11 surefire ways to improve your blog post titles with keywords
Numerous studies have shown that blog titles are one of the most important elements for search engine optimization, which is why you should always make sure your title is optimized with keywords.
Here are 11 surefire ways to improve your blog post titles with keywords:
1. Keep it short and to the point.
Blogs are meant to be shared quickly on social media channels, which means potential readers, will only see your article’s title before deciding whether or not they want to read more about the topic. Make sure your article covers what it says in its title because if you don’t, all that work you put into writing a great post could go down the drain.
2. Make it catchy so people will remember it.
Put yourself in the readers. If you were scanning articles on a social media feed and came across two titles, one short and to the point and the other very long and complicated, which would you choose? The answer is probably obvious. Make your article pop by using hyphens to break up longer keywords into shorter sets or clever wordplay that might include puns or alliteration.
3. Use numbers where appropriate.
If you have some statistics or numerical data related to your topic, now is the time to drop those figures in your title so people know what they’re getting from reading your post.
4. Add words that indicate a clear concept of what’s covered in the article.
Words like “how-to,” “top 10,” “ultimate guide” or even just simply using the keyword itself can all be used to draw in readers who are specifically searching for that topic.
5. Make your keywords relevant to your article’s content, but don’t overdo it.
You should include popular or trending keywords that people might search online about the topic of your blog post, but you also want them to actually read it so don’t overload your title with too many. Just use enough so they know what the post is about without giving away too much information and preventing people from reading it themselves.
6. Promote your posts on social media channels
Well in advance of publishing an article if possible, especially Twitter and Facebook since those sites have character limits for titles (160 characters on Twitter). The more time you give yourself for promotion before hitting publish the better chance you have of attracting more clicks once people are on your blog.
7. Don’t make it too long.
As a general rule, try to keep your titles under 60 characters if you can since there is an invisible line break that converts headlines into two sentences when they pass the mark. A lot of that depends on what social media channel or platform you’re using to promote your title though so if yours is longer than usual then just post the first part and use a link with follow-up text at the bottom of your article to let readers know how the rest continues.
8. Use keywords naturally throughout your blog post
it as well as in its title by ensuring most words are spelled correctly and used how most native English speakers would use them. People are more likely to click on something if it’s not written in broken English or sounds like a robot wrote it so proofread your article carefully before publishing it.
9. Use related keywords with synonyms
Your readers might search online about the topic of your blog post, but don’t go overboard since Google will consider that as keyword stuffing and penalize you for over-optimization thus lowering your chances of ranking high on SERPs.
10. Use tools like Yoast SEO and SEM rush
to check how optimized your title is with keywords by doing searches online to see what comes up first in Google based on the type of content you’re writing. This way, you can tweak the words in your blog post’s title to ensure they’re being used how people are searching for them.
11. Be careful with what you say in your blog post’s title
Since copied titles can lead to copyright infringement if you don’t have the rights to the article or music shares, which are both things that affect SEO negatively when associated with copyrighted material. Plus it could get you in legal trouble if someone takes issue with what you were trying to say in your headline. Don’t plagiarize either since that’s also a huge no-no in the online world and will quickly get you blacklisted by Google thus preventing your articles from ranking high on search results pages. Just use these tips when writing blog posts so yours generates more clicks and shares among readers who are interested.
Conclusion:
Keep in mind that these are just general rules for writing blog post titles that tend to be most effective online, but sometimes they won’t work at all since there are other factors involved like overall content quality, social media promotion, and more. Just try to incorporate as much of what you can into your next article title and see what happens (if anything). Maybe it’ll do well or maybe not depending on how many unique views the article gets each day so don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t skyrocket your website page views overnight…it might take some time before things start taking off.
