We’ve touched on this before, but it’s so important that we decided to return. Anyone who claims that search is cooling off is likely to have pants ablaze.

But even we were a bit shocked when we read recently that 20 to 25 percent of the searches conducted by Google represent brand-new queries that have never been seen before (Thanks to SEOmoz for the reminder). Stop for a second and think about that. It’s simply astounding, considering the millions of searches enacted each day on the Search Engine of Search Engines.

It also underscores how challenging the field of search engine optimization and marketing can be at times, given the ever-changing nature of so many key elements. But that rate of spanking-new searches should also be a big red flag to companies and website operators — if you’re not investing in SEM/SEO services, you’re probably going to get more and more lost amid the shuffle of the online marketplace.

Keeping pace with that amazing rate of new searches is a tough job. It’s easy for companies to fall behind or fail to capture the wave of potential flooding Google every day.

Get your head above water. Give some serious thought to the importance SEM/SEO strategies can play when it comes to your bottom line. lifeBLUE can help you serve those millions of new searches every day.

For a newspaper reporter, there’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning to find a terrible — or worse, misspelled — headline atop your big scoop. Nothing ruins a good, resume-worthy story faster than having a sleepy copy editor decide to spell “bucks” with an “f,” as in: “MAYOR CAUGHT PILFERING BIG BUCKS.”

The most grating part, as any reporter will quickly tell you, is that they almost always never write the headlines. But they’ll be the first to tell you how important they are — a good headline is the Holy Grail of entry points, guaranteed to ensnare readers who otherwise might never read your story.

This maxim is actually more important on the Internet, where people are already in a hurry and used to blowing through mountains of information in a matter of minutes. Often, a catchy, memorable, intriguing and all-around entertaining headline is the only shot you have at getting visitors to actually give your content a look.

And, unlike those ungrateful reporters, bloggers, content developers, SEO heads and other online copy writers can’t typically blame a copy editor. Odds are you’re your own writer, editor and coffee-fetcher. Feeling your pain, and still getting our own coffee, we at lifeBLUE wanted to offer a few tips for writing good headlines for blog posts, link bait, viral pieces and all other manner of social media content. So, here we go:

1. Be succint

Don’t give all your good stuff away in the headline. A piece titled “Nightmare at Lambert International Airport As Drunken Passengers Refuse to Stop Screaming ‘Cockpit’ and Throwing Pretzel Bags While Bemoaning the Lost Genius of Jeff Buckley” may intrigue a few frequent fliers and JB fans, but others will see little reason to read further. Instead, stick with something a little shorter and attention-grabbing, something that leaves readers of all backgrounds wanting to learn more. Something like “Nightmare at Lambert” or “Nightmare at 35,000 Feet.” We do miss JB, though. Tragedy.

2. Use active verbs and bold words

That’s bold as in strong and connoting action and authority, not bold as in bold. Although, it is always a good idea to find ways to make your headlines stand out in color or size from the rest of the text. Using passive constructions like “to be” verbs and the past tense are shown over and over again in readership studies to be boring gateways to nowhere. You’re only using a few words to lure people to your cache of content, so make them stand out and sound good and strong to the ear.

3. Provocative

It’s much easier to do this online than in print. Take a stand in your headline, call someone out or tease us with your amazing knowledge. If you really know why someone is a complete jerk, then say so, using bold words, in your headline. But being provocative doesn’t necessarily have to be loud and in-your-face. Don’t be afraid to provoke thought, either. Some folks might turn away from a headline blaring “Why Judas Iscariot Totally Sucks,” so look for another way to bring people to your copy. How about: “Christ’s Downfall Started With a Kiss.” We’re cool with JC, here, too, so we’ll probably read both.

4. Classify the Copy

Social media sites like Digg and Reddit may soon render this rule obsolete, as stories simply headlined “Cool” or “Wow” will invariably be Dugg about 5,683 times. But it’s still a good idea, especially for link bait and viral pieces, to give readers some semblance of what your content is all about.

5. Embrace lists and pictures

This is another online rule driven by social media and networking sites. While lists are incredibly standard, almost cliched means of communicating information, they’re also never going away because people love to read them. Give us 10 easy tips or hints or reasons Karl Rove sucks and we’ll devour each one. It’s human nature to want something neatly packaged and chronological. Don’t churn out list after list, but don’t be afraid to throw some “Why XXX is Destroying America” or “Ten Reasons XXX Gives Me a Headache” list copy out there. The picture rule is simple. If you’re posting on social media sites, put this little abbreviation (PIC) in your headline, assuming you have a picture. It’s amazing how many high-traffic pieces become high-traffic because of that little abbreviation — and because there’s a great photo on the page, too. If you’ve got great art, let the reader know.

6 . Be Funny, Never Pun-ny and Think, Darn It, Think

Stay far away from puns in headlines. Very far. They’re awful, old “tools” that readers today will recognize as lame and unworthy of their precious time from a mile away. Dedicate real chunks of time to crafting funny, entertaining, provocative and engaging headlines. It makes no sense to spend three hours writing a top-notch blog post or link bait piece only to slap some stupid, completely uninteresting and unappealing headline on top after 4.39 seconds of thought.

Got it? Speaking of JC, though, we’ll leave you with one of our all-time favorite headlines. After a rain-swollen river threatened to flood a Pennsylvania town twice in two days, readers woke up the next morning to this gem: “Second Coming of Crest.”

That, friends, is a keeper.

For those who don’t use them every day, search engines can sometimes be a frustrating mess. Ostensibly, it doesn’t take much to use a search engine. Type “www.google.com” into your browser and get crackin’. But sometimes your specific searches come up empty, leaving you unable to find what you came online looking for in the first place.

In the interest of helping some of those more inexperienced in the ways of true search, we at lifeBLUE decided to put together a brief primer on some of the basic ways you can improve your time navigating the search engines and more easily find the information you need. And, of course, if you’re interested in improving your company’s standing among the search engines, make sure to check out our SEO services.

Here are a just few helpful hints and basic facts. Seeing as we’re big St. Louis Cardinals fans here at lifeBLUE, we’ll use the keywords “baseball” and “Cardinals” as examples:

The Basics

-If you type in Baseball - you will get any web page that features the word baseball.

- Baseball and Cardinals - will give you pages that have baseball and Cardinals.

- Baseball or Cardinals - will give you pages that only have baseball with no mention of Cardinals or Cardinals with no mention of baseball.

- Baseball – Cardinals - this will give you a baseball pages devoid of the word Cardinals (Make sure when typing this into Google that the space is between the first word and the minus, since the first word is what you want to keep in your search).

- Baseball + Cardinals - this is the same as using the word “and” in the search.

-“Baseball Cardinals” - this will provide results that only feature the words Baseball Cardinals consecutively. This is good when you’re looking for a specific company, name or other item.

Restrictive Searches
-define: Baseball - this will give you the definition of baseball.
-phonebook: wang IL- will give you the listing for Wang in Illinois.
-bphonebook: wang IL- will give you the listings for businesses named Wang in Illinois.
-inurl: baseball - this one is pretty cool. This will give you a return of all sites that include baseball somewhere in the site’s URL.
-allinurl: Baseball Cardinals - this will give you a search that uses all the words you typed after the colon in the URL.
-related: lifeBLUE.com - gives a return on sites that are related to lifeBLUE.com
-info: lifeBLUE.com - provides all information available about the website.
-link: lifeBLUE.com - provides other sites that are linked to this website.

And those are just a few. There are dozens upon dozens of little tricks and devices you can use to amp up your Google searches. Here’s one last little trick for you. Did you know that Google is also a calculator?

Try it. Type in an addition problem in the search bar and hit search. Or ask it how many quarts are in 17 gallons (search “quarts in 17 gallons”). Google will generate the answer, without fail. Truly, it is all things to all people, the official one-stop shop of the Internet. Sounds like another American empire we know and love…

Now we just need the G-folks to figure out a way for us to simultaneously buy a toilet brush, some bananas and an oil change online.