If you want people to read your blog posts you’ve got to have a good title.

How do people find your blog and when they’ve found it, what makes them read your blog posts?

The answer is in the title or the headline.

Think about it. In the first place, your blog gets indexed by the search engines and blog directories. They classify your blog by what they interpret as its subject matter. What’s the most powerful way to tell the bots what your subject matter is? Why, your title. Bots are not that smart. Give them some valuable clues and the chances are that you’ll get indexed how you want to be indexed.

Then, when you’ve got yourself indexed in the right category, how do they list you in the search results? Why, your title. Now we’re talking about humans, not bots. You need to give your potential human visitors something to tempt them in.  An attention-grabbing title will do the job.

Let’s look at an example.

Say you have a gardening blog and you’re writing about dahlias. You could have the title to your post ‘Another Late Summer Plant’. Yeah, well. Not very specific, is it?

So how about ‘Dahlias - Late Summer Glory In Your Garden’. That’s better. An even better title would be ‘Dahlias - Beat The Slugs And Grow A Winning Dahlia’.  In both cases the title begins with the word that your blog post is about and you’re offering a title that tempts them to read more.

An even better title, at least for humans, is to ask a question. Make it short and snappy and impossible to ignore. ‘Dahlias -  How Do I Keep Snails At Bay And Grow Winning Dahlias?’

Whenever you’re writing a blog post, the title comes first. It’s what grabs your reader’s attention in the first few seconds.  And, if your blog displays other fascinating titles on other posts in your blog, it’s what will keep them there.

When you look around at a lot of blogs, one of the things that strikes you (if you can bear to look for long) is that they are very boring.

So what do you do? You click back, or you click away, and you instantly forget where you just were and what you just saw. Boring, boring, boring… 

So how do you get your reader’s attention and keep them on your blog?

1. Say something different, or, if you can’t do that, say something from a different angle. Suppose that you just went to the store and bought a pack of frozen fish. Now, you could report this in all its tedious detail because that’s what you just did, but the chances are that fifty thousand other people did exactly the same thing today - so what? How about ‘one fish’s journey from ocean to ice-box’ or ‘how an unknown fisherman caught my supper’? OK, I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but you get the idea.
2. Ask you reader a question. So, they’ve read all about the storm at sea and the fish market and the teenager at the grocery checkout, but don’t leave it at that. Ask them a question about their similar experiences or opinions and invite them to post a comment. People like to be engaged in a dialogue. They actually might have something very interesting to say. And when people have commented on a blog, the chances are that they’ll come back to see their offering on display.  You just got them hooked!

So, what do you do to get your blog noticed? Feel free to leave me your comments!

Bloggers are sometimes their own worst enemies. Maybe you have a fantastic theme, and a fascinating topic to blog about, and masses of unique content, but there are three big no-nos if you want an amazing blog:

1. Don’t overload your blog with flashing banners, animated widgets and blinking gizmos. If your blog has so much going on that it looks like a fruit machine in a casino then no-one’s going to focus on anything. People will click away from your blog just to save their eyes. If you want to show off some flash and movement, make that gizmo the one stunning centerpiece of the page. Then you will have made your point.
2. Whatever language you are writing in, get your posts spell-checked. You may not think it matters but it does. You want to engage your readers, not irritate them. And it isn’t grown-up to have a lot of exclamation marks (!!!) scattered around your text - you don’t want to sound like a hysterical teenager, even if you are…
3. If you allow other people to comment on your blog, keep an eye on what they post. Yes, it’s great to have comments from readers, and, no, you don’t want to censor free speech, but some comments can be a pain, or offensive, or irrelevant. Remember that it’s your blog and you decide what’s shown. Don’t let others ruin your blog for you.

Bloggers blog because they’ve got something to say. So say it!