There are 4 million blog posts published on the internet every day, fighting for people’s attention and reading time. Luckily, not all articles are created equal, and how they perform depends largely on the blog headlines.

Maybe you’re an expert in your field and have tons of valuable information to share. Or maybe you want to be a blogger and write about your life and interests. In any case of writing content for the web, it’s catchy and creative blog titles that make the readers click and share.

Wondering what makes people click on a blog post headline? Well, you clicked on this one to learn the best tips, so keep on reading.

Follow a Headline Formula

Most bloggers and professional writers with successful headlines follow a simple copywriting formula that gets them clicks. Some of the best-performing blog post titles include:

• How To…
• The Ultimate List/Guide To…
• The Proven Methods To…
• The Secrets To…
• The [number] Mistakes People Make…
• [Someone] Did [Something Unusual] + [Timeframe]. Here’s What Happened.
• Stop [Strong Command]
• What You Should Know About [Topic of Choice]
• [Number] Little-Known Ways To…
• Are You [Question]?

Using these formulas, you can make a long list of catchy titles and refer to it whenever you’re stuck and need some inspiration. You can always use A/B testing to see which titles perform best.

Study Successful Blog Post Headlines

The best way to learn how to write good titles is to analyze what’s already out there. Study successful blogs in your niche and see what types of headlines they publish. Watch what gets shared on social media and whether the content actually delivers on the promises in the title.

You’ll notice a lot of similar titles out there, but to be on the safe side, try to think of your own unique ones. It’s important to be original because search engines and readers can smell a bad copy from a distance. You can also use online tools and research reports to see which headlines perform the best.

Deliver What You Promised in the Headline

The number one rule of successful headlines is to deliver on your promise in the content. When readers click on a title, they want to get some information on a particular topic. The majority of online readers have an attention span of around 5 seconds and they’ll quickly skim through your article to find what they need. If they don’t, they’ll leave and won’t come back.

This is why you need to make things easy for them and use the right formatting for your blog posts. Headings, bullet points, quotes, images, and short paragraphs are a must for online content, both for SEO purposes and your readers.

Steer Clear of Clickbait Titles

You’ve seen clickbait titles all over the internet saying things like “you’ll never believe what happened next” or “this simple trick will shock you and change your life“. While some clickbait titles are good, others are just sensationalist and the content they offer is fluffy and nowhere near as shocking.

Luckily, readers who need value and knowledge know a clickbait title when they see one. The reason why clickbait doesn’t perform well in professional industries is because it sounds like gimmicks and readers don’t want to waste their time. Instead of trying to lure readers in with clickbait, offer real value in your headline and deliver on your promises.

Use Keywords in Your Headline

Google and other search engines have algorithms that analyze your headlines and content for quality, backlinks, and keywords. If you want to rank your content high on the SERP, you need to implement a valuable keyword into the title and then into the article. Keywords should fit the title naturally, not be awkwardly placed just to be included.

Make a list of several keywords that your target audience is searching for and play around with title combinations. You can also type in the keyword in your search bar and see what headlines come up. You can then analyze them and see what performs best.

Make It Personal

Even though your headline is meant for thousands of people, the reader should still feel like it’s addressing them personally. You don’t have to (and realistically you can’t) use personal names in the title, but you can use personal pronouns like ‘your’ to make people feel like the content is all about them.

A good headline example is “Your Ultimate Guide to Backlinks” instead of “The Ultimate Guide to Backlinks“. For this to work, you need to know your target audience extremely well and talk directly to them instead of the entire internet.

Appeal to the Reader’s Emotions

Headlines that appeal to the reader’s emotions have better chances of performing and getting clicks than dry data. In fact, BuzzSumo analyzed 100 million headlines and discovered that the most shared and clicked on headlines appealed to the reader’s emotions.

However, this can be tricky because you don’t want to overpromise in the headline and fail to deliver in the content. For example, if your headline contains the phrase “you’ll be shocked“, your audience will expect to be shocked. Otherwise, your title is clickbait.

Practice, Practice, Practice

For every blog post headline you think of, you need to write at least 10 more before you choose the winning one. Learning how to make a good title takes time and practice, but you’ll soon get a good feel of which headlines resonate with your readers.

There are also online blog post title generators that can help you come up with ideas and word combinations. Remember to avoid clickbait titles, overly-promising headlines, or titles that contain jargon your readers can’t understand.

