Comments on: 15 Ways to Rework Your Next Blog Post Title

By: KETAN RINDANI

KETAN RINDANI — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:03:36 +0000

Lovely points, those.

I had read somewhere that it’s inportant to include your keyword in the post’s title, especially in the first three words. This helps Google spot your post better. Don’t know how effective it is, but I have begun implementing in my own blog as well as that of the company I work for.

Your blog is a God-send, if I may say so! Thanks, Darren.

By: Tommy Kirt

Tommy Kirt — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:55:12 +0000

As a new website owner I built my site using the Microsoft philosophy of Generics In Naming, including generic site name and article title names, I thought it was clever being exact and to the point (and boring). Alas still so much to learn. I can however vouch for the Lists, one of the top articles on my site and the one I promote the most is a List, it’s great as it really sums up a lot of topics in a very brief way, perfect for a lot of busy surfers who would otherwise bounce. I already know a lot of articles that could do with renaming using these principles, I would just like to be sure it won’t harm my rankings before I went ahead.

By: WebDev

WebDev — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:12:21 +0000

Well, well, when first I saw the title I thought this is yet another tips list. However, this is not. All the points are pretty explained so the reader doesn’t need to decrypt it. Thank you.

Personally, I use slugs to get search engine attention and titles to get visitors from search engines :)

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:22:12 +0000

Awesome Darren. And thank you for the very valuable 31 DBB. This task 32 though is the one that ties it together.

By: Nic

Nic — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:57:25 +0000

I THINK I’m quite good at writing titles. I naturally do most of the things you mentioned. But this is all great advice, I learnt a few things here I can remember to stop me getting too cocky!

I once couldn’t think of a title for a post so I just wrote the first thing that came to mind. Then the first line of my post was something like, ‘I realise that’s not a great title for a post, doesn’t exactly make you want to read on, does it?’ and one of my readers commented, “Actually, I thought it was a great title – it made me curious enough to click the link!” I was pretty pleased with that.

I really enjoyed your 31 day blog thing and learned some valuable stuff.

By: Michael Hall

Michael Hall — Thu, 28 May 2009 19:00:42 +0000

thanks for the great content darren and all the other commenters, i don’t think it was mentioned already, but i’ve seen and used a wordpress plugin that lets you rotate several versions of each post – i.e. you can have several unique posts with their only title and content tied to the same url/post slug, it keeps track of which titles were clicked on, so you can remove the losers after you have a clear winner.

so each visitor would see a diferent version of that post if you added alternative versions, it uses tracking to make sure they don’t notice the rotation.

By: Gary Sanet

Gary Sanet — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:37:16 +0000

The copyblogger is an expert in this field :)

By: Tasha

Tasha — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:43:58 +0000

Ahhh!!! As always something meaty to work on. So many ideas I just never thought of before.

Thanks teacher YOU ROCK !!!

Tasha
http://www.theeangels.com

By: SYoung

SYoung — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:25:28 +0000

Your advice to write for the reader first and SEO second is refreshing! As a veteran writer from the old “print publication world” I simply can’t force myself to put words in a blog piece so often that it is just ugly writing. I probably won’t “make it big” in the techno world!

By: Zawad Iftikhar

Zawad Iftikhar — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:52:02 +0000

I like the idea of making it controversial cos I have noticed recently that the Posts on my blog having controversial titles regarding the ongoing news were viewed more then the others posts having straight and simple titles

By: Smooth Skin

Smooth Skin — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:13:40 +0000

Great lists, both of them. I like what you said about keeping it simple (a Forrest Gump mindset). A simple title will get them in there, and don’t oversell. Don’t come up with some off the wall title that will make promises that can’t be kept or supported in the text. This will turn readers off and your traffic will diminish. And lastly, I agree with find what works and repeat it.

thanks again for pointing out some of the essentials.

By: Essai Selvan

Essai Selvan — Thu, 28 May 2009 02:15:16 +0000

Writing a good blog post title has been a greatest challenge ever since I started Blogging.

It’s been 2 years but still can’t make a compelling blog titles (sometime :P) May be this will help me a little bit. Let’s see what happens.

By: shannon

shannon — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:20:13 +0000

Title get people interested but hopefully you have something to write that makes sense and deals with the title.

shannon
http://www.eighthorses.com/

By: Content for Sites

Content for Sites — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:33:16 +0000

yes agree with these tips Darren… actually, nothing beats with simplicity. simple but catchy and informative, these are the reasons why people visited your site.

but what do you think is more important, the returns that you get in displaying ads on your site? or the earnings that you make from your products?

i think, the best rule of a thumb is that if you need people to buy your products, don’t display ads on your site ’cause it’ll make them choose those from the ones that you’re really selling.

just a thought…

by the way, thanks for these tips again Darren.. keep it coming! :)

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:44:25 +0000

Simple, yet rarely remembered. We see these tactics used daily be it on magazines, newspapers, radio, or TV newscasts. We should definitely take a lesson from them, as they clearly attract viewers/readers. Everyone is in a rush nowadays…people don’t have time to read a whole post just to see what the point was. I couldn’t agree more that post titles are incredibly important.

Thanks for bringing up the topic again and reminding all of us who let it slip our mind!

By: Bryan Karl

Bryan Karl — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:43:39 +0000

Wow thanks for the tips. Currently, I am actually into this dilemma of how to effectively write a post title to make it attractive as well as good for search engines. This post is my answer. Thanks so much! :)

By: Matutu

Matutu — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:32:31 +0000

Ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!! Not to so funny but yes..let me say this if you surely can’t write a good tittle then you won’t get the flock of readers that’s a simple fact. Best example as we all know,magazines,newspapers,novels all sell coz of great tittles.
all comes down to creating great tittle before anything..LOL

http://www.frogblogger.com

By: Emily Geizer

Emily Geizer — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:08:23 +0000

Thanks so much for this! I’m also reading Darren’s book right now and just finished the section around post titles. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me how important they are and what a huge learning curve I have with this. For those of us not in advertising, this is especially difficult!

But, just observing my own patterns when I’m searching for information, I know that good titles are critical. I recently changed one of the titles from a popular post from Toilet Training Regression to End Toilet Training Regression Now.

Thanks again, Darren!

By: Bailama Pessima

Bailama Pessima — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:07:49 +0000

Great Post Darren you always give out good info. Thanks again for the post. http://www.maddengeneration.com

By: Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:30:59 +0000

I often times rather write an SEO friendly title to get rankings but it is important to also have catchy titles in order to get people to want them to read.