You’re standing in the checkout line, with several people in front of you. You glance over and start reading the titles of the magazines in front of you. And for some reason they just pull you in.
Do you really care who had an alien baby, or how you can create 365 looks that will make you look more sexy? Maybe … Maybe not.
Yet there is just something about those titles that make you want to pick up the magazine and start reading.
It isn’t a coincidence that the titles are that tantalizing. In fact I’m willing to bet more time is spent on creating those titles and cover layouts then they do writing the stories themselves.
What sells is the title – the sizzle – not the meat of the story. Yes, the story itself has to be good and give you exactly what the title promises. Yet the story satisfies your hunger for whatever information you were promised. You won’t move forward and take action once you’ve read the story.
Because editors know the only way they will stay in business is to get you to buy the magazine, they spend their time on what matters most. The titles.
Now lets convert that over into what you potentially do every week. If you blog, every week you sit down and come up with topics to write about. Yet how much time do you spend coming up with your titles? I know for a lot of you, the answer is “just a few seconds” – and that may even be pushing it.
I see post titles every day that are worded something like this:
- Testimonials
- My Favorite Tips
- Case Study
- Its Friday
Great titles, right? Yet I see the all the time. But what are they doing for your business? Are they truly motivating your prospects and clients?
When your clients come over and visit your blog, they are a captive audience. They are there for something specific. They are looking for advice, motivation or inspiration. They want to learn more about whatever business you are in.
But do any of the above titles do any of that?
If they are already clients and visit your blog, they may visit the case study post, especially if its about them. They may share the link with family and friends – again, especially if its about them. But what will happen outside of that?
If a prospect wanders into your site to look around and likes what they see, they may end up on your blog and read a testimonial or two. But outside of that, there really isn’t much more to read with titles like that. They’ll get what they need and leave.
And that’s the people that go directly to your site.
Yet there’s another way – a way in which I hope you are trying to create – to drive traffic to your site. And its all about search.
Yep, its Google. People head over there millions of times per day, typing in keywords and key phrases, hoping to come across great information. You can earn a ton of traffic coming through Google. But only if you are creating the right posts that will gain traction inside of Google.
Testimonials won’t do it. Have you ever gone into Google, looking for anything, and typed in the word “testimonials”? Probably not.
So why do you create a post titled Testimonials? It does little to attract attention from the people on your site; it does nothing to attract attention in Google.
Which means in order to gain traction, you have to change your titles. But what should you write? What are people looking for?
The easiest way to find out is to head over to Google and use their keyword tool to do a little research.
Let’s use the word “garden” just to see what comes up.
When you type in garden, you’ll get many different results. This will show you what people typed directly into Google last month using the keyword you’ve selected. It isn’t a comprehensive list, but should be a great starting point. It will show you search terms as well as worldwide and local results.
From there, you can further refine what keywords you wish to look at. For this example, lets choose the term “organic gardening”.
After letting the results come up using this phrase, you can see a wide variety of options.
If you were starting up an organic gardening business, with just this one simple search you would gain a lot of information on what people are searching for within your industry. They want organic gardening tips, organic garden seeds, and would love to find it all in an organic gardening magazine.
Testimonials as a blog title might bring in a handful of visitors to that post.
But if you created a blog post title “The Best Organic Garden Seeds For The Urban Gardener”, do you think you could attract more attention from a variety of sources … including Google?
If you spend a little time and find a way to make each post you create attractive to both Google and your readers, your posts could quickly help you build up the traffic to your site – and the profits to your business.