Coming Up With Creative Blog Titles Is Easy With These Tips!

Whether you’re a business owner, a blogger, or just someone who enjoys publishing content online, a good headline can attract the right audience to your blog.

These tips will help you create catchy, valuable, and creative blog titles that your readers will love and happily click on.

Need more writing and headline inspiration? Here are 6 types of blog posts you should try today and wow your audience.

Every man and his dog has a blog these days.

Look, we don’t blame them.

Despite all the toing and froing of the internet, blogs have been, and continue to be, a cornerstone of content marketing.

But 4 million new blog posts are now published every single day.

The success and ensuing popularity of blogs combine to make writing a successful blog one helluva competitive task. These days, it isn’t possible to just write an article and expect people to find and read it. It’ll just get lost online.

Mixing up the types of blog posts you create is one way to help yours stand out.

Variety is the spice of life, right? Writing alternative forms of blog content prevents your posts from becoming stale and ordinary. You cover different bases, entertain in novel ways, and set yourself apart from other blogs out there.

Sound good? Read on for 6 types of blog articles to try out now.

1. How-To Guides

Okay, so this one’s nothing revolutionary.

But the success of how-to articles on the internet means it deserves a place on this list.

People use the internet to solve their problems. Thus, writing easy to understand, step by step how-to guides almost always go down a treat.

The exact topic, of course, depends entirely on your niche. A plumbing business might write how-to guides about fixing common household plumbing issues; a dentist’s office could create guides for cultivating better oral health.

You get the idea.

Think about your area of expertise and use your insight to create instructive posts. Doing so helps establish you as an authority in the niche. Help somebody do something for themselves, and, ironically, they may solicit your support later on.

2. Listicles

Here’s another type of blog post that’s hugely popular online.

You can’t beat a good list.

People are impatient these days (our attention spans are literally less than that of a goldfish!). They don’t want a giant wall of text to go through. Present them with it and they’ll almost certainly look elsewhere for their answers.

Lists are a top method of summarizing masses of content into key points. Trust us when we say this goes down better in the fast-paced, impatient world of the internet.

Streamline your content in this way and you’re on your way to a winner. Even better, they’re often far quicker and easier to write.

It’s a win for everyone involved.

3. Guest Posts

Here’s a quick one for any lazy webmasters out there (just kidding…).

Assuming the quality of work is up to standard, guest posts are a brilliant way to get new content, for free and with zero effort. In exchange for a backlink or exposure to your audience, someone else volunteers a blog post for your website.

They write an article on a given topic and you host it!

4. Review Articles

Remember: people go online for answers.

Combine that with an unparalleled urge to buy things, and you have a need for review-type articles. In simple terms, people want to know about the pros and cons of the products they’re interested in buying.

Are you up to speed with your gear, tech, household appliances, or what-not? Well, writing accurate and impartial reviews will address this demand for answers.

Of course, the desire for quality reviews doesn’t stop at products. Services are just as much of a priority.

Take TripAdvisor as a case and point. People want to know about the standard of restaurants, hotels, attractions, and so on before frequenting them.

Set about writing these reviews and ranking them on Google.

5. Curated Content

Curated content encompasses a broad spectrum of specific content possibilities.

Nonetheless, it’s often ignored by content creators, meaning it’s worth mentioning here.

Indeed, the very notion of being a content creator is at odds with curation. Here, instead of creating something from nothing, you pull together a post based on what’s already out there.

Shocking as it might sound, your next blog post doesn’t have to be original content!

Heck, you could even ask permission to host a favorite blog post from a competitor on your site. Credit the source and you earn a popular pre-written post with (almost) zero effort.

Resource pages are another example of curated content. A marketing firm could write an article about ‘the best marketing resources on the web’, which simply includes links to, and a description of, each resource found.

Regardless of the exact format, assembling a post based on pre-existing content can be both helpful to you (it saves writing something from scratch!) and your readers.

6. Interview Posts

Any narcissists out there should close their ears now:

You don’t have to be the center of attention in your blog posts.

Why not interview experts in the field or people of interest to your niche? Your readers gain a fresh new perspective and useful insight into a certain topic.

You could record the interview too and write a transcript of it. Doing so earns you two brand new forms of content for the website, opening the door to a wider audience.

Moreover, this is a great way to earn newfound organic traffic and interest- the interviewee is likely to share the interview with their audience too.

