Try these useful tips to grab your reader’s attention from the get-go.
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It’s the meat of your post that counts, but, more often than not, it’s your post title that first signals to potential visitors they should hop over to your blog. In this post from our archives, Krista gives us some great pointers on crafting titles that work.
You’ve been working hard on your blog: you put thought and effort into your About page, your site title and tagline, and you’ve even picked a funky blog name. You sweat your photography. You read and re-read your drafts to make sure they’re just so.
With over 1.4 million posts published on WordPress.com every day, how do you make sure your work stands out in the crowd? Crafting strong post titles is one way to snag reader attention, pique interest, attract followers, and earn repeat visits. Here are some ideas to think about as you write titles for your posts.
Get original
There are plenty of posts like What Game of Thrones Taught me About Modern Society or Everything I know about Marriage, I Learned from Homer Simpson in the world today.
How many listicles have you seen recently? You know what I’m talking about: 10 Signs Millennials Will Ruin the World, or 15 Ways to Tell if You Really Are a Hipster. Sure, these types of headlines have become commonplace on the web and we too enjoy a funny listicle now and again. If you want your work to stand out from the crowd, you might want to rethink these types of constructions, unless you feel you’ve got a piece that transcends the genre. And in that case, we can’t wait to read it.
Study the masters
Chances are, there’s title inspiration and guidance in the blogs and magazine articles you’re already reading. Are there a few sites or magazines that you really like? Study their titles. Consider what it is about these titles that draws you in.
What captured your attention? What tickled your curiosity? Try emulating your favorite authors when you write post titles. Me? I admire Maria Popova‘s title writing style over at Brain Pickings. Never trite, always enticing, Maria’s posts always end up in my Instapaper account for later brain feeding. Here’s a few Brain Pickings post titles that caught my attention:
- The History of Philosophy, in Superhero Comics
- Henry James on Aging, Memory, and What Happiness Really Means
- J.R.R. Tolkien’s Little-Known, Gorgeous Art
Lead with the end in mind
If you’re writing to educate, be it to share a personal anecdote or offer hard-won advice, it’s good to ask yourself: What’s the most important thing I want my reader to remember from reading this post? Crafting the answer into a post title automatically reinforces your most important point for the reader, making sure your message not only gets heard, but remembered.
Try creating intrigue or using the element of surprise with titles by alluding to something readers can only see or learn by reading the post. Consider Maria Popova’s headline above, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Little-Known, Gorgeous Art. Right away, I’m surprised — One of my favorite authors — Bilbo Baggins‘ daddy no less — was not only a writer, but also an artist? This piece of new information makes me want to follow that link and find out about Tolkien’s works of art.
BONUS: How do Google, Twitter, and Facebook see it?
Your post’s title automatically becomes your post’s slug, which is part of the permanent link or URL to your post.
If your post title is fairly long, (over six or seven words) consider editing your slug to remove words such as “to,” “from,” “our,” “this,” “that,” etc., that don’t specifically relate to the post’s topic, for speedier search engine parsing. For example, this post’s slug would have been:
/perennial-favorites-post-titles-that-boost-your-traffic
I shortened the slug to the following to put the emphasis on the main idea: writing great post titles.
/great-post-titles
If you’ve got your blog automatically connected to push and tweet posts to Facebook and Twitter, post titles are what gets sent out as a default via Publicize, so it’s important to consider how your post’s title might be perceived when it appears on your social networks.
As you write your piece, you may also want to think about the words readers will use to search for your post and ensure those words get a place in the title.
And now, over to you
Writing enticing titles is not only an art form, it takes a bit of practice. In your blogging experience, what have you found most effective when it comes to blog post titles? Share your tips with the class in the comments.
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When I initially commented I seem to have clicked on the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and from now on each time a comment is added I recieve four emails with the same comment. There has to be a way you are able to remove me from that service? Thanks a lot!
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You need to remove yourself. Click on the “Unsubscribe from all follow-up comments ” at the bottom of one of those e-mails.
