What’s in a name? Just how critical is a blog post title to the overall success of that post? How does it impact how many readers you get or how many of those readers will pass it on? Quite simply – hugely. Writing a killer title is crucial. Here’s why:

SEO Benefits

The title holds more weight with the search engines than the body of content does. Therefore it is critical to include an idea in the title of what your article is about through using a related keyword. Google and the other search engines rely on crawlers or bots to tell them what topic content on the internet covers. You need to make it clear to these bots exactly what your post is about.

Letting your readers know what it’s about

We work longer hours, we eat lunch at our desks, sleep less and have mastered the art of multi tasking (ok, some of us have). Why? Because we’re busy. So if someone is looking for an article about something specific, they’re hardly likely to read ten or more full article just to find one that they are looking for. They’re much more likely instead to peruse a few titles and only read in full the articles whose title indicates that it covers the topic they’re interested in. So your title also has the job of informing human readers of the topic matter.

Not too much information!

I know I just said it’s important to give an idea of the topic matter in your title. But go easy on the info! If, for example, your article is about the human-dog relationship, your title could be something as simple as “The Bond Between Humans and Dogs.” It would be giving a little too much info to call it, “How the relationship between dogs and humans has developed since the evolution of the domestic dog from the grey wolf many thousands of years ago.” Not so catchy. And ok, that’s probably a rather extreme example, but balancing the title between not enough and too much information is critical. If you give the readers a load of facts in your title, why do they even need to read the article?

Spark Interest

If your title can include an idea as to what the topic is but then leave the reader with questions they want answers too, you’re likely to persuade them to read. Ask a question in your title. Returning to our dog-related example, you could pose the question in the title, “How did the relationship between humans and dogs develop?”

Humour

Whether or not you inject a little humour into your post titles depends largely upon the type of blog you are writing from. A very serious site with serious readers who read purely for the educational value is probably not the best place for humour. But a light hearted leisurely reader site would be. Again on that dog post, something like, “Why men prefer dogs to their wives – The Human-Dog relationship.”

Essentially, when writing a title, you need to consider the fact that your readers expect to get something by reading your article, whether its entertainment, information or something else. Giving an indication of “what’s in it for them,” in the title invites readers in effectively.

[This is a guest post by Stacey Cavanagh, an online marketer for Tecmark: SEO Liverpool and Manchester]

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