How to Create Blog Titles With a High Click-Through Rate
A blog title is your first opportunity to intrigue and engage your readers. Creating great content is critical to the success of your blog—obviously. But if you want people to read your blog post, you need a title that compels them to click.
To write effective blog titles with a high CTR, there are certain tips to follow which include keeping your titles short, optimizing your blog post title for SEO, conducting competitive keyword research, using numbers, and more.
In this post, we will show you how to create great blog titles, along with some essential tips for getting your blog posts read by a wider audience.
What is click-through rate CTR (& why is it important)
Click-through rate is a metric that is calculated as the percentage of people who click on a link to the number of people who see it.
Basically, it’s the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. For example: if your post has 10,000 impressions and 1,000 clicks (10%), then your CTR would be 10%.
The click-through rate metric gives you an idea of your post’s relevance.
High CTR means users find your post highly relevant, and low CTR means users aren’t clicking on your post to read more.
Reasons for low CTR include:
- Low relevance with what the user is searching
- Failing to depict what the article is about
- Lack of intrigue-generating terms
How important is a click-through rate?
If you’re looking for the top spot in Google’s organic search results, it’s pretty important. According to research by Backlinko, the first result of a Google search has an average click-through rate of 27.6%. That’s more than 10x higher than the average CTR for pages in the tenth position.
Let’s say you want to drive potential customers to your site. How do you do it?
One way is by writing catchy titles. When you write blog titles that catch their attention and get them to click through.
The goal of a blog post is to get potential leads on your website and sometimes to get them to perform an action—like signing up for an email list or downloading a white paper.
A high CTR means that people are clicking through from search results, which means that Google thinks your content is relevant enough for searchers to click on it. As well as driving more clicks to your blog posts, a high CTR can improve your blog’s overall ranking in search results.
So how do you get a high CTR?
You need to write compelling content that will catch your audience’s attention.
To do this, focus on what the search engine is looking for in its results and create content that meets those criteria.
TIP: Mimic the top results. Titles on the first page are already proven to work. Try to improve on what they are doing to have increase your CTR
If people are searching for “how to lose weight,” then create an article that explains how to do so—and don’t use any jargon or industry-specific terms. Keep things simple, straightforward, and easy to understand.
What is a good CTR?
When it comes to click-through rates, quantity is not quality. A high CTR doesn’t necessarily mean your content is good—it just means that people click to read more.
Click-through rates depend on factors such as your industry and the keywords you’re in competition for.
It’s not uncommon to observe your CTRs in double digits if someone is searching for your brand name or the name of your branded or trademarked product. Then it’s also not uncommon to see click-through rates of less than 1% on keywords that are not relevant to your website.
Best practices to write effective blog titles
According to CopyBlogger, 8 out of 10 people will read the title of a blog post, but only 2 out of 10 may continue to read the rest of it.
You can have the most interesting and engaging content, but if your blog post title doesn’t do its job—drawing readers to your site—you might as well not bother.
This is why it’s so important to spend time writing blog post titles because great blog post titles lead to great blog posts.
You’ve heard the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? Well, don’t judge a blog post by its title, either. However, we all know how a catchy blog title can draw you in when they’re well-written.
To write catchy blog titles that will catch your reader’s attention and draw them to your site, try some of these tips.
Keep blog titles short and informative
The blog title is the first thing you see when you open a new blog post, so it’s important to prioritize blog titles that are easy on the eyes. That means titles should be short and informative to attract a high CTR.
The earlier quoted report from Backlinko suggests that title tags between 40 and 60 characters usually have the highest CTR. It also states that blog titles between 10 and 15 words in length get 1.76x more clicks than single-word terms.
This is all good news, but it doesn’t mean that you should start writing your titles like they’re haikus. A lot of marketers will tell you that long titles are bad for CTR because they take up too much space on the search results page.
What they don’t tell you is that these same marketers are guilty of using clickbait headlines in order to get more traffic and conversions. They use long-tail keywords in their titles and then write for the search engines instead of their readers.
