You can spend a lot of time writing a blog post, making it both informative and engaging, but if you want as many people as possible to read it, you need to give it a title that is easy to understand while being search-engine friendly. By taking a few minutes to create a relevant title that contains well-chosen keywords, you will increase your chances of having your blog post picked up by Internet search engines.
Here are a few key tips to help you write titles that are attention-grabbing yet easy for both man and machine to understand.
Many bloggers think that a blog post title needs to be clever and cute to attract attention, but this can actually work against you on the Internet. By all means, be as creative as you can; but it’s probably best to leave clever and cute to newspapers, magazines and other print media.
For example, let’s say you’ve written a blog post about a new hybrid potato and given it the following title: “New spud – a chip off the old block!”
A regular visitor to your blog on potatoes, someone who understands the nuances of the English language, might read this and think, “Oh, that’s really cute!” But what about non-native English speakers? It’s possible to have a good command of English and still not know that a spud is a colloquial term for a potato, or that a “chip off the old block” refers to someone who shows the same characteristics or traits as one or both of his/her parents.
In international organizations like the CGIAR, where the majority of the staff are non-native English speakers, it’s important to think global when you write your blog post titles — the same also applies to your post’s content. If you ignore your international readership, that cute eight-word title about the new hybrid potato might prevent a first-time visitor to your blog from returning. Even worse, a regular reader might get fed up having to decipher your titles and not bother coming back. Or perhaps potential readers won’t find your blog in the first place, simply because they usually ignore cute titles in search engines and RSS feeds. Sometimes you can be too clever – and that’s not cute, at all.
Since Google is the most popular Internet search engine, it might be useful to take a peek behind the scenes of this Internet giant to see what happens when you carry out an Internet search.
Just say you want to find out what’s happening in the world of hybrid potatoes. You’ll probably type the words “hybrid potatoes” into the search engine – not spuds, pots, tatties, tubers, praties or taters. When you carry out an Internet search, you try to be as specific as possible and narrow it down to a few keywords, so it only makes sense that you make your titles as specific as possible, too.
Google will look at all the posts with the words “hybrid potatoes” in the title, and then it will examine the content of those posts. If “hybrid potatoes” is also mentioned somewhere in the opening paragraph of a post (better still, somewhere in a subheading too), it will feel confident that the post is actually about hybrid potatoes and include it in the search results. After all, Google wants to keep its customers satisfied by providing them with speedy, relevant content. Google will also look at a post’s content alone (just in case someone has been trying to be cute with their title), but those posts will appear lower down on the list of search results.
Reasons why less is sometimes more:
Way back in 2004, when the first issue of ICT-KM News was published, our news article titles were fairly simple and to the point. Two years later, we decided we might attract more readers by being a little more creative with our titles. BIG mistake!
The idea was good but, unfortunately, I was way too enthusiastic for our newsletter’s readership. With my background in journalism and my penchant for creating snappy newspaper headlines, I churned out a few ‘gems’ that now have me feeling just a little sheepish.
“Dgroups: Dway to Go!” screamed one such heading. The accompanying story sedately announced the number of DGroups the CGIAR had created since becoming a member of the online collaboration platform. I’m sure a few non-native English speakers must have thought ‘Dway’ was a typo.
My love of alliteration led to the next title: “Partners in Prevention”. This title tells readers absolutely nothing. Worse still, the opening paragraph doesn’t say much either:
Collaboration and cooperation are vital to the success of the ICT-KM Program. The backbone of the Program comprises dynamic individuals: busy professionals who juggle the responsibilities of their nine-to-five jobs with the demands of their respective projects. But there is only so much they can do on their own.
Can you guess what I was writing about?
If such a post were to appear in our newsletter today, I doubt anyone would click on the “Continue reading” link. It’s also unlikely that it would appear high up on the results page of any Google search.
The feedback to that particular newsletter told us that we were on the wrong track. “Things need to be told as they are,” one reader said. “If you don’t come to the point, you’re wasting my time,” said another. “This is not appropriate writing for an international research organization,” said yet another.
All sound advice that we took on board in a bid to improve our communications.
Examples of good attention-grabbing headlines are all around you. The next time you carry out an Internet search, pay attention to the posts that grab your attention. Ask yourself why you would click on certain titles and not others. Are they persuasive without being slick and gimmicky? Straightforward and to the point? Do they ask questions? Are they controversial? Do they make you smile?
Returning once more to the “New spud – a chip off the old block!” title, I would re-write it to give as much information as possible without making it long-winded:
One of the above titles was thrown up in a Google search. Can you guess which one?
In a nutshell, a few keywords in your title that are relevant to your post’s theme will put you well up the search list. If you can’t keep your title short, the very least you can do is to include the keywords in the first part of the title to ensure that you catch the searcher’s eye.
We look forward to your feedback on this tutorial. Did you find it helpful? Do you have any experiences of your own that you would like to share? Would you like to see more written about blog writing? Comments are very welcome and will help us fine tune the next tutorials.
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Photo credit: Taro Yamamoto
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