Don’t settle for a lackluster title. Write a compelling title to grab your audience’s attention, boost engagement and improve SEO.
The title of an article is more than just the descriptor of what is included in the article itself. It is both a marketing tool and an SEO tool, and making sure that titles are crafted to take advantage of all aspects of your program is incredibly important. So why are compelling titles so important? There are a couple of reasons.
Reason #1 – Reducing bounce rate
The title is the first part of your article that your audience will read. If the title is compelling, it will pique the interest of the reader and invite them to read further into the article itself. If the title is not catchy, not descriptive or doesn’t provide value, the reader will immediately leave the article and potentially your site altogether. This then increases bounce rate.
Reason #2 – Boosting SEO
The second reason the title is important has to do with SEO and your content marketing program. For SEO, you want to make sure that you include your focus keyword phrase within the title itself. Doing this acts as a signal to search engines to let them know what the content is about. Because search engines place much higher value on the title, they will use what is in the title with much more weight and importance.
When you’re formatting your title, you want to make sure you’re using proper <H> tags. In this case, for titles, we recommend using <H1> tags.
Reason #3 – Time spent on site
A third reason having a compelling title is important is to help drive visitors to your site to read the content. If you can get people to read the content, and if the content of the article is compelling, you have a much greater possibility of getting readers to read more content on your site or take other actions that can make content go viral.
What makes a compelling title, and how do I write one?
There are a couple of aspects that make for a great title:
- Grabs attention. The title should pique the interest of users in such a way that they want to read further.
- Has a focused keyword included in such a way that it easily flows within the title.
- Falls within character limitations associated with various mobile readers and desktop browsers, as well as search engines. Most search engines have a character limitation on title length. Follow it.
As a tip, presenting the title as a question or as a bold statement is a great approach to make it compelling.
In summary
A compelling title is more than just the header at the beginning of an article. It plays a critical role in getting readers to read the entire article. It affects your sales funnel. And just as importantly, it is a key signal used by search engines to drive your SEO program and rank higher on appropriate keyword phrases.
Need help?
If you have a content marketing program or are planning one, download our e-book 100 Mistakes Businesses Make When Starting, Optimizing and Scaling Content Marketing Programs. This e-book will walk you through the mistakes of hundreds of other companies and the challenges they faced in implementing their content marketing programs. To learn more about how Tempesta Media can help you streamline your content creation process and deliver quality content at scale, contact us today.
