If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a good blog title is worth a thousand clicks. But a bad one, well, that’s a different story. Your blog title is the arguably the most important component of your content; if it’s good, it will entice people to click it to read the content. A good title can make the difference between only your mother reading your content and attracting a wider audience of the kinds of people you want to read it (potential customers).
If you’re not getting the results you want with your blog content, you might be making these grievous errors with your blog title.
1. It’s Not Intriguing
A good blog title should be curiosity-piquing and interesting. It should make people scratch their heads and wonder what they’ll learn if they click it to read your article. Show a little leg, but not too much. Here’s an example:
Before: 6 Things to Know About Parakeets
After: 6 Critical Facts You Must Know Before Buying a Parakeet
The first title is bland and vanilla. But you see how the second title creates a sense of urgency and makes you feel you absolutely must click the title (if you’re thinking about buying a parakeet, of course)?
2. It’s Too Long
Did you know that a blog title any longer than 70 characters will be cut off in Google search results? If your titles have been too long, people might not be getting the full benefit of them in search results, and so might not click on them. Here’s how that can work against you:
Anything and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Buying and Caring for Orchids
In this example, everything that comes after “Caring” would be truncated in a Google search. So people wouldn’t know what your article would tell them how to buy and care for, and so they probably wouldn’t click on your title.
Keep your titles short and to the point. Simply cutting out the “Anything and” from the example title would ensure that it was short enough to be fully included in search results.
Poor woman. She’s been reading one blog title since noon.
3. You’re Going Crazy with Keywords
You’ve heard how important keywords are to your content, and so you try to use them everywhere you can, including your title. While, yes, in general, it’s a good idea to include a keyword, only do so if it sounds natural. It’s easier to sound natural if you don’t try to use a giant keyword phrase and stick instead to just one word:
Before: 5 Ways to Get Your San Diego Plumbing and Repair Needs Met
After: 5 Things to Know Before Hiring a Plumbing and Repair Specialist
It’s tempting to get the entire phrase in, but it just makes the title awkward, and no one clicks on awkward titles. You can use “San Diego” in the article to get the job done. Less is more, people.
4. Your Title is Vague
In addition to not being intriguing, your title doesn’t really tell readers what your content is about. And so they don’t click. With so much content competing for your readers’ attention, you need to specify exactly what people can learn if they read your blog post.
Before: 10 Things to Know About Businesses
After: Top 10 Success Secrets from Highly Effective Business Owners
With just a little more effort put into crafting more engaging and specific titles, you can greatly increase the number of views a given blog post gets!
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