RSS Feeds8 Ways of Creating Compelling Blog Post Titles
Jul 09, 2007
Why do you need compelling blog post titles? Because the blog post title is the first thing you see when you arrive at a blog post. Your visitors first read your title, and if the title catches their fancy, they go ahead and read the post. It prompts your readers to read further and it prompts people to click your link (provided the anchor text consists of your title) wherever it appears.
Practically every blogger and online copywriter who writes about blogging and copywriting at some or the other time has written about the importance of creating compelling blog post titles: the killer blog post titles. So why am I writing about it again? Well, first of all, I have never (or I’ve forgotten if I have) written on this hot topic, and second, I don’t want to assume that all my visitors have read various posts on the importance of creating compelling blog post titles. So this post is for all those readers who are either not aware of what a great difference carefully crafted blog post titles can make, or who simply want to re-confirm their belief in writing strong, effective titles.
Why do you need compelling blog post titles?
Because the blog post title is the first thing you see when you arrive at a blog post, or even the blog itself. Most often than not a blog post title is the biggest text you see on the screen after maybe the name of the blog. The entire essence of your blog post manifests in your title. Your visitors first read your title, and if the title catches their fancy, they go ahead and read the post. Your title is the voice of your posts that goes far. It rises above the din and becomes a discernible voice. In simple words:
- Whenever people link to your posts, they use your title as the anchor text.
- Whenever your link appears on the search engine result page, it’s your title that appears as the clickable link.
- On all social media websites such as Digg and del.icio.us it’s your title that grabs the attention and makes people click your link.
- The search engines use your title to rank your blog post.
- Your visitors read your blog post if they find the title captivating enough.
- 8 out of 10 people read the title but merely 2 out of 10 read the post.
- Your title makes you stand out
If all these things matter to you, you can easily deduce that one can never underestimate the importance of creating effective, well-meaning, compelling blog post titles. So here are the famous 8 steps you can take to create compelling blog post titles:
1] Highlight the greatest benefit in your blog post title
What is the greatest benefit your visitors can derive by reading your blog post? For instance, you are reading this post because you want to know how to create compelling blog post titles and if I’m able to convey my thoughts lucidly then this is the greatest benefit of this post. Try to think about why a reader has come to your blog. Certainly he or she is looking for a solution, an answer, or anything that satiates his or her craving. Does your post provide something that can put an end to his or her search or at least solve a part of the problem? Highlight that in your title. A few examples of benefit-based blog post titles are:
- A Lazy Person’s Guide to Losing Weight and Gaining Health (a post on losing weight and gaining health)
- 5 Ways To Destroy The World, Or Save It (a post on the importance of preserving the eco-system)
- Making Money For Dummies (a post that talks about making money by following simple saving habits)
- Create A Killer Website In Just 5 Steps
- 3 Events In The Past Decade That Could Have Destroyed Our Planet
- How To Be An Asshole And Still Attract Girls
All these titles either make startling revelations or present great solutions to some pre-existing problems. By reading these titles one can easily make out what the posts are about.
2] Create a controversial blog post title
A controversy attracts visitors as honey attracts the bees. Creating controversial blog post titles can be a double-edged sword because it can even backfire. Make sure you are on a solid ground before you contemplate creating a controversial blog post title and stay away from foot-in-mouth situations that will make you look silly.
A good example of creating a controversial post title is this post on SEOposition titled DoshDosh.com Copies Us but I’m not Flattered in which Brian Gilley has accused Dosh dosh of copying content and images from his blog, and Maki of Dosh dosh has reacted with a post titled SEOPosition Attacks Dosh Dosh with Blatantly False and Inaccurate Accusations. Both of these are accusatory posts and they are surely controversial and incite interest in their respective readers. Without going into who is right and who is wrong, you do want to read what’s going on on these blogs and I’m pretty sure lots of blogs have already linked to these two posts.
3] Break a news or a secret in your blog post title
A title that breaks some interesting news or a secret instantly draws attention. News are topical, they are current, and most people want to read them in order to keep themselves up to date. The more targeted the news is the greater is the attraction. For instance,
This New Blogging Platform Is Going To Make WordPress and MovableType Look Like Publishing Technologies From The 19th Century
OK, a bit long, but you can make out it packs a punch for those who are really interested in blogging news. You instantly want to check out what’s so great in this blogging platform that is going to render WordPress and MovableType obsolete? Highlight the main thing about the news story and even if there exists none, create one, but a genuine one.
Similarly, we love sharing secrets or being exposed to them.
10 things your doctor doesn’t want you to know
4] Use powerful words and expressions in your blog post title
Powerful words carry different definitions for different people. Some get put off by them, and to some they give an adrenaline rush of prodigal proportions. Although the effect of powerful words and expressions has tapered due to their overuse and often wrongful use by marketers and sales people, in the past such words have triggered revolutions.
