When it comes to blogging, blog post titles have a lot to do with how your blog is seen (and ranked) by the search engines. If all things were equal, clever titles would entice readers, but search engines neither look at blog posts equally, nor are they particularly clever. As hard as it might be, clever blog post titles may doom your post to search engine oblivion. Ultimately if the search engines don’t find your post or don’t rank it very high in search results, the readers who would have appreciated your clever title will never get to see it.

How do you make your blog post titles attractive to both readers and search engines? Ultimately, you want to appeal to readers, but to get to the readers, you have to get through the search engines. You may need to write your blog post titles a few times to get it noticed by both the search engines and the readers, so start with a basic title that’s reader-oriented.

Short is always better than long. Try to keep your blog post titles short. Don’t worry if your first attempt comes up long; you’ll be editing it anyway.

Make your blog post titles relevant to your post. After you’ve written your title, re-read your post and make sure your title genuinely relates to your subject matter. If not, modify it so that it accurately describes the subject matter.

Select interesting words that make the blog post titles stand out. Try to use words that your audience would use, or that are meaningful to your industry. Sometimes a question, or a seemingly absurd statement can catch a reader’s interest. Re-read your title. If this weren’t your post, would you read it based on its title?

Include keywords in your blog post title. A keyword is a search term that a user would type into a search engine. Keywords must be relevant to the subject matter of your post. When you were planning your blog, you probably developed a short list of keywords related to your subject. Optimize your post titles using those keywords. You won’t have room for more than one or two keywords in a title, but when you have the opportunity to use one or two, take it! If you’re struggling with how to include a keyword in a post title, try starting with the keyword and see what you can come up with.

There are many more techniques you can use to optimize your blog post titles, but if you’re new to blogging, these tips will provide a good starting point.

Photo Credit: Ilker Yavuz