any traffic to this hub.
               I did have another hub on the dangers of obesity in fat dogs, published back in 2012 when I was stil very new at this, and it had some good traffic at the beginning, but not very good at this time.

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                  gerimcclymposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes, I can see how a dietary change is an important part of losing weight. My main point was that your title should accurately reflect the content of your article. So, depending on the content you decide to stick with for this article, your title could be something like, "Diet and Exercise Tips for Overweight Dogs".

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                     DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     That is a good point. I wonder if I would scare the readers away though by using that "d" word.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Awhile back Robin gavae me this website to use to help me with title creation.  I love it!  http://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer  It really helps me to write better titles.  Give it a try!  As for the one you came up with...it's far too long.  Plug it into that site to get an analysis and then start playing with it.

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         DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks. I lost that tool.

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2. 0

   calculus-geometryposted 7 years ago

   I think a dog owner who has this problem would Google something containing the phrase "overweight dog" or "dog is overweight," so I think "overweight" is the keyword to include in your title.  At least, this is what naturally popped into my head when I asked myself what I would Google.

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      DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      How about "7 Exercise Tips For An Overweight Dog"?
      I shuffled the capsules around a little bit so that the exercise tips are at the beginning, the tips on diet and the dangers of obesity are down at the bottom of the hub.

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         calculus-geometryposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         It's a clear, concise title I would click on.  Is there a difference between an overweight dog and an obese dog in terms of how they can lose weight? Because I notice your article uses both words.  Do more people find your article with a search phrase containing obese rather than overweight?  Anyway, I hope a simple title change works out for you.

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            DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

            The only search term I have from Google is "fat'! Not sure why most of the categories read "no information found", so apparantly not many people are finding this article through the search engines.
            Some dogs are definitely more prone to gaining weight, so I think there is a difference. If I ignored my Schnauzer´s weight she would be obese in no time. 
            Thanks for your input. I am going to try this new title for a while and see how readers respond.

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3. 85

   Marisa Wrightposted 7 years ago

   Surely the question is - if I had that problem, what would I type into Google to find the answer?  That's always the best title to use. 
   
   I tried a few to see what would autocomplete.  I think it might be a good idea to have a title that includes "fat".   I tried Googling "My dog is fat" and got the following:
   
   My dog is too fat what do I do
   My dog is getting fat
   
   ...and what I noticed is that none of the results included the word "fat" in their title. I'm guessing most writers thought as you did, that the word "fat" is too confronting.  But it does mean that if you actually used the word "fat" in your title (and elsewhere in your Hub), you'd have a good chance of beating all of them for that keyword.  Worth a thought.

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   1. 99

      DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I call my Schnauzer "gordinha" (little fatty) but when someone comes over to visit and mentions that she is kind of fat I get offended. Even if I typed "my dog is getting fat" I would never open an article about "Exercises for your fat dog"! Is that stupid? Yes, but I guess I am not the only one.
      Ever noticed all of those "husky sized" clothes in the department stores? They are for fat kids. Do you think any mom would buy them if they were labelled for fat kids?
      
      
      This is Tica, my little fatty!

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         theraggededgeposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Aw... she's lovely.
         
         The thing is... when I checked Adwords 'fat dog' had a far greater number of searches than 'overweight dog', so people are searching for it. And, as Marissa mentioned, there are no actual results for that term.
         
         We acquired a fat Labrador, MableAble. You might remember you helped me with her ears? We switched her diet from kibble (previous owner) to raw (what our other five dogs eat) and the weight just melted away with normal exercise. We discovered that she is prone to EIC - Exercised Induced Collapse - where the dog loses control of their back end, so intense exercise would not be good for a dog like her.

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            DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

            My dogs are on raw too but Tica likes to sit underneath the parrot cages--my Pionus likes to feed her fresh coconut every afternoon so I am not really in control of her caloric intake anymore!
            When I replaced the word "overweight" with "fat" in that title analyzer that TT2 suggested, it thought that my title was too short. Not sure about that.
            I have also noticed that if a searcher types in the exact words of the title into the search engine they will still put articles that have a different title above yours, if for some reason they like the source or the article even more. So, they might put "Exercise Tips For an Overweight Dog" on the first page if they like the source, and "Exercise Tips For My Fat Dog" back on page 10 if they do not like the source. Maybe that is why fat is not showing up in your results?
            Have you noticed this same thing with your hubs?

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         gerimcclymposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Cute dog. In Spanish, we say "gordita" for "little fatty".

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            DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

            I am Brazilian. Many of our words are similar to Spanish, like "gorda", but the diminuitive in our language is "inha".
            We just got back from our late night walk on the beach. She runs around, chases the feral horses and burns up more calories than you could imagine. Still, notice that little round belly on her?

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4. 84

   Solarasposted 7 years ago

   Here's my suggested title: surprisingly quick and easy dog weight loss plan
   
   I would leave out the word exercise, since many folks don't have the time or inclination to spend time exercising with their dogs.  They might not click if they think it entails more work for them to do.

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   1. 99

      DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      wow, I like that. I think I need to write another one and use that "Surprisingly quick and easy" and then compare how the page views to the other title. I am reluctant to use that for the other article though since I want people going into it knowing it is going to be a little work. (Maybe I am too negative a person to even be writing on this subject!)
      Think I should go with "How your dog can lose 10 pounds in one week with the military iditarod diet"?

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         Solarasposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         LOL - military dog diet will be a smashing success! I predict 6 million views the first week.

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   Penny Sebringposted 7 years ago

   Perhaps "7 tips for your chubby canine"? Just to go the other direction.

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   1. 99

      DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Pleasingly plump?
      How about "Exercise Tips For Your Pleasingly Plump Dog"?
      I could live with that!

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         Penny Sebringposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Cute!

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         Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         That would be a great title for a print article, but nobody is going to be searching for Pleasingly Plump so it's a complete non-starter I'm afraid.

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            DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, you are right, and I try never to use titles like that.
            I did like gerimcclym´s suggestion but most of the articles already out there are trying to make weight loss look easy, which it is not. If I follow her suggestion, however, I do not think readership is going to go up since people want an easy and unrealistic answer.
            The part of this article that is unique is the calorie counter I worked on. How about "Easy Calorie Counter And Diet Plan To Help Your Dog Lose Weight"?

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               Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               If your calorie counter is a point of difference then yes, I'd definitely say that's worth a try.

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