Time to Try These Different Types of Blog Posts

The internet is awash with blogs just like yours.

Even if you’ve seen some success already, there’s no time to rest on your laurels. The sheer mass of new content that’s published daily means you have to go the extra mile to stand out.

Posting different types of blog posts will be a helping hand in that endeavor.

Doing so keeps your writing fresh, your audience on their toes, and readers more actively engaged. After all, not all content is created equal and a one-size-fits-all approach won’t cut it; different topics demand alternative approaches.

Hopefully, this post has provided a selection of top ideas for successfully mixing your blog posts up.

Tired of waiting months for your blog posts to rank? Click here to get some quality backlinks to help drive juice your way.

Blogs are simply wonderful: they give you a creative space to write, lend a personal voice to your brand, and generate more traffic to your site.

However, you shouldn’t just post as many blog articles as you possibly can. It’s quality over quantity, leaving your readers wanting more and more from you.

There’s a fine line between writing blogs that will service your readers and just writing posts that will put more words onto your site.

So, how often should you be writing? It honestly depends on your style. Here are a few factors to see which one fits best for you.

1. List out Your Goals

As with anything else on your website, your frequency of blog posts depends entirely on the ultimate goals that you have.

These goals range from thought leadership to increasing engagement. You should lay out your marketing goals, sales goals, amount of readers you’re shooting for, brand identity, etc.

Think back to what inspired you to start the blog in the first place.

Was it to generate more leads for the business you own? Were you hoping to help people think through a certain aspect of their life? Is there a product or service coming somewhere in the near future that you wanted to push?

Whatever that looks like, it can help you figure out your goals and marketing strategy, which will, in turn, answer the question of how often you should post.

For example, if you’re trying to get more people to follow you on your company Instagram account, posting 2-3 times a week and tagging your Instagram account on it will help direct more readers to it.

2. Your Writing Style

Here’s another clear indication of how much you should or shouldn’t be posting on your site’s blog. What kind of writing do you enjoy doing?

Are you one to tackle the big topics in a thorough, 2,000-3,000 word article? If so, you’d probably see tremendous results from writing one of those a week and pushing it out for the rest of that same week.

Do you like to write 500-1,000 word articles with little how-to’s and/or “5 reasons why” type of subjects? Then maybe shooting for a range of 2-3 throughout the week can produce consistent readers.

Whatever your writing style is, your schedule needs to give you enough time to carry it out. Don’t set a goal of 2 3,000-word articles per week if you don’t have the time to do so efficiently.

If you’re rushing out your writing, then you’re doing a disservice to your readers.

Provide yourself the time to deliver quality content, and your readers will flock to you for it.

3. Amount of Current Posts

Another big indication of how many blog posts you should aim for is the number of posts you currently have on your site.

If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to post more per week than someone who already has 100-200 blog posts on their site.

However, you’ll want to keep posting as often as possible until you get somewhere in the 300-400 mark if you’re looking to max out site visitors. Then you can start posting less often and yield the same big results.

The amount of posts translates to a certain amount of visitors that can be expected.

If you’re not looking to be an industry-leading blog, then this portion won’t matter as much. Instead, you may want to consider filtering out blogs after a certain lifespan, unless, of course, they’re the top-producing articles on your site.

4. Your Company Size

If you’re a business that’s looking to ramp up site visitors, you may be surprised to find out that your company size plays a part in blog writing.

A basic rule of thumb for most companies is to shoot for publishing around 11 blog posts each month. The numbers don’t significantly change from posting any more than that.

However, if your company is a relatively big company (more than 100 employees), then posting over 11 blogs per month will help you see significantly more traffic.

Let 11 posts be a great starting point. Test it out for a month, see how it feels, and make adjustments as you see fit.

5. Your Blog’s Topic

Every blog owner at one point or another hits something called a writer’s block.

They just can’t seem to come up with the next topic, and it feels as if you’ve covered everything already (which is, of course, not true).

From there, it can get hard to uncover things to talk about and may lead to you posting far less often.

To get out in front of that, you may consider pacing yourself and not going over a certain amount of posts each week. There will always be new trends and relevant topics that you can discuss.

Try scheduling out your topics when you can. Don’t just say you’re going to post 11 times a month; schedule those out week by week with the topic attached.

That way, you’ll be giving your readers a consistent pace of blogs each month.

