The importance of good blog titles and headlines
The most important part of your blog post when it comes to SEO is the blog title. People find your content by way of searches on major search engines and from those who share it on bookmarking and social networking sites. Writing a title for a blog post for the web is different than writing for a publication. When writing a blog post your title headline should be a summary of the content.
I was reading an interesting post over at kathyblogger.com titled “How Sex Can Help You Write Articles That People Cannot Resist Reading” that resulted in my writing this post.
In her post she says that any time you tie sex into whatever you are talking about, you will see an increase in traffic. What Kathy fails to note is that this kind of traffic tends to have a higher bounce rate.
(Kathy does give some humorous post titles and I do recommend you read her post.)
What is a bounce rate?
A “Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the landing page (entrance page).”
In clearer terms someone entered your site, and left it without clicking on another post.
The Wrong Keywords for Blog Titles
In January I wrote about using the right keywords in your title after I experienced what using the wrong keywords can do.
I used the words sweet vagina in a post I wrote about vagina lollipops. This resulted in me showing up in Google SERPS for the words sweet vagina. Visitors landing on the post didn’t wish to read about vagina lollipops. That is not what they were searching for. By using what I thought was a catchy title, I attracted the “wrong” traffic.
For the full post about my experience please see “Using the right Keywords.”
How to Choose Keywords for your Blog Titles
One of the factors that affect your position in the search engine results pages is your blog title. When writing blog titles for your post, remember to keep in mind how someone doing a search will find your post.
When choosing the the title for your blog post, I recommend using ‘Google AdWords Keyword Too‘ or ‘WordTracker free Keyword tool.’
Making Outrageous claims and promises
In Darren’s post “How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog ” he offers a tip of using big claims and promises to draw your readers in. He says that one problem with this is if you can’t actually back them up with the post itself, you run the risk of putting readers offside. This is why I believe your title should stay true to your content.
Closing Thoughts
I believe that having a great title for your blog post is an absolute must. Coming up with a catchy title that draws readers in isn’t always easy and something I myself have struggled with.
Points to remember:
Keep your titles short and relevant.
Don’t over stuff your titles with keywords.
Guess what people are searching for.
Also remember that people are sharing your posts on social networks. You want to create content that speaks to your readers and that they will want to share.
Fabulous foreplay- How to tease may sound like a catchy headline and might draw a number of readers in, but my post has nothing to do with foreplay. If someone clicked on the title via Twitter or a search engine they may be very disappointed when they got here.
Using sex to draw readers in or writing a humorous post title might seem like a good idea, and may draw in traffic, but using the actual phrases that people are searching for is your blog post is much better in the long run.
Your thoughts?
Further Reading
For further reading on writing blog post titles please see:
How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog by Problogger
Writing Better Blog Post Titles by Lorelle VanFossen
Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog by Lorelle VanFossen
Why Some People Almost Always Write Great Post Titles
How to Write Killer Blog Titles & Why Mine Suck
Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Headlines by David Garfinkel
How To Choose a Blog Post Title by Rose DesRochers ( That’s me)
Related Post:
- – How To Choose a Blog Post Title
– How To Write Blogs
– Using the right Keywords
– Creating Killer Titles To Advance Your Blog
– Blog Optimization- Optimizing your Blog for the Search Engines
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September 15th, 2010 at 7:47 am
Well,
If anyone knows a thing or two about using sexy words in page titles – that would be you Rose. (lol)
You took the idea a step farther and dug into the pros and cons better. I can see it having a higher bounce rate, especially if the post is not relevant to the audience you are targeting. I think it is very important to keep part of the title directly relevant to your target audience.
If you just mention sex and nothing relevant to your audience, then you are going to get lots of traffic that has no interest in your real content. They will bounce.
If you use the marketing tactic to draw more visitors from your target audience, by adding relevant keywords to your target audience into the title along with the sexy words, then I suspect your bounce rate will be somewhat lower. And, you might actually pick up a new fan of your site.
You can bet that you will draw some traffic that is only interested in the part about sex. They will bounce. Might be a good opportunity to throw a giant Google Adsense block on that page right dead smack in the center above the fold. Then when people bounce, you might get them to bounce through one of those ads.
Hmmm…….
Good stuff Rose. And yes, I agree that using phrases that people are searching for in your post is way better in the long run.
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Rose DesRochers Reply:
September 15th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
It doesn’t matter if you use relevant keywords along with those sexy words. You are still going to appear in the SERPS for unrelated keywords and that is not a good thing.
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September 15th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Agreed about key words. One tip I’ve read, applied: Use the keyword and SEO terms for the post headline and save the “clever” for Twitter and other feeds.
Another good keyword to juice up a headline: porn
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Rose DesRochers Reply:
September 16th, 2010 at 11:53 pm
Good point Davina. Let me test this.
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September 15th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
I agree Rose. I don’t want to get the name for being a bad neighbourhood by using those types of blog titles.
I stay true to what my blog is about and people know when they visit what they will be reading about.
I have only done one blog title which would peak people’s curiosity but it stayed on topic.
Patricia Perth Australia
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Rose DesRochers Reply:
September 16th, 2010 at 1:01 am
Good for you.
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September 16th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Good advice Rose. I follow most of what you’ve outlined, however I tend to try and give my titles some metaphoric or humorous leeway in order to draw readers in through curiousity. Descriptive titles are good, titles that describe and make people curious as to just what you’re on about can be even better.
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Rose DesRochers Reply:
September 17th, 2010 at 12:03 am
Freelancing: My Ticket Out of Happy Acres is certainly an interesting title. lol
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September 17th, 2010 at 8:32 am
@Rose DesRochers:
Hehe, thanks. I did manage to get my site focus into it at least;)
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October 28th, 2010 at 7:43 am
This is a really funny blog post – I’ve been a fitness blogger for about 1.5 years now and I have to agree that titles are extremely important in getting people to read them. Unfortunately, has only been a short time that I have been focusing on other keywords besides my main theme to attract people. Since I have been doing that I have doubled my traffic.
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