How to Use Titles Effectively on Blogs

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I’ve been browsing through topics on Digg and Stumbleupon today. I didn’t really read many posts, I was just scanning the titles and moved on if it didn’t seem like an interesting topic. And this is exactly the point of this post. It doesn’t matter how good a post is, it will always attract more readers, if it has a catchy title.

A Few Directions for Using Titles Successfully

I know it is hard to define a real strategy for writing titles and that it is sometimes also a personal preference, but I will try to outline a few aspects, that I believe are important to make a good title.

Take your time – First, I think you should take some time and think about your headline. Many bloggers take a lot of time to write a good blog post and then just slap a title on it and that’s it. By doing that you just lost a number of readers, for the reason I mentioned above.
Make it simple – To me it seems that good catchy titles are generally short and simple. So keep it that way.
Describe the topic – Might be obvious, describe in a few words what the post is about. Mastering this is not so simple tho’.
Get attention – Doing a shocking or controversial headline could attract readers, but make sure the rest of the post lives up to the promise your title makes.
Use keywords – In addition to all above, you’d want to use keywords that you want your post to be found with in search engine results.

Utilizing all points above in a title can be quite a challenge, so I say it again, take your time. Think about your headline as an advertisement for your blog.

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