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Your blog title is the face of your article. Even the highest quality and entertaining content will be passed over if the title doesn’t grab the reader’s attention and pull them in. Here are two different ways to construct blog titles that will win readers and boost blog traffic.
Learning from Past Winners
A great start to a blog title is looking at previous high performing articles. Search for an article with content similar to yours that has a high number of Facebook likes, a massive amount of Twitter tweets, gobs of Google+ shares, and/or hundreds of reader comments. Dissect it, learn from it, and use it as a map for creating your own unique blog title.
Look at their blog titles:
• What are the keywords and phrases?
• What is unique about it? Is it funny, engaging, phrased as a question…?
For example, if you wrote an article composed of SEO tips, you could use Sujan Patel’s “100 Lessons Learned from 10 Years of SEO” as a model. It has 1,061 tweets and 204 reader comments.
• The keywords would be lessons and SEO.
• It shows the reader that the author has a decade of experience, that the tips are tried and true, as well as the number of tips inside.
One could conclude that the blog title needs to state the number of tips, use the keyword “SEO,” and convey that the article will teach the reader tips that work. Good blog titles for the new article could include 8 Successful SEO Tips, 8 Powerful Lesson in SEO, or 8 Tips From an SEO Expert.
Using The Google AdWord Tool
A second way to craft blog titles, is to use the Google AdWord Tool to see which keywords and phrases are highly searched, yet are low in competition. When a reader searches Google, that information is stored. This tool shows the number of searches for words and phrases, plus those closely related.
For example, one of the Wagepoint team members wrote an article with steps to register a business in Canada. “Register business Canada” was entered in Google’s tool, the category “business and industrial” selected, and the following data was produced (click the photo for a larger view):
Results can be sorted to find keywords high in demand with low competition, or main search terms can be adjusted as needed. A keyword was chosen, a few extra relevant words added in, and the final blog title “How-To Register Your Business in Canada (Plus Infographic)” was selected. The process from start to finish took about five minutes.
