According to the experts over at BuzzFeed, “over 2 million new blog posts are published on the web daily.” That’s a dizzying number of blog posts – enough to fill Time Magazine for 770 years. It also amounts to a lot of competition for readership among bloggers, and why you need every tool in your blogging arsenal if you want to get YOUR blog posts read.
Writing dynamic and compelling blog post titles happens to be one of the most important components of effective blogging because one of the first things a blog article must do is capture the attention of searchers, and get them to at least click on your post and give it a view.
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Unlike a magazine or newspaper article headline, where the entire article is right in front of the reader (including enticing images, captions, etc.), a blog title is basically all a person is going to see in the search results. The title is the boldest and most obvious component, and a major factor as to whether a searcher will click on your title result or move on to the next. You’ve only got about two seconds of time on your side and about 70 characters to work with, so you better use it wisely.
You Know It When You See It
A compelling blog article without a compelling title to go along with it really isn’t going to amount to much if nobody clicks on it. That being said, don’t be afraid to put a a fair amount of creative thought, time and energy into creating a title that’s going to set the tone for your entire blog post as well as entice people to read it. You can also start off with a working title as you flush out your article. Let it stew in the pot for awhile so you can play around with it until it morphs into the final product. All I can say is that a perfect post title is like art – “you know it when you see it!”
Keeping It Real
Don’t make the mistake of creating an awe inspring title that has very little to do with what your post is actually about. It’s good to be creative with your title but you also need to stay on point with the topic of your blog post and keep it real. Definitely don’t try and “trick” searchers into reading your posts with titles that either make false promises about what the post is going to be about or titles that are more like “click-bait.”
A lot of YouTubers, for example, use deceptive click-bait titles in order to get people to click on their Youtube videos even though the video doesn’t have anything to do with the title as promised. Trust me, people don’t like to be played, whether its a Youtube click-bait title or a search result in the index with a compelling title that’s misleading.
Does Title Length Matter?
The title of your blog post is what will be displayed in the search results unless you create a meta that overrides the main title or h1 title. Whether you include a meta title or not, the title/meta title should be at or below Google’s allotted 70 characters. Otherwise, a portion of the title will get cut off in the search results, which is very annoying.
There is also a general consensus among bloggers that a title is most effective if you keep it at 8 words or less. Shorter titles that have punch like “Blinding Headlights Make Big Headlines” or “GREEN is The New Black” can be very enticing and peak the interst of readers. However, If you feel the need for a more expansive headline to describe a particular post to its fullest glory, then by all means go for it!
Using Titles that Already Exist
At one point or another, there’s the likely chance that you’ll blog about a popular topic that’s already been blogged about by someone else. We all have our own spin on things. When it comes to creating your title, look at the titles that already exist for the topic and see how you could improve on them. There is definitely a lot of title foddder in the search results to graze upon – just don’t take a title that already exists and reuse it verbatum.
The truth is that professional copywriters seldom “start from scratch” when creating headlines or titles. Rather, they keep a collection of catchy, previously used headlines, otherwise known as a “swipe file,” to get ideas from or to reuse and modify for their latest article.
Using Action Words in Titles
If readers are going to take time from their busy day to read something online, it better be something that will come in handy at some point. Titles that include words that convey action and benefit like “drive,” “enhance,” “boost,” or “increase” offer a promise of practical advice that will give them a benefit, an advantage, or something that will improve their life in some way.
Using Keywords in Titles
You should defintitely use keywords in your blog post titles as well as research good keywords for the topics you blog about. That being said, there is a fine balance needed when optimizing blog post titles. Focus too much on optimization and not enough on creating a compelling title that readers will want to click on, and you could lose potential traffic to your site – even if your search engine placement rocks!
Utilizing Geo-targeting in Titles
If you are writing about a topic related to a specific locale, then you should add a layer of geo-targeting to your title. For example, let’s say you are a real estate professional and you are blogging about the topic “preparing your home to sell.” If you fail to geo-target the title, you willl end up competing with every other blog post written about the same topic in the index.
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However, if Denver is your local market, you would geo-target the above title to read something like “How to Get Your Denver Home Ready to Sell Fast!” You have now narrowed down your search parameters for searchers and search results without losing any “umph” in the title. Not to mention, if you don’t geo-target your title, you are also competing with all the top real estate guns like Trilia, Zillow and realtor.com., with big marketing dollars, and who already dominate the index for just about every topic related to real estate. Geo-target! Geo-target! Geo-target!
The Blog Post Title Takeaway
No doubt about it – titles are a critical component to blogging because they are what draw the reader into the body of your blog post. Without a well thought-out blog title that is creative, compelling and search engine optimized, your amazing content could fall to the wayside and simply language in the index – unread.
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