That said, expressions like “Become a millionaire instantly” can draw big attraction even if the post talks about day dreaming. A few examples of powerful words and expressions are:
- Benefits
- Rewards
- Revealed
- Answered
- Get
- Free
- Learn
- Create
- Solve
- Secret
- Money
- Sex
- Master
- Easiest
Example: “Master the art of seduction in just half-an-hour.” or “The mystery of life and death solved.”
5] Ask a question or give an answer in your blog post title
We are all looking for answers, whether it’s life or technology. Just see how well blogs like Steve Pavlina (personal improvement), Lifehack (improving your personal and professional productivity), Problogger (blogging tips) and Copyblogger (better blogging and copywriting) do because they help us improve, and very often provide us answers we are desperately looking for.
Write your blog post with an objective: it gives an answer to a question, whether asked or unasked. Then sum up that answer and make it into your blog post title. If you don’t want to give the answer in your blog post title, then ask the question that your blog post answers. For instance, “How can you save the planet by doing these simple two things everyday?” or “Do you want to master killer CSS-design tricks?”
6] Write blog post titles for search engines
Ideally you should not depend on search engines for your traffic because they can be really unpredictable, but a large chunk of traffic comes from them. The search engines love blog post titles that say a lot about the content of the blog post. In order to drive highly targeted traffic from search engines to your blog, use a title that has your keyword or the main expression in it. If you have written a post on losing weight, expressions like “lose weight”, “losing weight”, “weight loss” should definitely be there in your blog post title. Since the title of your blog post appears as a hyperlink on the search engine results pages, it’s been observed people click those links more that contain the words and phrases they have just searched for.
7] Tickle the humor nerve
Humor is timeless. We all love a laugh or two. Humor is conspicuously lacking on the blogsphere or if it is there I haven’t come across it. Make people laugh with your blog post. Make people laugh without offending them though. There is a very thin line that divides healthy and unhealthy humor. If your humor makes a few people happy and a few people angry, I don’t think it’s healthy humor. Don’t use caste, class or nationality based humor, it’s actually boring. Let your wit be spontaneous and definitely don’t sound desperately humorous.
8] Shock the reader with your blog post title
A shock never fails to get the attention but if your post is not shocking enough or if it does not justify the shock manifest in the title it can also put your readers off. Just now I read a title “45 Muslim doctors planned US terror raids”. The title that those 45 people were not just terrorists, they were doctors, shocking because doctors are supposed to save lives, not destroy them. You immediately want to read the story.
Conclusion
Just remember that your title is as important as your blog post because it prompts your readers to read further and it prompts people to click your link (provided the anchor text consists of your title) wherever it appears.
Technorati Tags: killer headlines, killer titles, blog post titles, compelling titles
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Blog Publishing, Blogging Tips, Content Publishing, SEO
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July 9th, 2007 at 7:41 am
[...] Amrit in a long post discusses how writing compelling blog post titles can improve your search engine rankings and bring more traffic to your blog. Your visitors first read your title, and if the title catches their fancy, they go ahead and read the post. It prompts your readers to read further and it prompts people to click your link (provided the anchor text consists of your title) wherever it appears. [...]
July 29th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
[...] For bloggers this is why you should use great titles (see 8 Ways of Creating Compelling Blog Post Titles). Sadly, I admit I should use more care in titles. For example, instead of Four small Gmail tweaks [...]
August 1st, 2007 at 10:01 am
I liked your artlcle as it’s pretty thorough and give a lots of examples. You really have to take time and care in choosing the post title, no point in great post that nobody finds!
August 7th, 2007 at 3:40 am
just FANTASTIC.
August 10th, 2007 at 9:15 am
[...] 2. Write Eye-Catching Titles – This tip has been explained over and over again so I’m not going to beat this one to death. Use words and phrases that are exciting and captures the reader right from the start. The title is the first thing they will read, so make it good. ContentBlog talks about this in detail with their article, check it out. [...]
August 16th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Thank you, this helped a lot!
September 20th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
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September 24th, 2007 at 10:04 am
BlogRush: Focus on the blog post title…
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September 25th, 2007 at 8:36 am
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October 9th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
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December 23rd, 2007 at 5:12 am
i have read the 8 ways of creating blog and so on .i have made my site so imressive
January 20th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
[...] is about. They say we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or title for that matter, but the title sure makes us give it a second look. Then when you actually read it, you can decide whether to place it in your [...]
February 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
I am a bit late finding this but better late than never! Believe it or not, I just wrote a blog post without putting a title on it!
This brought me to write an article on http://therealmaccoy.blogspot.com/2008/02/importance-of-writing-good-blog-post.html, in which I link to your article.
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November 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am
[...] Creating Compelling Blog Post Titles « A Partridge In A Pear Tree [...]
March 18th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Very good post. I agree with all points. I’ll be using them in the future. Thanks.
March 25th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
[...] 8 Ways of Creating Compelling Blog Post Titles | Content Blog [...]