Write Better Blog Titles Faster
Fluxe Digital Marketing
We help smart businesses build strong brands and generate leads in a fraction of the time it takes to do on their own.
Contrary to what you might read from various copywriting gurus, writing great blog titles is not an art form.
Yes, creating great blog post titles requires a certain amount of creativity, but it’s a learnable skill — one that’s more reliant on common sense and a handful of best practices than creative wizardry.
And while titles are important, creating them shouldn’t take a ton of time.
We can’t teach common sense, but in this post, we’ll unpack three common title types along with our six best tips for writing better blog post titles faster than ever before.
3 Types of Blog Post Titles
After 14 years spent writing, reviewing, researching, and auditing content, we’ve identified three types of titles:
1. Dull Titles
These are titles where the writer didn’t try hard enough (and it’s obvious).
They may be overly vague or incomplete, such as:
Incompleteness may be an attempt to generate intrigue, but it has the tendency to come across as lazy or uninteresting instead.
Other titles come across as dull because they contain typos. Nothing says “this isn’t worth reading” like a title with spelling mistakes.
2. Obnoxious Titles
On the other side of the spectrum, there are obnoxious titles where the writer tries too hard.
These titles rely too heavily on emotion or sensationalism and rarely deliver on their promises. For example:
“15 Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts That Will Radically Improve Your Life”
Gmail keyboard shortcuts may save a few minutes here and there, but I doubt they’ll “radically improve” anyone’s life. Titles like this come across as clickbaity or desperate and can tarnish a brand’s credibility.
Titles can also be obnoxious when they’re too long and descriptive:
“15 Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts That Can Save Every Small to Medium-Sized Business Owner 20 Minutes Per Day and Make Email Fun Again When Implemented Correctly”
3. Just-Right Titles
Dull and obnoxious titles are two ends of a spectrum. Between these extremes, there’s a wide range of perfectly good titles.
To find this happy middle ground, we need to start with the goal. First and foremost, a blog title should get the click.
We want readers to be compelled to read the article, and since the blog title is the first thing they’ll see in a search result, it needs to grab their attention and motivate them to read the post.
The problem is, seeing the click as the only goal is the root of all clickbait. These Machiavelian titles use deception, sensationalism, open loops, bait-and-switch, and other forms of shallow intrigue to get the click. But the content rarely lives up to the hype and ultimately hurts your brand.
So how do you get the click in a way that aligns with your brand?
Think Goldilocks. Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right.
Getting a “just-right” blog title just right isn’t an exact science. It’s highly subjective and dependent on the audience you’re trying to reach. There’s more wiggle room in writing effective titles than you may realize, which should be a relief.
Some titles are better than others, and there are definitely some title formats you should stay away from. But in general, sticking to these principles will leave you with multiple options for perfectly good titles.
6 Criteria for Perfectly Good Blog Post Titles
You’re in great shape if your blog post title checks all six boxes.
1. Consistent With Your Brand Voice
If you’ve chosen to invest in content marketing, you have a brand voice.
To “get the click,” copying someone else’s voice may be tempting. Resist the temptation! You’ll only confuse your audience.
For example, email marketing guru Laura Belgray has a unique brand voice. It’s colorful, descriptive, and personal. And her readers expect it from her.
MailChimp has a different voice. They cover similar topics on their blog, but there’s no confusing the two.
Look at these two posts — both about email marketing:
What works for someone else may not work for you, and that’s okay. Know your voice and keep it consistent in your blog titles.
2. Congruent With Your Content
Writers create irrelevant titles for several reasons.
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The first is clickbait. If the title promises something, the content had better deliver, or you risk losing rapport with your audience.
Incongruent titles also come from an innocent oversight or attachment to a working title. When the content drifts from the original idea — a natural part of writing — make sure you revise your blog title to capture the new topic.
Otherwise, you risk confusing your readers and hiding your content from people seeking the solution you wrote about.
3. Contains Your Keyword
Your audience is looking for information about a specific topic. When a blog post is optimized for that keyword, search algorithms display what they consider the most relevant, highest-quality content.
Including the keyword in your blog post title is crucial to optimizing it.
Even if you don’t care about ranking for a keyword, you surely recognize the value of helping your audience find what they’re looking for when browsing your blog.
Including the keyword sounds like the most basic advice, but you’d be surprised how often it gets left out.
4. Compelling
Make your blog post title so attention-grabbing that people can’t resist clicking.
Your audience is looking for a solution to their problem. Calling out their need and the solution you’re offering is more effective than baiting them with emotion.
If you can’t identify the clear need the article is addressing, there’s a valid argument for not publishing it.
5. Clear
Aim for clear over clever. If your readers have to spend more than a second thinking about what you’re trying to say, you’ve lost them.
It’s not the right blog post title if it doesn’t inform readers what the article is about in one take.
6. Concise
Long titles may be more descriptive, but they often bury the keyword and confuse readers.
Just because shorter titles have fewer words doesn’t make them easier to create. The adage “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter” applies to titles too.
Writing a clear, compelling, short title takes practice, but it can be done.
Fluxe’s Non-Magical Blog Title Creation Process
Here at Fluxe, we follow the same process for (almost) every new post, and it’s not complicated, fancy, or magical.
I think it’ll work for you as well as it’s worked for us.
Step 1: Review & Document
Take inventory of your information.
First, write down the primary short-tail keyword you’re trying to rank for.
Then, confirm the audience your post is trying to reach and the problem you’re trying to solve.
Now, review the thesis. This is the big idea of your article captured in one sentence.
Finally, review your headings and subheadings. This helps you verify that your thesis is consistent with your content.
Step 2: Brainstorm
Now, create at least five to 10 titles to choose from.
At Fluxe, we start by generating three to five ideas off the top of our heads. Then, we use some tools to help us generate more ideas. This is where artificial intelligence helps.
Finally, we review our content bank to ensure nothing on our brainstorm list is too similar to a title we’ve already published.
Step 3: Narrow & Confirm
Ask your team members or friends which headline stands out, but always keep your target audience in mind. What sounds great to a friend may not resonate with the person you’re trying to reach.
After getting feedback, two or three contenders will likely stand out.
At this point, you could let your audience decide the headline through split testing. There are several great WordPress plugins for this. We like Thrive Optimize.
If you decide not to split test, use your best judgment. As long as the title meets the six criteria — consistent with your voice, congruent with your content, contains your keywords, compelling, clear, and concise — you won’t make a bad choice.
Final Thoughts
I’ve read that you should spend just as much time writing your title as you do on the post itself.
In my opinion, that’s not realistic — especially if you’re publishing two or more substantial posts per month and have any other responsibilities. (But to each their own.) After practicing this process a few times, it should only take about 15 minutes to create great blog titles that get clicks.
Writing blog post titles is not an art form or a high science. They don’t need to be perfect! Only spend as much time and mental energy as necessary to create a title that gets the click in the right way. Then, move along.