Your Title is Vital: Writing Compelling Post Titles
When you see a post in a news listing or newsletter, you usually make a snap decision about whether or not you will read it based on three elements. These are:
- The thumbnail
- The preview of the text
- The title
If your goal is getting people to open and read your content, then these three elements are essential to fulfilling your goal. This post (as you may have guessed from the title) will review a couple of tips and tricks for crafting compelling post titles.
Why does a title matter?
As we’ve already established, interesting titles make for more clicks, and more engagement with your content. But if that’s not enough for you to take titles seriously, there are a few more ways in which titles can impact the success of your content:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the words in your title play a big role in determining how high a search engine will rank your post.
- Accessibility and usability: if your title does not match the contents of your post, you have successfully misled and most likely frustrated the reader.
- Capturing attention: like in the example in the introduction, the title has a major role to play in capturing the attention of readers and persuading them to open your article.
All that to say, a title is just as important as (or maybe more so than) your content itself!
How do I create a good title?
Don’t lie: tell the reader what your article is actually about
Sure, the title “The exact solution to every single one of your problems (+ 15 cute kitten pics)” is attention grabbing and certainly promises a great and useful article. Unfortunately, overselling your article and misleading your readers is sure to lead to disappointment and frustration, instead of happy and engaged readers (especially if you only included 14 kitten pics).
In reality, “lying” about your title is usually less drastic. You might be tempted to write something like “Everything you need to know about writing an article” when your article is actually just about choosing a great title. Narrowing your title down to precisely what is in the article is more effective, and wards off angry readers who were looking to learn about finding article topics or using headings.
Use keywords… naturally
Historically, it was common practice to “keyword stuff ” your posts, including the titles. The logic was that SEO favoured content that used keywords frequently. Since then, most search engines have evolved to detect and ignore keyword stuffing. Besides, it also makes content read like it has a product placement deal with the keyword.
While keyword stuffing is no longer a best practice (or even a good one), using keywords where appropriate ensures that people searching for those words can find your post.
For example, some keywords for this post might be: title, blog, best, writing, how to. Rearrange those keywords and you have a perfectly good title: How to write the best blog titles.
Keep it short
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest book title is 4,558 words or 27,978 characters. It’s about stocks.
We definitely don’t recommend following in the footsteps of N. Srinivasan and competing for the world record. What we do recommend is keeping your title short and sweet. Some estimates recommend around 55-60 characters or a maximum of 6-10 words. While there isn’t a hard and fast rule, using enough words to catch a reader’s interest, but not too many as to lose it again is ideal.
Use numbers where applicable
You might be familiar with listicles: articles that are structured as lists and proudly announce so in their titles. These will usually be something like “17 Kitten Pictures that Will Make Your Day” or “5 Tips on How to Bake the Best Quiche”.
This is absolutely a technique you can use to create a post title. Numbers are attention grabbing (odd numbers slightly more so!), and also tell the reader exactly what they’re getting in the post. However, forcing every post into a listicle format isn’t an approach you want to take either. So, use numbers only where they make sense.
For example, if I had titled this article “7 Title Writing Tips”, I might have also numbered the tips to better reflect the title (and pre-emptively saved you from counting how many tips I actually included).
Take your time
You don’t need to start with the title. In fact, it’s usually easier to come up with a title after you’ve written the article itself. If you want a title that accurately reflects the post itself, then having a complete article before settling on a title is ideal. Titles can also evolve as you write and remove or add topics to your post.
Get a peer to review it
After spending a long time with your own content, you might be oblivious to a good title opportunity that will jump out at a peer reviewer. When you get a second pair of eyes on your article, you also get double the brainpower coming up with title suggestions.
I took my own advice and shared this article with some coworkers to get their title suggestions and/or pick which of my ideas they liked:
- Quick Tricks to Pick Up Clicks: Writing Compelling Post Titles
- What’s In a Name? : Writing Compelling Post Titles
- A Sense of Entitlement: Writing Compelling Post Titles
- Your Title is Vital: Writing Compelling Post Titles which Rhyme
- Titles are Vital: Writing Titles in Haiku Attracts More Readers
Test out several options
As you may be able to tell from the list above, I didn’t just go with the first title that occurred to me. Comparing several titles and getting feedback on them from colleagues is a great strategy to choose the ideal post title.
In Conclusion
Titles are an important component of your post. They boost SEO, capture the reader’s attention, and indicate to them what the article will contain. There are several tips and tricks you can take advantage of to craft compelling post titles:
- Don’t lie: tell the reader what your article is actually about
- Use keywords… naturally
- Keep it short
- Use numbers where applicable
- Take your time
- Get a peer to review it
- Test out several options