The title of a post can be very important. A good title may catch a visitor’s eye and spark their interest to read the post. That reader may like what they read and become a regular visitor. A title relating to the post will rank highly with search engines because the post title is used as the page title and as an H1 HTML tag. If a post ranks high with search engines, it will attract visitors who may be searching for information on a particular topic. This may also lead to an increase in regular readers.

I’m not trying to say that increasing the reader base is the goal, but it is always a plus. As most people with a blog or personal site would agree, we don’t do it to become popular or gain readers. We blog because it gives us a unique place to voice our opinions or work out our thoughts. At the same time, these opinions or thoughts are public information via the web and therefore can stimulate discussion or help someone.

With that said, I’m curious as to how others create the titles for their posts.

Do you create titles that are “Google-friendly”? What I mean by that is the post will turn up when people search for common things. By creating a misleading title, it could cause the opposite of what I discussed above. A post could be ranked higher than it should be. Many people will end up visiting the site just to see what their search turned up. This situation is bad for the Internet.

Should a post title be the first thing that comes to mind or something that has some quality thought? I think that both strategies can be important in different situations. There are many times when a first thought is the best thought, but times when a post deserves a great title.

Do you create a post title before writing the post or after? If you create the post title first, you may try to model the post to match the title, straying from the original intent. A title added after the post is writen should be a better fit.

I usually try to create a catchy title relating to what I write about in the post. My goal is not to rank highly with Google, but I won’t complain if I do rank up there. For some reason the majority of my titles are the first thing I fill in on the post form, but I think I’ll try to change that in the future. I also try to create a title that is a play on words, which is always fun to come up with.

What’s your strategy for creating post titles?