How much time do you spend on coming up with a blog post title? Seconds? Or is it more like minutes or hours? Do you research it or just go with the first thing that comes to your head? Writing a blog post takes time (I get it), so the temptation to slap any old title on it once you’ve finished is completely understandable. The thing is though, it doesn’t matter if what you’ve written is the most riveting, well thought-out and informative post on the internet; if it’s not got a good title, people aren’t going to click on it. I’m sorry: tough love and all that.
People are busy and their attention online is constantly being pulled in a hundred different directions. What is it about your blog post title that is going to make them stop scrolling, and click instead? Our attention span is at its lowest ever, at just 8 seconds. Your first impression - your blog post title - has to grab them by the ears and maintain eye contact for an uncomfortably long time. No not really, but it does need to be enticing enough to interrupt the mindless scroll. Some might consider this click bait, but honestly; if you’re providing something of value that’s going to educate or help people in some way AND you aren’t being deliberately misleading about the content of your article, click bait that bad boy up.
All of this stuff about eye-catching blog post titles comes even before you consider the SEO impact of a good quality title. You need people to click on your article if you want to convince Google it should be the number one result! Say you’ve written a post about your home composting system. This is good quality information that plenty of people these days are going to be interested in. But then you name it “My Home Compost”. Look… I want to have a home compost, and even my eyes would completely gloss over it. While it does contain your keywords, it doesn’t offer me any indication of what I’m going to get if I do give you my click.
So where to start?
Google It
The first place you should start with a new blog post topic is Google. Google, after all, is what we’re all aspiring to: that coveted number one search engine ranking. Google starts to give you blog post title suggestions the second you start typing.
Then it gives you more and more!
Any of these may relate to what you’ve already written, or it might get those creative juices flowing for what you can write about next. These results are there because Google has determined they’re important to your search. This is because they’re important to the other people who also made this search; the very people you’re trying to reach!
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Prozely
Prozely is a blog title generator; simply type in your topic (“home compost”) and get a list of possible blog post titles you could use for that topic. Not all of them are golden, but it will get you thinking about the different ways you can phrase your title in order to grab the readers’ attention. I know I wouldn't scroll past "The Shocking Truth about a Home Compost"!
Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a very excellent tool that will give so many potential options for a blog post title. It’ll start by giving you a visualisation of the types of questions people ask search engines when researching your topic (get it? Answer the public?). It’ll also give you options that include popular prepositions and comparisons. Obviously don’t pick a question for your blog post title that your blog post doesn’t answer; you’ll just piss people off. But people love to get Google to answer their questions, so having their questions as your title will set you up for having a pretty good chance at getting those clicks.
Keysearch
Keysearch will help you understand how competitive your blog post topic is. This might help you make a decision about what keywords you’ll be targeting in your blog post title, and throughout your article.
If you click on “Explorer” at the top of the screen, you can enter your URL to see what competition level you should be targeting if you wish to rank for a keyword. A low rank doesn’t mean you can’t use high ranking phrases, it just means it’ll be that much harder to see your post on page one.
Click on "Keyword Research" and type in your topic to see how it ranks. As you can see, “home compost” is a very competitive phrase! Luckily, Keysearch will also provide you with a list of similar keywords that you can choose to “check” to see if there’s a different phrase you should be targeting instead. This may change the direction of your blog post title; and indeed the blog post overall.
All this being said, don’t let high results like this one discourage you from saying what you want or need to say. You still have your unique audience that follow you and will find your blog in other ways. Google isn’t the only way people find websites!
Coschedule
Finally, Coschedule’s headline analyser will score your blog post title based on the potential emotional response. You can then make adjustments and select the one with the best “emotional” score. Coschedule works on the logic that emotional headlines are much more likely to convert, especially happy or positive ones!
Coschedule will also give you recommendations based on the length of your title, and what parts of it readers are most likely to see when skimming. Further down you’ll also see a Google search preview and a preview for how this title will appear in inboxes.
So there you go! There is no reason for basic boring blog post titles, and 5 good tools for creating engaging, interesting and emotional blog post titles that are much more likely to get eyes on screen!
Cheers,
Laura x
[Related] 11 Things to Do Before Publishing Your Blog Post
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