5 Tips for Writing Captivating Blog Titles

Whether you blog for business or as a hobby, getting people to actually read and engage with your content can prove challenging. Although there are a number of factors that can make blog posts successful, perhaps one of the most important components is a captivating title. Creating a compelling title is critical — it hooks your reader’s attention, encourages them to click on the post, and motivates them to read it in its entirety.

So, how do you go about crafting a superior blog title that will intrigue and inform your readers? Keep reading to learn a few tips!

Keep It Short

Today’s online users have a short attention span; in fact, a study by Microsoft indicates that the average human being now has an average attention span of just eight seconds. This means that in order to capture your audience, you must create short, yet informative, blog titles that articulate the article’s purpose in a short amount of time. A reader should be able to understand the intent of your blog post with just a quick glance, so a short title is likely to outperform those that are more complex.

Shorter blog titles are more successful from a more technical perspective too. Try to keep your blog title under 65 characters, as anything more than that will get cut off in Google search results. Have a look at the image below as an example. The blog post’s title is “Want To Increase Website Traffic? Here Are 134 Website Traffic Tactics.” However, because the title is over 65 characters, the most informative aspect of the title is cut off. Your potential readers will likely select a different, more specific title instead.

Do Proper Keyword Research

Keyword research is extremely important, as it plays a major role in determining what topics your audience is interested in. By conducting diligent research on your keywords, you can learn a lot more about the readers you’re targeting and directing to your website. However, without conducting keyword research, you risk targeting keywords and search topics that are of little to zero interest to users.

There are many online keyword research tools you can use to perform keyword research like Ahrefs, Moz Keyword Explorer, or Google Trends. Once you’ve done your research, writing a captivating title becomes much simpler. Make sure you use the main keyword in your blog title and try to place it as close to the beginning as possible. If this isn’t possible, however, don’t sweat it. You’re writing this post for people too, and an oddly written headline can be a real turnoff for readers.

Make It Relevant

Perhaps the most important tip of all, your blog titles should be useful and be able to convey the key message of the content. Always know who you are writing for and avoid vague and confusing blog headlines. Your audience should be able to quickly determine if the blog post is applicable to them or not after reading the title, in addition to understanding what benefit they’ll receive from reading the article.

Be sure to use action verbs and powerful adjectives to best develop your blog title. Using descriptive language not only helps your reader understand what the article is about, but also makes for a more eye-catching title. For example, if your blog post is about dinner recipes, rather than using the title “Best Dinner Recipes,” try something more specific like “5 Italian Dinner Recipes You Can Make in Less Than 30 Minutes.” The second title is not only more informative, but it’s also more appealing.

Evoke Emotion

A good blog post title uses language that sets your content apart from the sea of blog posts available online today. Be sure to use words that add a dash of “oomph” to the post. For example, words like “things,” “awesome,” or “great” are used far too often.

Marketing expert Neil Patel recommends using “trigger words,” which can help produce a spontaneous reaction in the reader, increase conversion rate, contribute to brand awareness and reduce bounce rate. A few examples of these trigger words include “free,” “new,” “proven,” and “never.” Trigger words are known to produce an emotional reaction in your reader and make them more likely to read your post.

Make the Most of Numbers

Listicles, a piece of writing or content presented in the form of a list, is one of the most popular blog post styles used today. If you often write in a listicle format, be sure to use the numbers in your list to your advantage in your title. In fact, research has shown that blog post titles containing numbers resonate the best with online users.

Moz reported on a study that found that of the various types of headlines, 36% of readers preferred and were more likely to click on articles that had numbers in the headline. Adding numbers by way of a prefix or suffix makes a title very impactful and immediately helps capture the reader’s attention.

Now that you’ve learned a bit more about how to write captivating blog titles, make sure to apply your learnings when creating your next post. But don’t stop there — be sure to revisit your previous work and give the title a bit of a revamp. You might be surprised at the results!

This is a guest post by Marie Johnson, a UX Designer and technology writer from New York City. She is also a contributor to Enlightened Digital, a digital magazine dedicated to technology and business news, updates, and analyses from around the web.