tedster - 4:49 pm on Jan 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

Newspaper headlines are a good source of inspiration. I also like to study cover headlines on magazines - and they need to "work" on the newsstand for four weeks at least, so the cover "titles" get a lot of attention.

There's a funny tension involved - short titles can grab the eye and stand out on the list, but they don't always get the best words into a title element. Print headlines can succeed at times even if they ignore important keywords.

If its for a very competitive SERP, I like to study the top URLs first, to see how I might stand out if I make it to page one. It's better not to be tweaking titles after the page is indexed, so I want to start with a great choice.