In summary, keep your blog title short and to the point—but don’t make it so brief that readers get confused about what the blog post is all about.
Research your competition
If you’re looking to attract more organic traffic to your blog, one of the easiest ways to do that is to check out what your competitors are doing.
The most important step in creating a catchy blog title is researching search terms and keywords that people use when looking for content like yours.
One of the best ways to get an idea of catchy blog titles is simply by checking out your direct and indirect competitors.
Make a search for the main KW you want to rank for and analyze how the titles are written.
- Are they using numbers?
- Are they using a specific word like ‘amazing’, ‘incredible’, ‘stunning’
- Are they ‘Top X’, ‘Best X’ lists?
- Are they questions?
- Do they target ‘beginners’
- Are they ‘complete guides’ or ‘everything you need to know’ articles
Use this to your advantage and create a title that matches the already proven top results.
Optimize for SEO but don’t overuse keywords
SEO is crucial to your content marketing strategy, so your titles should be optimized with relevant keywords.
The blog title is one of the most important pieces of your SEO strategy; however, many content marketers don’t understand this fact and fail to optimize their blog titles, usually resulting in low click-through rates.
The Backlinko study states that URLs containing keywords could have a 45% higher click-through rate than URLs without.
SEO is a tricky game, and it can be difficult to balance keyword-rich titles and engaging titles. Some experts push for keyword-rich titles on one side of the coin, while others stress the need for more “humanized” titles in the content landscape.
Overall, it’s important to find the right balance.
For the best blog titles, there’s usually a struggle to include a strong keyword phrase while also getting your title to stand out.
Try to focus on using focused keyword phrases when writing blog titles; it’s best to stay away from keyword phrases that are too broad.
When optimizing your blog post titles for SEO, you want to consider the title tightness.
In a blog title, tightness refers to how well your keyword phrase is included clearly and concisely. Successful blog titles usually balance tightness and authenticity, sounding like the author speaks directly to the audience.
You may also like: How to structure your content for best SEO results
Create unique titles that spark interest for every page
When writing great blog titles, the blog post title should be written with the reader in view, and they should know what they’re getting out of the post.
If you can’t do that, your article isn’t worth reading. Catchy blog titles are a good way to stand out from the crowd.
Good blog titles can differentiate between blog posts getting clicked on and ignored. In fact, according to Melanie Duncan’s 4U Formula for writing blog titles, blog post headlines should be useful, urgent, unique, and ultra-specific.
Use numbers, hyphens, and brackets in your blog titles
Numbers, hyphens, and brackets can help you gain more attention from your readers and increase the clicks on your blog posts.
Iris Shoor from Buffer analyzed blog headlines from 100 top blogs online, and one of her prominent discoveries was that writing numbers as numerals is more effective on blog headlines.
In another study, Brian Dean of Backlinko found that including numbers in your blog titles can increase your click-through rate by 36%, while blog title examples that contained brackets got 38% more click-throughs than titles without them.
This is mainly because numbers are a good way to be specific about your promise. Plus, blog headlines that contain numbers can be effective as humans tend to be naturally attracted to numbers side-by-side with plain text.
You’ve probably noticed that parentheses and brackets have become a staple in blog content, helping writers achieve high CTRs.
It’s also not surprising that you can use parentheses to entice readers with an additional bonus offered in your content.
You may be wondering why there’s so much talking about parentheses here. Well, it turns out that when you write great blog titles, including parentheses can make your headline seem more authoritative, thus increasing your credibility.
Leverage the power of negative words
In creating great blog titles, positive sentiments are important. However, never underestimate the power of negative words.
Negative blog titles tend to excite the reader’s curiosity and make them want to read the article. Due to the fact that they are afraid of doing something wrong or the title connects with them personally.
Negative words can be effective in creating killer blog titles but use them cautiously. Go easy on the use of edgy words; use them sparingly.
It’s all about creating curiosity and intrigue, not scaring away potential customers. The best way to do this is by using keywords that will attract your target audience and their search queries.
Negative words make your blog posts more attention-grabbing. They have been found to be a great way to draw more attention to your blog title.
