Oneupweb : Blog Post Titles—Balancing “Eye-Catching” With “SEO-Friendly”

While I was browsing design blogs the other day, I came across this post from designer Chris Spooner on his Line25 blog and was immediately interested in the article, simply because of its brilliant title:

5 SEO Tactics That Make You Look Like a Douche

You have to admit it’s pretty brilliant—I mean, who wouldn’t click on a blog post title like that, especially if you’re in the industry?

Composing a killer, yet useful, blog post title is important for many reasons—but, in my opinion, there are three that stand out in rank of importance:

1. It needs to quickly summarize the blog post topic, and this is related as much to SEO as it is for the convenience of the potential reader in deciding whether or not your post topic is of interest to them.
2. It needs to grab enough of the readers’ attention to prompt them to at least scan the first few lines of your post before deciding to read the full content or click away.
3. It needs to convey that the topic is relatable to the reader. In other words, how can the content in this post benefit them, teach them something new, or help them in some way—either personally or professionally?

In Chris’ blog post title, he clearly nails all three:

1. The post topic is clearly stated in the first three words—the reader knows immediately that this is a post about SEO tactics.
2. Just the use of the word “Douche” in a blog post title was enough to capture my attention.
3. The relatability factor in this post title is somewhat of a creative scare tactic. I mean, who wouldn’t want to avoid “looking like a douche”?