[Mistakes #1] Five Common Title Mistakes – and How to Fix Them

[Mistakes #1] Five Common Title Mistakes – and How to Fix Them

The handful of words that make up your post’s title are the most important words in your whole post.

Without a good title, your post’s chance of success is slim.

Your title appears everywhere: in RSS feeds, in email inboxes, on Twitter, and on other blogs that link to you. Often, your title will be all that a reader sees (or certainly all that they read!) before deciding whether or not your post is worth their attention.

If you’re not sure whether you’re getting it right, check out these five mistakes and see if any apply to you.

Mistake #1: Using Your Topic as a Title

Your blog post’s topic isn’t your title.

A topic might look like “decorating cupcakes” … but that doesn’t make a very compelling title.

Instead, you need

• Five Simple Ways to Make Your Cupcakes Stand Out
• Eight Amazing Geeky Cupcakes (and How to Make Your Own)

Fix it: If you struggle to come up with titles, use this template to help.

Mistake #2: Being Too Clever

Some bloggers, desperate to attract attention, get overly clever with their titles. (This applies to email marketers too!)

Curiosity can bring in readers – but your wacky title is more likely to get a “huh?” before your potential reader turns to something else instead.

(Also, titles without keywords aren’t going to help your SEO much.)

Fix it: Every title should clearly tell readers what they’re going to get from the post. If you have a choice between a clear title and a clever title, go with the clear one.

Mistake #3: Writing a Too-Long Title

Sometimes, you’ll need quite a long title in order to sell readers on your post. Too-long titles, though, are a problem because:

• They can be confusing and difficult to read.
• They won’t display in full in search engines (most will display up to 71 characters)
• They’re hard for people to tweet in full.

Fix it: Keep titles to a maximum of 71 characters: that’s around 11 – 12 words. Mark Rogers of Power Mapper has written a handy reference to how many characters different search engines display in titles.

Mistake #4: Not Thinking About Benefits

Your title needs to sell readers on the benefits of your post: why should they read on?

Imagine if you were reading a blog about online marketing and you came across these two titles:

• My Recent Trip to Las Vegas
• Five Email Marketing Lessons from a Casino

Which would you be more likely to click?

Fix it: Make sure your title focuses on what the reader will get out of your post.

Mistake #5: Over-Promising

Let’s say you really want to get traffic, and you write the title:

All the Parenting Tips You’ll EVER Need

Will that get clicks? Sure. But if your post really consists of five done-to-death tips, you’ll probably disappoint a lot of readers (who may well never come back).

Fix it: Ask yourself, “If I read this title, what would I expect? Does my post match up to that?” If not, either change your title or improve the post!

So … over to you. What mistakes do you see being made with titles? What tips do you have?

[Mistakes #1] Five Common Title Mistakes – and How to Fix Them