[This post is part of the WordPress Guide for Beginners – Step by Step Tutorials]

No matter how good your content is, it is useless unless people read your post. People will read your post by just looking at the headline.

So headlines matter a lot! If you have a catchy headline that surely user will check your post.

As a blogger we always try to write a catchy headline so that people read our post. That means we write a readers friendly headline.

Then what about search engine? We always try to get organic traffic from search engines. For this we need a search engine friendly title.

To make it more clear let’s discuss it with an example.

For example, you can write a reader friendly title like ‘How I made $600 from Infolinks‘ You write this title because you want a quick action from your readers and you know people love this types of title.  In the terms of Search engine, it is not a good title as people will not search for the terms how you made $600 with InfoLinks. ‘How to Make Money Online with Infolinks‘ could be a good title for the search engine as people use this type keywords on search engine.

So our target is to write a post title that is reader and search engine friendly.

Now the question is how to achieve such scenario by which we can keep our post title Search engine as well as reader friendly.

Here is a simple way. Check it out!

How to Optimize Post Title for SEO and Readers

There are several plugins which offers you to write a different post title for search engines which is known as meta title. Check the below snap to know the difference between post title and meta title.

Post title is the normal title what you write on WordPress Editor. Meta title is the custom title which is written for search engine.

To write meta title you can use ALL in one SEO pack, WordPress SEO by yoast etc. After installing one of the plugin you will get some options like this at the end of the post editor page.

In the title box, write your search engine friendly title which will be shown on Search results. And also write a unique description with your targeted keywords in Description Box.

If you are using thesis theme then it has a built in option called ‘SEO Details And Additional Style’ which help you to customize meta title.

Now here is an example for better understand.

Readers Friendly Title

Search Engine Friendly Title

Search Engine Results

Maintaining two titles will surely increase your CTR. Here are some tips for writing readers friendly title and SEO friendly.
For Readers Friendly Title

• Make your titles scary (Like Don’t have Privacy Policy Page! Create it Now?)
• Ask questions in title (Like Do you want more profit from your blog?)
• Tell your secrets (Ex: How I made $699 from a single post)
• Use numbers in title (Ex: 10 Awesome tips to…).

For Search Friendly Title

• Do keyword research properly.
• Finish your post title within 65 words.
• Use unique words (Like Top, Tips, Awesome, Ways etc).
• Use ‘How to’ words if needed.

It seems time consuming or kinda tough to write a two titles for your single post. Once you make it habit you’ll find it easy. I hope it will increase your CTR.

• WordPress Blog Post SEO Checklist Before You Publish the Post
•  How to Write a Good Meta Description That Increases CTR

Over to You

If you like this post then just share it with your friends. You can also subscribe to our feeds to get more posts like this.