Writing Blogs for Your Intended Purpose

Ultimately, you should be writing blogs to accomplish the goals that you and your team have set for yourselves. If those goals are long-term, then a consistent dose of 2-3 articles per week should give your readers plenty of content to keep them happy!

Best of luck with your blogging endeavors! May it be an asset to you and your business’s marketing strategy for years to come.

Be sure to read this article on hiring a content marketer to see if that’s a necessary step for the level blogging you’re trying to achieve.

A website is an essential part of doing business. Customers who are looking for your product or service will turn to search engines first. And if your business doesn’t have a website they can find via search engines, then they probably won’t find you at all.

So, building a website for your business should be a top priority. Once the website is built and ready to launch, the final step is securing a domain name that works for your business.

Have questions about setting up a domain name? This quick guide will walk you through everything you need to know.

Choosing a Domain Name That Fits Your Business

What’s a domain name? It’s the web address that shows in the URL bar of an Internet browser. Think of a domain name as the name of your website. 

Because it’s the name of your business’s website, the domain name you choose should reflect your business. Ideally, the domain name you choose would be the name of your business – www.yourbusinessnamehere.com. 

However, this isn’t always possible, especially if your business has a common name. The domain name needs to be available for you to use it for your business’s website.

How Do You Find Out if a Domain Name is Available?

Domain names are registered by companies known as domain registrars. When you’re looking for a domain name for your site, you can use the website of one of these domain registrars to check if the domain name you want is available. Each of these domain registrars checks a database that tells them which domain names are available.

If the domain name you want is available, then the domain registrar will allow you to purchase the domain name and register it on your behalf. If the domain name you want isn’t available, then the domain registrar will usually offer suggestions for an available domain that might work for your business.

When the domain name you want isn’t available and you don’t like the suggestions made by the registrar’s site, you can brainstorm your domain names as well.

Using Different Top-Level Domains

You might start by checking to see if your domain name is available on another top-level domain name. Top-level domain names refer to the end of the URL. Usually, this is .com. But other top-level domain names include .co, .biz, .net and many others. Your preferred domain name may be available on one of these top-level domains when it’s not available on .com. 

Using a different top-level domain has advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage is that you can usually find the domain name you want on a less popular top-level domain. But some customers are skeptical of sites that end in top-level domains other than .com, .org, and .edu because they are so used to seeing these top-level domains.

In general, it’s better for branding to stick with your preferred domain name, even if it’s on a less popular top-level domain.

Tweaking Your Preferred Domain Name

If your preferred domain name isn’t available on any top-level domain or if you’re adamant about having a .com site, then you’ll need to get creative with your domain name. 

You can try using recognizable abbreviations for part of your business name in the domain name. Or if you use abbreviations in your business name you can spell them out in your domain name. You can also try adding a word that describes your product/services to your business name in the domain.

Make sure that your domain doesn’t get too long though. Long domains are confusing for customers and don’t work well for branding.

Setting up a Domain Name

Once you’ve chosen your domain name and verified that it’s available, it’s time to set up the domain name. You’ll need to purchase the domain name and register it with a domain registrar.

Often, the service you used to build your website will have the option for them to purchase and register the domain on your behalf for an extra fee. The fee structure for this is usually a one-time purchase to secure and register the domain name, and a yearly fee to renew the domain registration.

If the service you used for your website doesn’t offer domain registration or you don’t want to use their service, you can set up your domain directly with a domain registrar. Some popular domain registrars are GoDaddy, Bluehost, Domain.com, and NameCheap. There are many others out there as well.

Choosing the Right Domain Registrar for Your Business

When choosing a domain registrar, pay close attention to the services they offer as well as their prices. It can be tempting to go with the registrar that’s offering the cheapest price for your chosen domain. But if they don’t have the customer service to support you, you’ll have a hard time when you have issues with your domain or if you want to make changes.

Look for a registrar that offers good customer service, auto-renewal for your domain so your ownership of the domain doesn’t lapse, transfer lock so domain auction services can’t sell your domain out from under you, good site load times, and privacy measures so your personal information doesn’t show when others search to see if your domain is available.

Once you’ve chosen your domain registrar and set the domain up through them, they’ll help you launch your website on your new domain. They’ll also give you a login to their back end so you’ll be able to make changes to your domain settings if needed. If you’re unsure of how to use the backend or make changes, be sure to contact the registrar’s customer service.

