Blogging has become synonymous with content marketing strategy. Every single day, millions of people seek information about products and services online and blog posts regularly serve those needs.
But, without the right use of keywords and SEO header tags, your blog post will end up lost in the web that is the Internet.
So what is a blog post title and why is writing a good title for a blog so essential to its success?
Picture this scenario; you have toiled away and crafted a seemingly well written and well-researched blog post but before you know it, it is left withering away with zero comments, zero shares and yes, zero tweets or likes.
Sound familiar? Well, it’s enough to drive you up the wall and wipe out any motivation for writing any more content.
If you think the answer lies in spending more hours perfecting and honing your writing skills, you couldn’t be further from the truth. The answer lies in one word, the Title.
So how does writing catchy titles and post topics help, and more importantly, how do keywords help to boost your title and improve social shares for your blog?
Writing great content and slaving away while doing so is all good, but driving people into reading that content and getting more social shares for your blog post is where a good compelling post title comes into play.
They are the yin to the yang and what triggers people into clicking and eventually in turn reading your content. They represent it in search engines, in email, and on social media.
This article shares some tips and tricks on how to zero in on the right keywords and write effective post titles that get more social shares.
Making your post title catchy and engaging
People do judge a book by its cover and a blog by its title. A riveting and eye-catching post title is the gateway to enticing users to click so that they can quickly identify what the content is about and decide whether or not it’s applicable to them.
Creative blog names motivate people to click and read your blog. And every single click matters because that’s the secret sauce in determining whether your blog is destined to be liked and shared across the web or whether it’s going to end up in the proverbial graveyard.
Doing proper keyword research
Keyword research is extremely important and it plays a major role in determining whether your blog post is a hit or a miss.
By doing diligent research on your keywords, you can easily learn a lot more about the customers you’re targeting and directing to your website.
Following are a few keyword research tools that can aid your cause:
Keep it short but unique
Too often blog post titles get lost under a pile of thousands of other creative blog post names because of the failure to engage the user by using generic keywords and making it too long.
Cutting through the noise is hard because of the sheer volume of awesome blog post titles on the internet so make sure yours is distinct, short, attractive and thereby search engine friendly.
Try keeping your blog post titles fewer than 55 characters because Google invariably cuts out titles not under 55 characters.
Use your keywords the right way
Appropriate usage of keywords throughout your blog post in general and the title, in particular, is of utmost importance.
However, keyword stuffing should be avoided at any cost because users already know what the article is all about when they click, and blatant keyword stuffing will just put a user off for good.
Keyword usage should be subtle to maintain good readability and to get more social shares.
Keep post topics relevant
The most important tip of all is that the headline should be useful and be able to convey the key point of the content. Always know who you are writing for and avoid vague and mysterious blog headlines.
Readers should quickly be able to make up their mind by reading the headline and decide whether it’s applicable to them or not.
People want to know what benefit they’ll receive from reading what you’ve written.
A good post title for a blog needs a dash of oomph to improve social shares for your blog, which means making it pop out from the rest of the crowd.
Keywords like:
Are used far too often and fall firmly into the monotonous category. Instead use adjectives packing a punch like:
- Brilliant
- Incredible
- Painstaking
Great blog headlines use fancy keywords, which hit the right spot. When in doubt, keep the Thesaurus handy or you could alternatively even use a blog title generator (more on this later).
Make the most of numbers
A lot of blog titles begin with numbers because they entice people to click.
Adding numbers by way of a prefix or suffix makes a title very impactful and immediately helps capture the reader’s attention.
If you go through a list of creative and catchy blog post titles, most of them will include a number.
For instance, the title:
- “Cats are Wonderful Companions” sounds pretty dull.
- But “19 Awesome Reasons Why Cats Make Brilliant Companions”
This transforms and optimises the blog post title, making it infinitely more engaging.
Think of trigger words to create viral titles
A lot of people go online to seek information and if you can’t seem to place a number effectively in your headline, use trigger keywords like:
- “How”
- “Why”
- “What”
These words evoke curiosity in the reader.
The better the headline, the better your odds are of beating the averages and getting what you have written read by a bigger percentage of readers.
Examples of blog post titles using this formula:
- How to write effective post titles?
- What do SEO header tags mean?
- How to Create Clever Blog Post Titles?
- Ways to Generate New Topic Ideas
Use active voice in your titles
Directly addressing your audience is paramount in luring and keeping them engaged.
By using active voice, you can make your writing much livelier and help people feel like you’re on the same side.
Use free headline or post title generators
And I am saving the best for last. If despite all the ideas I listed out, you are unable to think of ideas for what to write about or if your creative juices aren’t flowing on that particular day, well I have got great news for you.
Getting a good title for a blog or coming up with great blog post headlines couldn’t be easier thanks to these tools.
Some of the popular ones available are:
- SEOPressor’s Title Generator
- Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer
- Hemingway Sharethrough
- Blog Title Generator – BlogAbout by Impact
These blogging tools basically require you to add your keywords into their generators and thereby generate a list of creative and catchy blog post titles for you to choose from.
Additionally, if you’re using WordPress and not much of a programmer, you can add Custom Title WordPress Plugin to easily edit and customize the WordPress post title replacing the need to add coded styles to the page.
To wrap
Well, that’s all folks and I truly hope these blog post title tips will have given you enough ideas for what to write about and will help you write titles to get your audience excited, make your titles more bold and effective and make them pay attention.
Writing headlines isn’t rocket science but it sure does take a lot of work and practice to effectively integrate keywords and make maximum impact.
Implement the suggestions I have listed out, and you will be able to increase your traffic and revenue in no time.
We hope you found this article useful and informative as always. Do leave your valuable comments below and don’t forget to share this article with your friends.
Guest Author: Hello! My name is Gaurav Jain, a full time Internet Marketer and Blogger from Gurgaon, India. I manage a blog www.eMoneyIndeed.com, where I write about Making Money Online – SEO – Blogging and much more. Do check it out! You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks.
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