What Makes a Compelling Title

Titles are what sell your content.

They are the first thing readers see in search engines, in email, and on social media. But, they’re often the hardest part of content writing. It’s no surprise, then, that one of the most common questions we get is ‘What Makes a Compelling Title?’

Luckily, we’ve come up with a simple formula for writing compelling headlines and blog titles that you can reference from here on out.

Title Character Count

Google displays roughly 60 characters of a title in a search results page, correlating directly with reader engagement data. To get the most page views, aim to construct titles containing 31 to 60 characters.

Keywords

Keywords are a key driver of engagement, but note that keyword balance is also important. Stuffing titles with keywords has a negative impact on post performance.

Pronouns

Using pronouns such as “I, you and we” personalizes the title and the experience for the reader. Simply using a 2nd person pronoun can increase page views by as much as 200%.

Asking Questions

Using the 5Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why or How) is a method used to pique the interest of the audience. It provides a clear purpose for the article and explains to the reader what they should expect to learn.

Presence of a Number

Using a number in the title communicates a form of structure such as a series of facts or prioritized thoughts. When used to establish the form of content, numbers in articles are effective and result in increases in engagement.

Emotion

Words are assigned an emotional value based on one of three states: positive, negative or neutral. Data illustrates that words with either a positive or negative connotation contribute to reader engagement, especially when represented within a title.

Once you’ve refined your title using the tips above, we want to hear what you came up with! Comment your catchy titles in the comment section below.

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