9 Simple SEO Tricks To Format Your Titles And Get More Traffic

Wouldn’t it be fabulous if one can make small changes to the titles and increase organic traffic? As a writer myself, I know we are good at writing, but most of us are a disaster for marketing.

Nothing wrong with that, as we cannot be master of all. Our expertise is writing and creating content. I didn’t want to put my head into SEO and marketing as it is like a distraction for me and a waste of time that I can use to write more.

But what’s the point in writing if there is no audience to read it. I would instead write a personal diary.

I also tried the easier and only known techniques most writer follow -

1) Getting traffic by posting our links on social media, hoping that people will click on those links, which works if you have a dedicated fan base like those top writers frequently featured on the Medium home page.

2) Submit to top publications with thousands of followers, but these are notorious for snubbing new writers.

I tried both and failed miserably in attracting anyone to my stories.

I had to do something to succeed, and so, I turned my head back to SEO. After days of reading and spending hundreds of hours, I understood that SEO is not as complicated as it looks, and some easy tricks help writers rank their content.

Why Is Title Important In SEO?

A title is one of the most crucial parts of your content. If you ever read a newspaper, you would know that the decision to read an article will ultimately depend on the headline. A good headline will get more reads than great content with a poor headline. So, your headline is one of the most critical elements of your story and in SEO.

How do you get more clicks without having any followers?

The titles can be excellent click generators if you optimize them with these 10 simple tweaks.

#1 - Length of your title tag

Research shows that a title with roughly 15 to 40 characters length gets an 8.6% higher click rate. An optimum title can have 30 to 40 characters because that’s enough to put in keywords. Anything higher, and the click rate goes down.

#2 - Exact query in URL

There is a 45% increase in click rate when the exact query is in the URL, so if your URL is benefitfromyoga.com/what-is-hot-yoga and the keyword that someone is googling is “hot yoga,” you’re going to get more clicks.

#3 - Use power words

Power words increase click rate by 13%. Power words are like amazing, simple, unbelievable, etc. Anything that describes what you’re trying to get across, and the more adjectives we use as power words, the better.

#4 - Use emotional words

Titles that convey emotions enjoy a 17% higher click rate versus ones that did not contain emotions. Examples of emotional words are Awe, Best-selling, outstanding.

#5 - Include the timeline in your title

Titles with years generate a 4.9% higher click rate. E.g., if I have an article that says, “How to start writing on Medium in 2021,” it can generate more clicks for you. Year in the title tells people, hey, this is more relevant and up to date.

#6 - Evoke curiosity

Evoking curiosity can increase your click rate by roughly 5.9%. For example, “The seven benefits of waking up early, the last one will shock you.” I know this may be a little bit longer, but that gives you a good idea of evoking curiosity because people will be anxious to check out the sixth benefit in your article.

#7- Format your titles as questions

Questions tend to get a 14.1% higher click rate. e.g., what is hot yoga? It is an example of a question in a title. People generally search for answers, and a title with a question mark has a higher chance of getting clicked. You may use tools like askthepublic.com to understand what questions are being searched by users related to your topic.

#8 - Create titles that resemble education

Educational titles have a benefit of 10.4% more clicks. Examples of academic titles are — How to create eBooks? or How to rank number one on google? or say, How to install a security camera? These are examples of educational, informational articles.

#9 - Get inspiration from ad copies.

The last but important technique of generating high clickable titles is to look at copies of running ads. Ad managers have to optimize their titles for developing the quality score. Learn from these ads because that ad copy can help you generate optimized titles.

Key Takeaways

1) Titles are as important as your content. Your audience perceives you based on your titles, and hence they need to be given their due importance.

2) Optimizing your titles will help you gain organic traffic without a following or fan base.

3) The technique of creating a clickable title is not restricted to story platforms like Medium, Hubpages, or Vocal. These are useful for any content you are making or publishing like blogs and websites.

4) Use the Headline Analyzer tool from Coschedule. It’s free and provides you a complete analysis of your title and its SEO score. Any score above 70 should is considered good.

5) Finally, the most crucial advice. Don’t try to force all ten elements in all your titles. You have to be picky in using one or more of them in your titles as per need.

6) SEO is a slow process and provides long-term benefits. At least give your work a month to see the results.