As you can see from my weekly blog link roundup, I’ve been thinking about titles lately. Titles are important in all writing, but they are extremely important when you’re blogging. Why?

1. Readers use your title to evaluate your post. Because people naturally skim rather than peruse, your titles are going to catch your visitors’ eyes. More than that, if you offer RSS feeds, many of your readers will decide whether or not to read your new post based solely on the title. If it doesn’t grab them, or doesn’t immediately make sense, your post won’t get the audience it deserves.
2. Search engines expect the title to summarize the post. Just like readers, search engines evaluate you based on your titles. The way most blogs are set up, the title is a prominent feature. Search engines pick up on this, and look for keywords in your title for clues about the topic. If your title doesn’t accurately represent the post, you’ll miss out on some search engine visitors.

So what makes a good title?

1. Accuracy. There’s a reason this is number one! If your title is a good representation of your post, you’re on the right track. Sometimes it’s very tempting to go cutesy (and I have a hard time resisting a good pun), but a straightforward, to-the-point kind of title will be more useful to your readers.
2. Search-friendly words and phrases. Take a moment to think about who really needs this post. What would they search for to find the information you’re sharing? Use those words or phrases in your title to attract those people to your post.
3. Emotional involvement. If you can make your title emotional (without overdoing it to the point where it’s hype), you’ll inspire people to read. Take a look at the 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work and notice how many of them evoke emotion. If you can work emotion in while still being accurate, you’ll be writing successful post titles. An interesting tool to play with is the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer (but take it with a grain of salt).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 4:05 pm by Sarah Lewis and is filed under Tips. It's also tagged accuracy, audience, blogging, emotion, hype, marketing, search engine visitors, search engines, seo, titles, topic, Writing. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.