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Great Tips. It’s always difficult to decide on a title for a post. But this article going to make it easier now.
#GirlOnTheMove
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Thank you for leading me to this one from the archives! I especially liked the advice about shortening the “slug”. Shame I can’t do the same with the ones in my garden…
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This is such great advise, especially for us new bloggers. I always think of the title of my post first as it’s often what then leads me on to writing the post. I do occasionally change the post title but usually to something I like. Perhaps I should think more about the reader than myself, but then I’d probably not be happy with my post title and, then maybe, just maybe, not press that publish button?
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Awesome post! 🙂 Would have loved to see more examples. 🙂
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Great ideas! I personally am drawn to the blog titles that sound like a bit of poetry. I’ve only got a few posts to my name so far, but for at least one of them, I tried to pull the poetry from my prose for my title, “Going to the Blue.”
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I will pay attention to what titles catch my eye in magazines. I have been disappointed when the content is kinda of different from the title, misleading.
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I am now, officially, going to ensure that my ‘Titles’ or ‘captions’ are not so PANTS! They will improve!
I also need to improve the overall ‘appearance’ of the thing, to make it a little more professional.
Pro.Fessional.
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Good discussion. I often found that post titles can either be a grabber or off putting. For example: if someone wants to write about how to be happy and manifest their heart’s desire and chooses a post title as something like this “12 Ways to achieve true happiness”. To me is off putting because it’s too normal, too common, too boring as there are millions of similar posts. But if the title is more in line with “Positive thinking is not enough”. Than that’s a grabber. I would want to know more. I would want to know “Really?! So what else is there to achieve true happiness?”. See the difference.
I always choose my post titles as if I was a potential reader.
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I hadn’t really thought about titles before but all of this is so helpful! I never edit my slugs so thank you for the great tip 🙂
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Titles are the trickiest things to craft!
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As an experiment, I once posted a title that could be construed as having a slight sexual connotation. As I suspected, it drew in more traffic than usual. The post itself did not live up to the potential expectation so there was no increase in ‘likes’ or ‘comments’–just traffic. I’ve often said to legitimate bloggers curious about increasing their traffic that it would be fairly easy as long as you didn’t care what that traffic was.
As for me, aside from the one experiment, I try my best to create titles that catch the essence of the post, always attempting to keep it fresh if not somehow clever. (I can’t say whether I actually achieve ‘clever’ when I want to.)
Most times, the title comes first–the result of a basic topic with a twist. I then rely on the title to help me stay focused as the post evolves.
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Just like headlines get me to click on an article.
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Great blog post. Great food for thought 🙂
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I struggle with titles . Changing the slug tip is worthwhile thanks !
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Buzzfeed and Upworthy titles work really good. Human beings are naturally curious, so it works 🙂
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In spite of my best efforts in blogging, i m not getting success. My blog is on solving everyday’s problems. I don’t want to pay, can you suggest.
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How do you define success? You have to blog for the love of it. Blogging for traffic is difficult and often disappointing.
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Heres you are wrong – DailyPost page shows “Grow your audience” heading – that says “Publishing is only half of blogging- building your community is the other half. Here’s how.”
I am blogging not for myself dear.
I like to tell to take the benefit of my writing and make their life easier.
I welcome you to check my blog and feature it on wordpress. regards
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There’s an important distinction between growing an audience of engaged readers who read your work and comment thoughtfully, and blogging to get page views (traffic).
All the content that we publish at The Daily Post is geared to help inspire you to create content that you’re passionate about which helps you attract that audience of thoughtful people.
The best place to ask for feedback on your blog is our weekly Community Pool feature, which we run each Sunday.
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Listings are just fine to attract clicks, but I think readers are slowly getting bored with them.
What do you think about the effectiveness of headlines which imply that the article answers an interesting question (such as ‘Do you know what to do when…’)?
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I like those types of headlines — provided the article is thoughtfully written and does answer the question posed.
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I agree of what you are telling in the first Paragraph. And should be focus in what to do and what to share… Thanks and looking forward to your other articles..
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