One of the biggest factors that affect your position in the Google search engine results page is your blog title. Because of this, you should do some research before deciding on the final title to go with. Here’s the process I use to write a good blog post title to get high website traffic. I’ll be using the post, How To Build Your Online Brand, as the case study.
Write Titles for Search Engine Users
The original title for Aditya’s guest post was Your Online Branding Efforts are Going to Waste. It sounded like a catchy title but after a bit of research, I rejected it and changed it to How To Build Your Online Brand. The reason for this is because people search for how to build an online brand far more than they search your online branding is going to waste. Mind you, I could probably rank first for that long tail because the volume is so low, but I rather be in the top 10 for a higher volume phase.
When coming up with a title for your blog post, try to imagine how someone doing a search will find your article. What do you think they would type into the search field? If you’re looking for information on online branding, would type how to build your online brand or your online branding is going to waste?
Find The Search Volume for The Keywords
The best way to find out what words to use in a title is to find the search volume for those words. This is where the Google AdWords Keyword Tool comes in handy. This tool gives you the estimate monthly search volume of any keyword you enter.
Looking at the results, we see that “online branding” is searched 8,100 times a month. However, “online brand” is searched 33,100 times a month. That clearly tells me that the title should contain the words online brand instead of online branding (if I had to choose).
You will be amazed at the difference in search volume just by changing one word. Another example. People search for online branding strategy twice as often as online branding strategies. From a Google traffic point of view, it’s best to use strategy instead of strategies in the title.
Tweak The Title with All In One SEO Pack
How To Build Your Online Brand is the post title people see when they get to my blog. However, the title that Google displays to search engine users is How To Build Your Online Brand – Online Branding and Strategy. The Google title has a few extra keywords in it thanks to a WordPress plugin call All In One SEO Pack.
All In One SEO Pack allows me to tweak the post title independent of what is actually being displayed in the blog. It does this by separating the WordPress title tag from the title being displayed in the blog post. This way you can have a nice attention grabbing title for your blog readers and a long keyword rich title for Google.
The plugin also allows you to enter keywords used in the post. There’s no need to do much thinking here. Since I used the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to create the title, I also used it to create the list of keywords.
The end result of all this is I am ranked number 3 for “how to build an online brand” and “how to build your online brand” and number 6 for “how to do online branding.” Had I not put online branding in the Google title, I might not have been in the top 10.
Most bloggers give a lot of thought into their blog post but don’t pay nearly as much attention to their title. The next time you write a new blog post, send some extra time on the title and Google will reward you.