Are you sad that no one seems to read your blog posts?
It could be due to the lack of catchy headlines – Specifically, headings that are both creatively written and contain a useful keyword phrase so that search engines can find your readers.
In summary, You need to rank well on search engines for the phrases your audience will use to find your type of content.
You would think at this point everyone understands search engine optimization (SEO) and the need to have a strong keyword phrase in the headline of their blog post. But that’s not my experience.
I’ve checked hundreds of blog post headlines in the decade I’ve run my Freelance Writers Den community. And again and again I see headings without a keyword phrase. Generic headlines that don’t stand a chance of attracting readers to search online. Such as:
- Look out for the red flags
- Head High or Body High (for a legal cannabis blog)
- How a marathon can heal your soul
What’s wrong with these headlines?
In this first case, we can’t even say who the post is for or what we’ll learn by clicking on it and reading it.
In all three cases, there isn’t a strong keyword phrase that search engines could use to get you some readers. At this point in the busy blogosphere, if you don’t take the time to weave a key phrase into your headline, your post is essentially doomed.
How do you find out which keyword phrase to use for your blog headline? More importantly, how can you put it artfully in your headline so it doesn’t appear as spam?
Let’s go through five key steps to crafting a successful, SEO-focused, catchy headline for your next blog post:
Step 1: Find a useful keyword phrase
To start with SEO, you need to think like your reader. What are they on your blog for? What are you passionate about?
Find a Keyword Tool Now – Ubersuggest is a useful free tool to get you started (however, you can use Google’s free Keyword Tool and experiment until you find a website you like). Start with searches your reader may be doing to find your type of content.
The mistake new bloggers make when discovering keyword research is to simply think about keywords too easily. For example, in the example headings above, I’d bet the running blog author thought the use of the word “marathon” would be a useful keyword. But in general, Single word keywords may be searched frequently but are too difficult to rank high. (I pay for the keyword research tool KWfinder, so my screenshots come from there.)
Weee, hundreds of thousands of searches a month! Sounds good until you see that ’79’ on the 1 to 100 difficulty scale.
This high level of difficulty means you probably don’t have a front page for that word. More importantly, this word doesn’t necessarily mean what you think – you’ll see that the top sites include a marathon gas company as well as a clothing company.
You have taken an important step. You’ve started researching keywords, but you don’t yet have a really useful keyword phrase that is low enough to get you ranked well. To be successful, we have to dig deeper to find a phrase that gets a decent number of searches – say, at least 1,000 per month – but is much less competitive.
Refine your keyword
When I think of a marathon runner’s greatest pain, I imagine that they are looking for something more that is “training for a marathon” topic. This search looks a lot better to be reachable:
Yes, there is less search for this more detailed phrase. But marathon runners are far more likely to search for this phrase than the simple word “marathon”. So it’s a better targeted audience. This is the kind of phrase I would recommend to this running blogger to get traffic to her headlines.
Let’s do this exercise again – this time for the topic of this blog post.
Of course, I started designing this post with the headline and keyword research. (Save yourself a lot of time and write your headline first, including the keyword phrase!)
After looking at phrases like “blogging tips” or “blogging” that seemed too difficult and broad, I tried “blog headings” or “blog headings”. As you can see below, it doesn’t even show 1,000 monthly searches in the blog heading.
But what the heck, look what’s popped up as a related search right under a search for “blog heading”:
If you’re wondering why “catchy headlines” are part of the heading of this post, now you know. This super-low-difficulty ranking and over 2,000 searches per month make it the sweet spot of a good keyword phrase for this topic. Sure, it doesn’t contain the word “blog,” but headings are headings. I still think it attracts the right reader.
Now that we can use a keyword phrase, we need to put it in the heading. There is one important thing to know about keyword placement in your headline. Let’s look at that next.
Step 2: start or end?
The first time bloggers use keywords, they tend to toss them in the middle of their blog headline. You get something like “How Writing Catchy Headlines Helps You Be Successful Bloggers.”
BUT. The best evidence is that Google considers what you have at the beginning and the end of your headline more than what is in the middle. So, you shot yourself in the foot by hiding your keyword phrase in the middle.
And now you know why the phrase “catchy headlines” is at the very bottom of the headline of this post. Yes, it can be harder to get the keyword flowing at the beginning or the end, but in my experience it’s worth the extra effort.
Step 3: check the length
Once you have a keyword phrase in a suggested headline, it’s time to do the other SEO check: we have to Make sure the heading is not too long.
You see, Google only shows 60 characters of a heading in the search results. After that, and it’s cut off (a fancy word for “cut off”). You don’t want your headline to be cut off as it means that some of your meaning is lost.
This free Moz tool is an easy way to check the length. As you can see, my headline is a good length.
If anything, this could be a slightly longer heading than it is – there is likely room for an additional word or two. But I liked the conciseness of this construct.
Writing a good keyword-focused headline is always more than just identifying and using a keyword. Next, let’s examine the secret sauce.
Step 4: add sizzle
One of the most important things about a blog headline is that it feels good fresh, new, unusual, surprising or different in some ways from the 1,000 other posts we’ve read on the subject.
This heading is an unusual case because there is a fun adjective built into my keyword phrase: catchy. If it didn’t have that, I would try adding a word or phrase to give the headline something special.
In the case of “running a marathon”, I might want to say that I’ve found unusual or foolproof or other ways to spice up the headline. Make sure you include an emotion word that activates the “feeling” part in your readers’ brains. You might rank well with a good key phrase, but if your headline is boring and doesn’t appeal to the reader, still don’t click.
Step 5: start the relationship
If you follow search engine optimization at all, you might know that Google has a keen interest in using related keywords in online content. Not only do you need to find a good keyword phrase, but you too Weave related words and phrases into your content.
Better yet, if you can insert a related phrase right into the heading itself. I did that with the phrase “SEO for bloggers”. As you can see below, this is a pretty decent keyword phrase on its own, despite having fewer searches and a higher level of difficulty than my chosen phrase “catchy headlines”.
Stacking it on the front of this headline gives you some extra SEO juice. Killer!
Go beyond keywords to create creative, catchy headlines
By using these five steps to create your headline, you can create much stronger headings for better search results for you. Remember that the headline is vital to the success of your post. If it isn’t strong and doesn’t have a good keyword phrase to rank for, no one will find or read your wonderful words.
It is definitely a skill that takes time to build to find the right combination of strong phrase and creative headline that interests the reader. Remember to allow time for keyword research on each post and come up with the best headline possible. That will be time well spent.
How do you choose keywords for your blog headings? Leave a comment and let’s discuss.
