You’re preparing a blog post. Maybe you’re just starting to write the post, or maybe you’ve typed a few paragraphs already. Before you hit the “Publish” button, you’ll have to think of a blog post title. There are two basic options:
You can use a tease to draw readers in who might be skimming headlines. Some sort of teaser that draws the reader in to find out the full story can make a great headline when your readers are moving quickly through their RSS reader or seeing a title of an article that got linked on Twitter.
There’s also the descriptive, keyword-laden headline which might not have the sexiness of a tease but is factual and will most accurately describe your post. Stuffing keywords that will be likely search terms into your descriptive title will lead to a better ranking amongst search engines and bring more visitors who are searching for those topics.
Which should you use? There’s not a single right answer. I try to mix it up a bit. Sometimes I’ll do both at once. I often consider whether is a post is a quick hit designed to get a bit of information out or whether it’s a more substantial, long-term article that I feel will have search engine ranking juice.
What’s your strategy? How do you title your blog posts?
Photo by RenaudPhoto, used under Creative Commons licensing
These other posts might be of interest to you:
