How to Write the Perfect Blog Title

So you’re looking to create the perfect blog title, eh?  You’ve created excellent content and are ready to share your hard work with your readers and the rest of the internet.  Your title is often your one shot to entice readers to click and read your content… and hopefully they will read it since according to Chartbeat, the company that measures real-time traffic for such companies like Upwothy, there is little correlation between social shares and people actually reading content, at least in the case of Twitter.  Ugh! What?! Why are we even badgering our brains to create meaningful and useful content?  Because for every buffoon who wants to look intelligent by sharing a blog post, there are twice as many people genuinely searching for good content or who will read said buffoon’s shared article and find it useful.  So either way, it all boils down to your bomb ass TITLE, the gateway to your content.

How to Write the Perfect Blog Title

Create a Working Title

Instead of just choosing a topic as your title, be specific!  A working title will be precise, have a niche and will reflect your content accurately.  For example, instead of “Social Sharing Buttons” as a title, which could go in many different directions, opt for something along the lines of “How to Add Social Sharing to Your Content Marketing” or anything that would be more specific to what your content reflects.  It will help you to ramble less and help readers to find exactly what they are looking for.

Don’t Be Bombastic

Help not hype.  Make sure your title accurately reflects what you are writing about and isn’t just inflated with catchy words.  If a title sounds extreme and exciting but has little to do with your content and isn’t useful or meaningful you will lose readership.

Keep it Short

Usually your blog title will appear as your title tag in search results.  Therefore, it is good to keep your title character count below Google’s display limit of 70 characters so the whole title will appear in the SERPs (search engine results page).  Another general rule of thumb is to keep your title limited to about eight words, give or take.  Shorter titles also comfortably fit into tweets.  However, these are general guidelines and if you have an excellent title that exceeds these quotes, go ahead, be brave and publish it!

Optimize for SEO Keywords

Clarity should be your main goal, but optimizing for SEO is beneficial, so keep both in mind.  Placing important keywords close to the front of the title will help your posts ranking and increase the likelihood of readers clicking on it on search pages.  Using Google Adwords Keywords Tool can also help you find the most popular search keywords based off of their usage.

Get Creative

Making an exciting title will grab a readers attention.  You don’t want to go overboard but creativity will help you stand out.  Use alliteration or strong phrases that pack a punch, ask a question, or use a list format.  All of these options will help differentiate your title.

High five friend, you’re on your way to blogging wonders!