A catchy title is the most important part of your blog post. But why? Readers see a creative title and associate it with an interesting post. If they see a very generic title, they associate it with a generic post, and might not find it worth their time to read. The title also appears in a variety of places, such as RSS feeds, search engine results, and even links from fellow bloggers, so it is important that it stands out.
Try and keep the title relatively short. Sometimes less really is more in terms of titles. You can grab a reader’s attention with a short title just as much as you can with a very wordy one. Shorter titles are also better for search engines, as the first 65 characters or so are the ones that the search engines pick up on.
One way to grab the attention of your reader is to add some humor to your title. When done right, it can attract many readers. Finding the right balance of humor is essential, however, for too much humor can cause your readers to not take you seriously. If you plan on doing a humorous title, try and incorporate a few keywords into the humor, so that it is better recognized by search engines.
Another approach is personalizing the title. Readers respond when a form of “you” is in the title. Despite the fact that there are hundreds or thousands of people reading your blog, such a simple word can make each post more personal-feeling to the reader. An example of this would be “How to Make Your Website Stand Out.” See how much more personal that is than “How to Make Websites Stand Out?”
Keywords are definitely something that you should consider including in your title. When trying to quickly find information on something, readers will skim for words relating to that topic. If they see these words in your title, guess what they will take a few minutes to read? Keywords in titles are also important for search engines, as they will help your blog to have a higher rank in the search results. Having a keyword as the first word of your title will increase your ranking even more.
A couple more quick tips to consider:
Use words that you know will evoke a response. Words such as “free” or “quick and easy” are very likely going to capture the attention of readers.
While using elaborate words may make your title look fancy and sophisticated, make sure that your audience will actually know what the words mean. No one wants to read a post where they had to look up four of the title’s words in the dictionary.
Make sure the title pertains to what your post is about. Don’t have a catchy phrase about boats when your post is really about computers. This can disappoint readers and mislead search engines.
A catchy title, while very important, is only the beginning of your blogging experience. Stay tuned for how to hook a reader by the first sentence of your post.
Ready to start your own blog? Visit us at Startmynewblog.com and start blogging today!