One of the most important parts of creating and promoting a blog post is coming up with a title that will get people to read it. Even if you have a truly great piece of content, most people will never click on the link and learn of its greatness unless the title piques their interest.
Because of this, writing those few words of the title can sometimes be just as daunting as composing the hundreds of words in the blog post itself. To help you tackle the problem, below are several tips for writing titles that get attention and get results.
- Remember your two audiences. Your title will be read by both people and search engines. People are the real target audience, of course, and should be the primary focus of your attention. But search engines are going to help you reach those people. Just as people look first at the title, search engines place a high emphasis on the title tags when determining what your content is about.
- Provide a reason to read. Every person who sees your title will be asking the same question: Why should I care? A good title will provide an answer to that question.
- Pay attention to what works. As you develop pieces of content, some will be wildly successful, while others...not so much. Since titles have such a big impact on readership, look for trends in the titles of your most popular posts. You should also pay attention to what is working for your competitors; if they succeed where you don't, at least you can learn from them and adjust your own title strategy.
- Use keywords. When possible, put the keyword at the start of the title. One way to do this without creating awkward phrasing is to use a colon to separate the main point (keyword) and the supporting details. Take our post Copyright & Plagiarism: What to do if You're a Victim as an example. Within the text of the article, that same phrase would naturally end with the keywords, rather than begin with them. As a title, though, switching the order helps get the point across immediately.
- Keep it short. Long-tail keywords can make for great titles, but make sure they are not too long. Search engine results won't display more than 70 characters in a title.
- Keep a list. Ideas for great titles will sometimes come to mind long before you actually have any content to go with the title. Write those ideas down, and keep a running list of titles awaiting blog posts.
- Make sure it matches the content. This is vital. Sometimes you can come up with a killer headline, one which grabs the reader's attention and fills a high volume/low competition void in keyword searches. It may even technically work, getting thousands of people to click through to your content. But if your content then does not match up with what was implied by the title, all of that traffic will bounce off and your readers will just be disappointed or annoyed.
By writing effective titles backed by useful and interesting content, you can build your blog into a must-read resource for potential customers.
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