One of the biggest issues I see with published blog posts is the title.
Why?
Mainly because of the lack of targeted keywords AND the lack of creativity within the title.
Page titles are a very important part of your published post because the title is used as part of the search engine ranking algorithm.
Bad title = low ranking.
Great title = vastly improved ranking.
Let’s take the issues one by one:
Search Engine Optimization: Lack Of Targeted Keyword
You are publishing a blog post because you want more traffic to your site AND you want to share your great knowledge…so you become the expert in your chosen niche.
In order to improve the ranking you want the title to include your targeted keyword phrase for that blog post.
You also want the title to be no more than 65 characters in length as that is the most characters Google displays when people search.
Targeted Keyword Title Example:
Let’s say your targeted keyword phrase is: “Body Detox”
Some bloggers won’t include the keyword phrase and create a title like: “Feeling Good”
Having a page title like that will not rank for the keyword phrase “Body Detox”.
Others will use the targeted keyword phrase. Perhaps: “A Complete Body Detox”
Having a page title like that will rank for the keyword phrase “Body Detox” but may not get many clicks from the people searching because of…
…Lack of Creativity
When you perform a search via the search engines, the results show 2 parts:
- The actual title of the page
- The description of the page (we will cover this in a later blog post)
In order to entice people to click on the page title and read more…don’t you think the title has to be enticing?
Would you click on a title like “Body Detox”?
Not very enticing it is.
I know I wouldn’t.
I’m skimming for the best title which is going to help me.
What about “A Complete Body Detox” – would you click on that?
Perhaps!
How about: “Whole Body Detox – Feel Great In 10 Easy Steps”?
A little more creative than the others, don’t you think?
Which means more people will click on it to read the whole page / post.
How to add creativity to your page / blog post titles
CHEAT!
Look at other websites and blog posts.
And change them to meet your niche.
For example, I saw this blog post recently:
“7 Tips for Creating and Running Your First Membership Site”
How could you change it and use it for your niche?
“10 Tips for Getting the most from your body detox”
“3 Super Tips for Quick And Easy Stress Relief”
Another way to cheat is to look at magazine headlines.
Magazines sell…all because of the headlines on the front cover.
Take a look at your favourite magazines and see if you can ‘steal’ any headlines.
One more idea:
This e-guide lists 981 titles that Cosmopolitan has used on their front cover for the past several years.
You can use them and change them to suit your blog post and niche.
Headline Swipe File
A couple of examples from the guide:
Cosmos title: “Is you skin aging too fast?”
Possible blog post title: “Body Detox: Stop Your Skin Aging Too Fast”
Cosmos title: “Diet tricks experts don’t dare tell you (but we will)”
Possible blog post title: “Body Detox experts don’t dare tell you (but we will)”
See how easy it can be to improve your page / blog post titles.
You can get this invaluable resource here:
Headline Swipe File
Search Engine Optimization: Why Page Titles Matter Summary:
Ensure your website pages / blog posts include your targeted keywords and are enticing. That way you’ll increase your natural traffic from the search engines.
What are your thoughts?
How do you entice people to click on the search links to your blog posts?
Please leave your comments below.
I gave up writing blog titles for search engines ages ago.
99% of my blog traffic comes from social media anyway so for me it’s all about giving followers a reason to click.
I use numbered lists a lot – it gives the impression that it’s a quick and easy article to read that will give them something useful to take away
Mark,
That sounds like a good appraoch.
Perhaps mix it up a bit – do both?
What do you think?
Andrew
Page Titles matter a lot in SEO.
Not only can it attract a person but it can be easily indexed and ranked when you are targeting certain keywords with your Page title.
Nice article though 🙂
Your article solved what i made mistakes earlier. My thinking was wrong, Attractive Title is the primary way to attract all the visitors to read your post. Then after comes other sources like images, fonts and videos. But using a keyword and all that matters to get more traffic was something that I was not known to. Thanks for the great info. I will look after all your points for my new post.
I also agree that the ctr increases if you use a eye catchy title for the post
of course title is key to get high rank on Google search engine. but after upgradation of Google keyword tool to keyword planner its really hard to find good keyword. may be because is keyword planner new and buggy right now.
title can give you huge traffic even if your content doesn’t deserve it that is the importance of title
People often overlook the importance of doing the small things right and straight away look at how to get a bunch of links ( generally spammy ones) and get an even spammier title and have content brute forcing keywords without a bother to what happens to the user if they magically rank for the search keyword. When will SEO’s understand that its not about how much stuff you get done but about the quality in what you are doing. The guidelines are there for a good reason..its time all SEO’s pay attention to that resource before resorting to grey hat..
Great suggestions – think I need to review my sites titles right away after reading this. Thanks!
Justin,
I wouldn’t necessarily review you existing titles. Perhaps just improve the future ones?
Andrew
Page titles matters in Search engine optimization. It lets the users know the topic of the post and acts as a good SEO aspect if we place the targeted keyword in it.
So, we must always place targeted keyword in titles. And we should remember that we should not attempt ‘Keyword Stuffing’ which Google hates.
Hi Mark,
Great post. It’s always good to be reminded about the simple things. Getting headlines from magazines and the local rags is something I do.
I was told this long ago. I agree that you have to make your title interesting or no one will read it.
Thanks so much for all the info. So much valuable info on your blog.
Thanks for taking the time to share with us.
Geri Richmond
Geri,
‘Stealing’ titles from mags etc is a great approach. I do it all the time.
Andrew
Oh, no! I suspected I should make some changes in the titles, but now I am sure, I need to! 🙁 Nevertheless, thanks a lot – a very informative article!
Robert
You can always start improving your blog titles…from now!
Andrew
Agree with above tips, I my opinion Page title is one the most important thing for On page seo. However Google’s Engineer matt cutts also clear that title come in top 200 ranking factor of google. So i am agree with admin.. Thanks for sharing keep rocking
Hey Andrew,
Nice post and Yes, page title is very important and it should be very attractive. Attractive title attracts many reader and drives traffic. Thanks for sharing this tip.