It’s common knowledge that blog titles with negative words tend to draw more traffic than positive ones.
Also, as part of the findings from Shoor’s study of top-performing blogs, it is suggested that journalists have been writing headlines that skew toward the negative.
Write listicles and how-to articles
Another way of creating catchy titles is using listicles, how-tos, and article titles that include numbers.
Numbers, listicles, and how-to articles break up large amounts of information into more manageable chunks. It’s especially important if your blog post is dense or heavy with information.
A listicle is a short, easy-to-digest list of content that can be a great way to break up the monotony of large blocks of text. They’re also a great way to make your content more scannable so that readers can quickly find the information they are looking for.
How-to articles are helpful in that they teach your reader something new. They also give them an answer to a question that has been on their mind.
There are so many how-to blog titles out there that if you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to do it right.
Here’s what you need to know about writing a helpful how-to blog post.
- Know your audience. You don’t want to create a how-to article that is too technical for the average reader, nor do you want to make it so basic that it doesn’t offer any benefit at all. Make sure you know who will be reading this post and what they need before writing it.
- Outline the steps involved in completing the task or process being discussed. And write with a tone that is friendly but assertive.
- Always provide an answer at the end of the post! No one wants to read through all that information and come away feeling like they still don’t know what they needed to know or didn’t get their questions answered—so make sure you deliver on that promise.
Adjust titles for social media
Thinking of your blog’s title as a social media post title is a great way to get more clicks through those channels.
This means including information specific to your audience so they can identify with it and feel as if the content was written for them. This often means using a lot of keywords that are relevant to their interests.
Make sure to put a lot of effort into your blog titles so they’re more hyper-focused than generalized.
The shareability of a blog post can be improved by using psychological triggers in the blog title. You can even use Twitter-friendly words in your blog post titles.
While you might not think of blog titles as being shareable, this can be an effective method for increasing the number of clicks on your posts.
This is because a good blog title will pique the interest of your readers and encourage them to click through so that they can find out more about what interests them.
It will also encourage social media users to share your posts because the content is relevant to their interests.
Use power words in your blog titles
One secret to persuading people to read your blog post is power words.
When you use power words in the blog title, it can spice up your writing, and it can help you position yourself as an expert in your field. Power words could be adjectives, adverbs, or phrases.
You can use words that imply that the post is promising readers something they don’t know. The words can also imply the positioning of the reader alongside the people they look up to. Power words can also suggest the information in the post is comprehensive and detailed.
Power words are effective because they help you create a sense of urgency in the reader. The words can also imply that the information is valuable, which may cause people to click on your post.
When you write a blog post, you want to include power words so that it’s easy for readers to find what they’re looking for. The key here is not to overuse power words or use them in all of your titles. Like with any copywriting tactic, they can lose their effectiveness if you use too many power words.
The best way to use power words is to sprinkle them into your titles. You don’t have to include a power word in every title, but if you do, make sure it’s an important one. Here are some examples of effective power words:
- You (you need this, etc.)
- Free (free information, free download)
- Ultimate (Ultimate Guide)
Carry out A/B tests
A/B testing is one way to discover what makes a great blog title.
While every blog post gives you some data on what headlines work, you’ll learn more detailed information by putting two blog titles against each other.
You can hypothesize all day about what makes a winning blog title, but you’ll gain insights by looking at the trends over time.
As part of A/B testing or split testing, multiple blog titles are shown to different segments of website visitors simultaneously, such as different blogs. The one with the highest CTR wins.
Basically, when multiple blog titles present themselves, put them to an A/B test and see which one performs best.
How Redakthor content marketing agency can help you
In this post, we have discussed some of the top practices for writing catchy blog titles which will help get your blog noticed by Google and other search engines. However, there has almost been no recourse to professionals that can help you craft a good title.
You can get your blog up and running quickly and save money by working with Redakthor, which specializes in content marketing for small businesses.
We offer a wide range of content marketing services, including content writing, SEO optimization, and article optimization. Get started with Redakthor today!