Does It Matter What You Title Your Blog Posts?

 The short answer, of course, is yes. Naturally it matters. More people will read a blog post with an interesting or eye catching title, that’s just common sense. But what makes an interesting title and is there anything else to consider? Here are some points I have noted from my own site analytics, as well as comments from fellow bloggers. 

 Firstly, people like structure. If it’s an educational blog post then they like to know exactly what they will learn. The easiest way to do that is to tell them the number of points you will be making in the title. For example, my last post was entitled 3 Essential Tools For Marketing Yourself as an Author. Now everyone knows what they’re getting. 

 What if your blog is on more personal subjects such as your own life or what you’re reading? Many bloggers go for a quirky title. Here are two I found when having a quick scroll through my followed sites just now- Wait. So Timon of Athens isn’t about a Meerkat Eating Baklava? And: It’s cold outside, there’s no kind of atmosphere… oh wait, this is supposed to be a blog post, isn’t it?

 I’m sure you’ll agree, these are interesting titles! They definitely made me want to read them. But there is one more thing to consider… 

 If you want traffic on your blog to be consistent, rather than just for a few hours after publishing a new article, you’ll want to be found by search engines. But, though there’s nothing wrong with them, how many people will find a super quirky title on their google search page? Not many. 

 My most successful blog post in terms of getting people on my site through searches is entitled What To Do If Your Book Is Too Long Or Too Short. This is a common problem and quite a few sites deal with it. But the title of my blog post seems to have hit the search terms people with that problem use pretty accurately. And the more people who search and click on it, the higher up the list it goes. If you search in google what to do if your book is too long, my article comes up fourth. So try to think about what people will search for that is covered in your blog post. Starting your blog title with ‘what to do’ or ‘how to’ or ‘does it matter’ works well because that’s what people will be searching for. 

 What sort of blog title works best for you?