Do your blog post headlines kinda… suck?

January 17, 2018

If you’ve been with me for awhile, you know I’m a bit of an RV nerd. RV traveling is kind of a thing for me.

So, I subscribe to a few RV blogs just to see what they’re doing. And, as I sit here and look at some of these post headlines in Feedly, I see stuff like these…

  • “Christmas in the Desert”

  • “Jambalaya”

  • “Not So Simple Or Safe”

Huh? These are blog post headlines?

And I’m not picking on any partticular blogs here, because this kind of thing is COMMON. Either really simplistic, boring headlines…. or some attempt to be cutesy with it that ends up being lost on anybody but the person who wrote it.

Thing is… I will not click on those headlines. Because they don’t stand out. Let’s talk a bit about how to make headlines which DO stand out…

On the blog, I have a big mega-post that covers the topic of blog headlines quite well. It is:

In this article, I talk about a “trick” you can do to get better headlines. And, I warn you… it’s a bit of work.

First off, you should try to write 20-25 headlines PER POST.

(OK, I’ll wait a bit while you pick your jaw up off the floor. )

When you do that, you will get the juices flowing. And you’ll find MUCH better headlines than if you just threw your first idea down and let it be.

So, after you write your post, you go back to your headline. And you sit down and come up with 20-25 potential headlines. The goal is to make them as interesting and non-boring asyou can. That post up there goes into all kinds of formulas and such on how to do that.

Clearly, you won’t USE all of your headlines. You’ll pick 1-3 headlines that really seem the best to use. Then…

Consider split testing your blog post headlines.

Yes, you can have multiple headlines for your post at the same time. Rotate them and see which one results in the most traffic. Then, the winning headlines becomes the permanent headline.

I’m a HUGE fan of Thrive Themes tools. And one of their tools that people don’t talk about as much is Headline Optimizer. This tool is built to make this split testing super easy. I recommend it.

Now, in all fairness to those RV blogs… many of them are treating their blog like a journal. So, it might not be worth it to them to go though this headline optimization process. But, there’s no doubt they’d get a lot more traffic if they did.

It is the kind of thing it is easier to do if you slow down, apply the Redwood Strategy, and really craft each blog post rather than just pumping out volume.

– David

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