5 Tips for Crafting Blog Post Titles
Many bloggers spend a lot of effort into writing engaging and interesting posts, but then just slap any old title onto it.
Take your time with your titles and treat them as “mini advertisements” for your work. Make sure your title is going to do everything it can to maximize the chances that people will engage with what you have to say.
While there is no real right or wrong way to create a “good title,” you might find these five tips for writing titles for your blog posts helpful:
1. Keep it Simple
Most research argues that the most effective titles are short, simple and easy to understand. While breaking these rules can help grab attention, they can also confuse, frustrate and put a glazed look in the eyes of potential readers. Shorter titles are also good for Search Engines - keep it under 40 or so characters and you’ll ensure the whole title appears in search results.
2. Grab Attention
Good titles set your posts apart from the clutter around them and then draw readers into your post. Grabbing attention might happen using tactics of ’shock’, ‘big claims’, ‘controversy’ or even ‘confusion’. While these tactics do work at getting people in - it should also be said that they can do more damage than good if the rest of your post doesn’t live up to the promises your title makes.
3. Meet a Need
An effective title draws people into reading more because they feel you’ve got something to say that they NEED to hear. Indexes like del.icio.us illustrate just how effective this is. Quite often the articles that get to the top of the list are ‘how to…’ or ‘tutorial’ type articles that show readers that they will learn how to solve a problem or need that they might have.
4. Describe
The majority of readers need to know something about what they’ll find if they read further. Titles should describe (in a word or few) what readers will get in the main post.
5. Use Key Words
If you want to maximize their power you need to consider using the keywords that you want your post to be found with in your title in some way. This of course is challenging when you are attempting to ‘keep it simple’ and to also ‘grab attention and intrigue’ - but it can be done. Words at the start of titles are thought to be more powerful than words at the end when it comes to SEO.
Thanks to problogger for inspiring this post.
Very well said. I share the same opinions. Out of the 5 tips, tip 5 is most difficult to achieve.