Discover How To Create Post Titles That Attract Attention

Aim: Showing you how to create effective blog post titles that attract peoples clicks and attention

There are many different strategies that when implemented effectively can draw more attention to your blog posts. The title is not necessarily the end all and be all of a successful blog post, but all the same pertains the obvious potential of a post being read and shared among many, and not just buried unacknowledged in your blog archives. I am not going to go all out and say there is a right and proper way of creating compelling post titles, as this is subjective to only opinion. Ultimately the goal of your post title is to attract people to click on your post and read the first few lines.

Blog post titles crop up again and again in search engine results, RSS feeds, links on other blogs and social media sites and also in your blog archives. In each of the above scenarios, the title is initially the only piece of text people see that is related to your blog post, and so is the only aspect that people are able to make assumptions on; shall I or shan't I visit that post. Write a dull and confusing title and it doesn't matter what you have written in the post, believe me, very few people will ever click on your blog post to read. Over the past two years of blogging myself, here are some of the techniques I have always stuck by whilst trying to create a compelling post title:

• Keep your post title simple - I personally think that the most effective titles are to the point and easy to understand. Consider a title the area of first impression; if the title is too long, confusing or non-informative people are only going to presume that your post entries are the same. There is seriously no point in making a title long, keep all the meat for the contents. As I mentioned earlier in this post, search engines such as http://www.google.co.uk/ use post titles as a means of labeling a search result. Many search engines only allow a certain amount of characters (69 including spaces), anything over this amount will be left out. You can read more on this matter at Search Masters.

• Write a unique post title - It's a great idea to write post titles that are unique, personalised and not like the rest. For example, add humor to your post titles when you think is necessary. Maybe ask a question or create a debate in your titles that will get viewing people involved. There are so many articles and posts on the internet now that have pipped us to the much easier to think of titles, and so it is at times hard to think of something that hasn't yet been created. Again, search engines like unique post titles; if you were to have an exact same post title as one of the articles contained in a large website such as http://ezinearticles.com/, its no easy feat trying to beat them in the search engine rankings. By making unique blog post titles, not only are you drawing people in with your creativity, but your also more likely to hit it high on the search engine results with that post.

• Meet a need that will benefit people if they were to read on - I think this is a rather obvious point. Many people search the interweb for an answer on a subject they are unsure about. Think of yourself when your looking for an answer quickly, your not necessarily after a lengthy read at that minute in time, so use post titles as an indicator to whether the likelihood of your query is to be answered somewhere in the post. I have titled this particular post as 'How To Create Effective Post Titles That Attract Attention' which I think is a great example of addressing the needs of a viewer, and the benefits they might reap if they were to read on. How To Create Effective Post Titles (meeting the need of the viewer) That Attract Attention (one of the many :P benefits of reading this post).

• Use power words - Using power words such as free, easy, discover, approved, guaranteed, successful, secrets are awesome in grabbing peoples attention. Just make sure that your claims to something free or awesome are met in the post, otherwise your slimming your chances of getting regular readers. More power words can be found at this address; http://www.printing.com/design/power-words.

• Use keyword in your post title that will shoot your post to the top of Google search - This is a whole subject matter that I couldn't just cover in one bullet point (I will be sure to do a separate post for keyword optimisation). Again, this is more search engine related where your post title is pulled when it meets a users search. I find the easiest way to do this is to imagine what you would type in to search engines such as Google if you were someone after an answer that could be found in your blog post. Use tools such as Google Adwords to see how successful some of the keywords you picked would be, potentially how many people would search for them.

Have you learnt anything in your experiences of writing blog posts, in particular  post titles? Have you used any of the above techniques, have they been successful for you? Are there any other techniques you use when creating blog post titles?

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