When I am scanning through my RSS feeds, I know what catches my attention. It is pretty common knowledge that a great headline will create interest and encourage people to want to read further. I am sure most of you have read the Evening Standard posters. The headlines are cleverly crafted to give just enough information to make you want to know more, but not so much that you don't need to buy the newspaper. In my opinion, the same goes with blog posts. Give them a great title which stands out from all of the others, and you have more chance of piquing the interest of a reader.
Nick Bradbury warmed my heart with his post on The Best Way to Increase your Feed Readership. He argued that a clever title is the way to go and cited his own experience with a blog he had already unsubscribed from. I am with him. I love my quirky titles. They express a lot about me and are as much a part of my personality as the way I write. In fact, as soon as I have come up with a concept I am formulating the title before I have even started writing the post.
However, in ride the keyword advocates. Brian Clark at copyblogger is a self-proclaimed fan of clever word play, however even so, he suggests that all a quirky title will get you is a few readers who like quirky titles, rather than a load of readers who will find you through keywords. A fair argument indeed and definitely one that ought to be taken into consideration when you are formulating titles for your posts. But then you need to ask yourself the million dollar question...
What are you doing this for?
If you aim to get as much traffic as possible, top Google with keyword heavy phrases and, as Brian Clark says, enlighten lots of people with what you have to say then descriptive titles with keywords carefully crafted into them are the way to go.
If your aim is to be yourself, keep your readers entertained and try and develop a loyal readership and even catch the attention of people who are really curious, then go for the interesting titles.
I would like to add that I don't think these things are in any way mutually exclusive. My aims are a happy combination of both. I don't like people who write just for the sake of keyword stuffing because I think it is false (and probably won't endear yourselves to your readers). But nor do I think being completely obscure is a great idea either. The ultimate piece of advice is be yourself. Give the post the title you think it deserves and if it happens to have keywords in it, all the better. Don't force something just for the sake of attracting Google, who isn't really a very interactive or interested reader. Work more to attract your subscribers, readers and customers - they are who you should be writing for.