Let me tell you a secret about getting eyeballs on your blog posts. The most important part of the post is the title. Seriously. It doesn’t matter how well you write, how many statistics you cite, or how gorgeous your pictures are. If your title is boring, and users never click through to read the post, they’ll never know how amazing it is. So, in order to get the click, you need to learn how to craft inviting blog post titles.
Blog post titles are also the most important on-page SEO factor. Think about it: when you scroll through the listings in the Google search results, do you click the juicy headline or the matter-of-fact headline? Most of us click the interesting ones.
So, if you’d like to pull in that traffic from the search engines and get people to click through on social media, you need to exercise those writing muscles to generate sexy blog post titles.
Okay, they don’t have to be sexy… they can be classy, but interesting, if you prefer.
Related: The Easiest Trick for Brainstorming Blog Topic Ideas
How to Create Click-worthy Blog Post Titles
Start With Your Keyword
As bloggers, we have to strike a delicate balance between titles that search engines want and titles that entice readers to click. It needs to be both specific and interesting at the same time.
Let’s start with doing a little keyword research.
Open up your favorite keyword research tool. I prefer KWFinder, but you can also use Ubersuggest or the Google Keyword Planner. Play around with the tools until you find a keyword with good volume that’s easy to rank for. That’s the great thing about KWFinder. You can see the keyword difficulty, search volume, and the sites you’re competing against right there in one handy screen.
For example, let’s say your keyword is “instant pot desserts” and you want to do a roundup of the best Instant Pot desserts you can find. In KWFinder, “instant pot desserts” shows a search volume of 10,300 per month, and the keyword difficulty is 32/100, which means “possible” to rank for. Great.
Make It Interesting
Now that we have the keyword, it’s time to make it interesting and clickable for the reader. There are plenty of different ways to turn our example keyword into an interesting blog post title. Here are a few ideas:
- 15 Most Pinned Instant Pot Desserts
- 10 Instant Pot Desserts with 5 Ingredients or Less
- Instant Pot Desserts: 5 Cake Recipes to Try
- Instant Pot Desserts You Wouldn’t Know Are Vegan
- 20 Low Carb Instant Pot Desserts You Won’t Feel Guilty About
See how that works? Start with the keyword, but try to make a juicy or helpful title that the reader just can’t help but click. Using keywords in your blog post titles doesn’t have to be boring!
Get Help With Your Headlines
Okay, say you’re just absolutely terrible at coming up with headlines. It happens to the best of us. There are so, so many tools available to help you generate better headlines, and lots of them are free!
Here are just a few you can use by inputting your keyword to generate lots of titles:
- Sumo Kickass Headline Generator – This is one of my favorite tools. You can input things like your topic, desired outcome, undesirable outcome, and number of items in your list to come up with titles. You can also choose from list posts, how-tos, DIY headlines, and more.
- Title Generator – This tool gives you 700 options just by putting your keyword in. A lot of them won’t make sense, but you’re sure to find a few good ideas with a quick scan through the suggestions.
- Portent – This is the first headline generator tool I found years ago when I wrote posts for clients. It’s simple, and for those of you who have trouble choosing between too many options, the single headline at a time may be great for you.
Maintain Your Voice
Now that you have some ideas and tools to help you generate awesome clickable blog post titles, there’s just one more piece of advice that I have: maintain your brand’s voice.
It’s so easy to chase the clicks and pageviews and lose your voice doing it. Don’t fall into that trap.
Not sure what I mean? Consider professional blogs for doctors, attorneys, or veterinarians. Their blog post titles should be interesting, but they shouldn’t be click-bait titles that we see so often today.
For instance, I don’t think most people want to search for doctors or attorneys who are using BuzzFeed style headlines. It’s not on brand, and could possibly make you question the professionalism of that person.
So, make it interesting, but keep your voice. That’s a winning combination for creating click-worthy blog post titles.