Note 301 – Can changing titles make posts more popular?

After publishing Note 300 yesterday it got me thinking about why some of my posts have been more popular than others, for example, why Note 192 ‘In doing so’ v ‘in so doing’ has had 206 views whilst Note 243 – Authority = Great Content + Shared Links + Google Ranking  has only had 2 views.  For a start the title in the latter is far too long and possibly confusing.

In the past few months I’ve touched upon how important it is to have the right titles, content and key words; however, I’ve just noticed that I haven’t specifically written a post about titles and how they can draw in the reader. The posts below cover some of this content:

1. Note 178 – Deciding on your writing niche(s)
2. Note 195 – Creating useful lists in Twitter which may help you as a writer
3. Note 183 – Well organised blog content
4. Note 236 – Writing Better Twitter Headlines
5. Note 221 – Write great blog content and it could go viral

It’s really important to get the content right with relevant key words for your niche.  You’ll also be popular if you aim to write about what your audience is looking for, before they even know that they need to read about it.

Changing the titles after posting

The exercise yesterday of seeing how many hits I have had on each blog posts has been quite an eye-opener for me.  The message I am reading into this is that I obviously haven’t got some of the titles and content quite right.  Alternatively it could be that they are not stored or categorised correctly on the site (making them difficult to search for).

An example I have just noticed is Note 35 – ‘The time’ in writing which I had to think twice about when I just read the title.  If someone wanted to know how to write the time correctly they might type into Google ‘writing the time correctly’ not ‘the time in writing’.  I will be changing that one today!

This ambiguous title could have prevented someone clicking on the post, which has an impact on the link being shared with others. One thing I have learnt in the last six months is that Google loves content if it has been referenced and shared by others, and rank you higher as a consequence.

It’s never too late to revisit posts and change the titles etc.  Has anyone else been successful in making existing posts more popular by changing the titles and adding more relevant key words?

Until tomorrow…

Sandra
www.sandramadeira.com

Related articles

• Note 300 – Most popular posts since My Writing Challenge began (mywritingnotebook.com)