How many articles have you read about how to write the best blog titles for SEO?

Lots? Yeah, me too.

Well, here's another idea; how about writing blog post titles with an aim to captivate and compel prospective readers to click on your post, and so that they will have some sense of what they are investing their time to reading?

Novel idea, right?

When you are writing blog post titles, there are three key things I like to keep in mind.

1- Give readers a sense of what they are about to read

Every single person who chooses to read your blog has invested their time to do so and there's nothing worse than being lured into reading a blog post because of a catchy title that has little to nothing to do with the content.

Respect the investment of time your readers have given, and do them a favour by letting them know roughly what you article is about.

2 - Include a hook to capture readers' attention

With all of the content being produced at any given moment, it's difficult to write truly unique and interesting titles for your blog posts.

This said, do your best to create a hook for prospective readers.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Use strong language to describe the subject matter of your language (i.e. instead of 'SEO tips for writing blog post titles', say 'Killer SEO tips for writing blog post titles')
2. Explain the benefit of applying the information you're sharing (i.e. instead of 'SEO tips for writing blog post titles', say 'How to attract droves of readers through search')
3. Explain the pitfalls of not applying the information you're sharing (i.e. instead of 'SEO tips for writing blog post titles', say 'SEO tips to ignore if you don't care about acquiring page views')
4. Address prospective readers directly in your titles (i.e. instead of 'SEO tips for writing blog posts', say 'SEO tips you can apply to your blog post titles)
5. Create a sense of urgency (i.e. instead of 'SEO tips for writing blog posts', say 'Stop missing out on views with these SEO tips for writing blog posts')

There are many more ways to create a hook, but you get the idea. Also, feel free to combine these tactics at your discretion.

3 - Don't forego letting readers know what your article is about in favour of a hook

And now I'll bring this full circle.

With great frequency I see blog articles titled with some incredibly 'creative' title but I don't have the faintest idea of what the article will actually be about.

And guess what?

I don't read those articles. Do you?

Again, if your readers don't know what they're getting into, chances are they're going to overlook what you think is a cleverly titled article in favour of another that they can actually extrapolate some meaning from.

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As you know, great titles for your blog posts are critically important. Take your time with titles and maybe steal a trick from my book - and I'm sure many other people as well - and write 15-20 potential titles before deciding on one. Seeing numerous options on the page in front of you frequently reveals pretty quickly what the best title will be.

How do you go about titling your blog posts? What do you look for in a great blog post title?