Any blog or brand that distributes content through a blog-based structure knows the importance of appealing to their audiences. While many want to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible, most brands and blogs have to focus their attention on a specific subset of users. Regardless of niche or topic, it’s unreasonable to expect that everybody will one day stumble across – let alone find interest  – in your content.

In almost every case, the first impression your blog and its posts will make on readers is the title. Post titles are therefore incredibly important in appealing to readers and keeping them on-page for meaningful amounts of time. Let’s look at what you should consider when creating viable post titles for your content.

Be Honest

First and foremost, you do not want to mislead people when creating your blog post titles. Ultimately, titles serve as a first impression for your content (and in some cases, your brand). If you mislead the reader by promising something that isn’t there – or even use a sense of vagueness to subtly trick them – then you’re probably not going to get the reception you desire. Ultimately, misleading readers with catchy but inaccurate or irrelevant titles means you’re just pinging noise at them: the only thing they’re going to be giving you is less bandwidth.

Tease the Story

People are natural story-tellers. Throughout all of human history, many of our greatest accomplishments, triumphs and failures alike have been passed down by word-of-mouth, art and writing. When creating your title, ask yourself if it’s possible to convey a short story of sorts with it. This technique allows you to accurately describe what the post is about while also appealing to the story-telling aspect of our personalities that naturally wants to learn what happened next. You’ll find higher clickthrough rates and conversion rates when you tease the story via its title.

Optimize for Search Intent

If you have a dedicated following, then preaching to the choir and tugging on their heartstrings may be the best strategy when devising titles. However, when you’re trying to reach new audiences or grow your brand for the first time, you need to rely on the power of search engines (at least if you’re doing it organically). Optimizing titles for search intent means phrasing your titles in a way that everyday users would be likely to search for – for example, tutorials often begin with “How to”, and titles aimed at search intent in general tend to use the “who, what, when, where, how and why” dynamic regularly.

Make Use of Facts

In many instances, people appreciate cold, hard data. Especially when aligning your titles with search intent, making use of facts and statistics can further reinforce your position and persuade audiences to click for more info. You’ve undoubtedly seen many post titles with a number in them, and some of the best-performing posts on the internet begin with a mind-blowing fact (do keep in mind that picking any random fact is akin to pinging noise at audiences; use one that drives home the point of the post and that’ll blow people’s minds!).

Whether your focus is aimed at search engines or users, creating titles that inform, persuade or intrigue is easier than you might think. Just follow these basic tips and your post title structure will be more in line with what both users and search engines like to see!