More Tips for Launching an Effective Business Website

Choosing the right domain name for your business’s website is key to your website’s performance. It’s also essential for your business’s branding. After reading this quick guide, you should have all the information you need about setting up a domain.

For more tips on how to launch and run an effective website for your business, check out our blog.

Quick question: when was the last time you hit the “next page” button on Google?

Your answer is probably something like, “never.” Or maybe even, “there’s a next page button on Google?”

As a business owner, you already know the importance of ranking high on the SERPs. You’ve probably already even started a blog to draw traffic and catch keyword crawlers.

Blogging on your own site is to increase your website’s ranking, but if you want to make it to the top, it’s not enough.

Guest posting is a great way to boost your SEO and gain traffic to your own site.

Here’s how.

What Is Guest Posting?

First things first: what is guest posting?

In simplest terms, it’s when you write a blog on someone else’s website. You are blogging on their site as a guest.

You’ve probably been browsing a website and noticed a post that featured another company’s service or product. Some of these are reviews, but many are guest blogs written by that company.

Guest blogging has exploded in popularity the last several years because it’s such an effective way to grow your brand and get traffic to your website.

Here are a few of the ways it can help you.

Exposure to New Readers

How many regular readers does your blog have? “Not enough,” you’re probably muttering.

We all know how important a blog is, but if you don’t have any readers, it can seem like a lesson in futility.

So how can you get more readers? Sharing and resharing to social media can help attract readers from your existing network, but it’s still limited.

But let’s say that another blog has hundreds of daily readers. If you write a guest post on their site, those daily readers will see your post.

And if you include a link to your own website, there’s a good chance that some of those readers will follow you back to your own blog.

If you get a few guest posts on some high-traffic websites, you can gather readers to your own site in a hurry.

For example, Leo Wildrich, the founder of Buffer gathered one hundred thousand users in nine months through guest blogging.

Increased Brand Authority

As a business owner, you probably already know how important brand awareness is. In order for your business to be successful, people need to know it exists.

But it’s not enough for people to be aware of your brand. They have to trust it.

Blogs are a great way for you to offer rich, authoritative content. And when you pair that with the new exposure that guest blogging gives you, it’s even better.

Most readers might not become customers, but many of them will recognize you as someone who knows what they’re talking about–provided you do know what you’re talking about.

And as your brand authority grows, so will trust in your brand. And that leads to more sales.

Build Traffic to Landing Pages

One of the biggest advantages to guest posts is directing traffic back to your own site.

But if you just direct them to your homepage, you could be missing out on a lot of conversions.

If you’re smart about where you send your readers, though, you can see a huge boost.

Directing readers to a landing page can lead to more conversions than linking to a homepage or blog page.

We wouldn’t want to say that most internet users are lazy, but they appreciate it when you make things easier on them. The more pages they have to click through to give you their money, the less likely they are to pay you.

Linking a guest post to a relevant landing page is a great way to turn readers into customers.

Valuable Backlinks

And now, we have the meat of why so many people are interested in guest blogging: building backlinks.

When search engine crawlers go out into the internet to gather results, there are a number of factors that they look for.

One of the most important factors is site authority.

The great thing about the internet is that anyone can start their own website. But that doesn’t mean those sites offer valuable content.

To make sure that a site is trustworthy, search engines take a look at the site’s relationships with other websites–namely through linking.

If a website that Google trusts–let’s say Forbes.com–links to another website, Google sees that as a sign of the other site’s authority.

If you can get a wide variety of sites with high authority to link to your site, it can go a long way to boosting your own site’s authority.

And do you know what the best ways to build organic backlinks to your site is? You guessed it: guest posts.

The Trick To a Great Guest Post

Guest blogging can give your site a great boost. But if you want to make sure it’s effective, there’s one thing you have to keep in mind.

You have to create valuable content.

If your blog posts don’t offer something useful to your readers, no one will be interested in anything else you have to say.

We’re all inundated with ads and spam all day long. The last thing anyone wants is to read a guest post that’s just a long ad.

Avoid spammy content. Create something that readers actually want. If you can make it shareable, that’s even better.

So don’t just write a guest post thinking about how your business can benefit. Think of how you can benefit the reader as well.

Backlinks and More

Guest posting is a great way to build valuable backlinks to build your site’s authority.

But it’s not the only way. To learn more about SEO methods that can boost your site’s ranking, read this article on SEO skills.