(I’m writing from the hip here so don’t expect anything enthralling. Like my title I suppose.)
7 years in SEO means I’ve had to deal with blog post titles and the various ways you should optimise them for maximum discoverability and click through rates blah blah blah. So when I read a blog post calling for bloggers to write better titles, I chuckled a little.
Please for the love of god, give me some idea what your blog post is about. I’m interested in a wide range of topics. So even if your post is about something obscure, give me something other than Recent Thoughts… or So Far, So Good. Recent thoughts on what?! What is good so far??? Especially on Bubbles, but maybe even on other blog aggregators, the title is the main signal so pause for a beat and try to come up with a decent title for your blog post.
For those who don’t know, Bubbles is like Hacker News but for small Web blogs but not as odious. I’ve submitted this site and a few others to it and I get traffic every so often. I also like to read blogs on it from time to time. I’ll click a link if the title is about something I want to read but in truth, I’ll click on it if it intrigues me.
The small Web is meant to be the antithesis of the commercial Web where optimised titles are a necessity (even if they aren’t always there) so, yes, titles won’t be perfect and Michael isn’t asking for perfection but perhaps when people write stuff, they’re just… writing stuff?
The prebuttal is fair enough but the subsquent sections are headed with directives on how to write better titles for him? For other people? I’m not sure that works as a generalised ideal. I did used to have “bucket post” titles for my Release Notes but I felt that they weren’t descriptive for my needs (so that I can agree with). But it was based on my needs. I don’t necessarily write to find a tribe. If you’re writing for yourself, a title isn’t a priority. There are plenty of web pages that I’m sure have amazing titles that are descriptive, aren’t clickbait-y, and aren’t weekly links or whatever that nobody reads because they’re buried somehow.
It’s funny that I saw this post because earlier this week, I was looking through posts by a writer called Ian Walker who I follow and his titles are honestly goals:
- my favorite puzzle games are lousy with adorable penguins
- headbutting god in the balls
- are video games fart?
- i’m not mad, i’m just disappointed
Now, yes, some of these indicate something about the subject matter. The top one is about puzzle games and the bottom one does outline his feelings towards the focal point of the blog. But “are video games fart?” is nonsense and I love it. I’d wanna know what that meant so I’d click the link. “headbutting god in the balls”? Surely not? But maybe? Again, click. If you’re not being specific or descriptive, maybe be silly. Truth be told, if you’re looking through titles from the small Web, you’d look through archives and you’ll surely click through a bunch of blog posts that catch your eye. If a bucket post interests you after reading, you’re gonna check through the rest regardless of the uniform titles.
I think all of this, to me, highlights how diverse our desires are for reading. Some people will want to be convinced while others are happy to see bloggers blogging without fear of nobody reading. If we’re not optimising for search engines, maybe we shouldn’t be optimising for human beings either. To bastardise a quote from Jenifer Lewis, leave that “better title” shit at home, it’s boring!
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