Titles are what a reader sees first. As you probably know, first impressions are important. So therefore titles are the most important part of any article or blog post.

 

8 Steps to Perfect Titles

You want a reader to quickly and accurately know what your article is all about by simply reading the title. You can do this in these 8 steps.

 

1. Make an effort to keep the title short

If you can accurately pin point what your article is all about within 3~6 words, half the title battle is won. For example, the title of this blog post is called "How to Write Perfect Titles". That accurately describes exactly what the blog post is about in 5 words, fitting within the 3~6 word limit.

 

2. Do not try to make the title smart

This may sound completely wrong to you, but you do not want a smart title. You want a specific title. A smart title would consist of any use of irony, word play or anything that could be classed as 'journalistic'. Simply label your article in an unlimited library of articles.

 

3. Title must be a label or a summary of the content

As mentioned in the previous step, your title must be a label for your article in an unlimited library of articles.

 

4. Make the title represent what your users would search for

What would users search for if you're writing a blog post on writing titles? I'd say something similar to "How to Write Titles" that's why I decided to add that into my title for this blog post.

 

5. Make the first 2 or 3 words in your title be your keywords

This step is a little sneaky, you want the search engines to pick up on your work. Placing your keywords in the title is one of the best ways for your keywords to get noticed, but they could also drive away your human readers if the keywords seem to be for the search engines and not for your readers.

Remember that your readers are more important, they are the ones that'll help you spread your information much better than a search engine will.

 

6. Proper names, products, brands and service names go last

Brand names for example are generally obvious and therefore don't need to be in titles, but if they are. They should be last.

Google has a title limit of 40, meaning they only show the first 40 characters in their search results. Adding your brand name, or service name at the beginning will waste those precious characters and leave your more important keywords out of the search.

 

7. Headlines have to stand on their own

Headlines should tell the user exactly what it is their about to read. This will influence the user whether or not they need to read the particular section of the article.

You may know a lot about Google, so if I added a headline within this article titled "What Google thinks about titles", it will probably be old information to you. If you could quickly realise this from the headline, you'll save time reading the old information.

Aim to make the headlines stand on their own.

 

8. Test your title

Testing is important, you will want to emulate your users by doing what you'd expect them to do.

For example you could type your article idea into Google and look for articles with the same title and read what those articles are about. This will then give you an insight into the article and how it performs in Google.

You could also test Google Adsense for the article title and see how well it performs. If the advertisements shown are accurate to what the article is about, generally you've got a perfect title.

 

Summary

1. Make an effort to keep the title short

• If you can accurately pin point what your article is all about within 3~6 words, half the title battle is won

2. Do not try to make the title smart

• A smart title would consist of any use of irony, word play or anything that could be classed as 'journalistic'.

3. Title must be a label or a summary of the content

• Your title must be a label for your article in an unlimited library of articles

4. Make the title represent what your users would search for

5. Make the first 2 or 3 words in your title be your keywords

6. Proper names, products, brands and service names go last

• Brand names for example are generally obvious and therefore don't need to be in titles, but if they are. They should be last

7. Headlines have to stand on their own

• Headlines should tell the user exactly what it is their about to read

8. Test your title

• Testing is important, you will want to emulate your users by doing what you'd expect them to do. For example you could type your article idea into Google and look for articles with the same title.

 

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Craig is a 22-year-old student currently studying psychology at Bournemouth University. He runs a self improvement blog and community filled with useful advice. His main aim is to help people exceed their expectations and reach their true potential. If you enjoyed this post, get free updates via RSS or E-mail.