From Edie: Ginny Cruz shares how to turn your readers’ questions into better blog post titles that improve search visibility, attract the right audience, and get more clicks.
How to Turn Your Readers’ Questions into Better Blog Post Titles
by Ginny Cruz
Your readers, or potential readers, regularly go online to find the answer to a persistent question.
How do I fix ____?
Why is ____ happening?
What should I do next?
Is ____ normal?
Can I make ____ easier?
When you think about it, isn’t that why you often go online? Of course, many of us also scroll to kill time (I sure do), but we tend to click on titles that interest us because we want an answer to a question that’s in our minds. It’s similar to searching library shelves and selecting the book title that piques your interest.
In today’s online world, especially since the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) snippets that summarize an answer to a search query, your job as a writer isn’t simply to come up with a clever title.
Your job is to answer the question the reader is asking. And that’s the sweet spot where you want to be if you want more readers.
Stop Trying to Be Clever
Writers (myself included) often fall into the “clever title” trap. We want our titles to be creative, intriguing, poetic, or unique. And there’s nothing wrong with that—unless the reader has no idea what the article is actually about.
Compare these two titles:
“The Morning Struggle”
versus
“How to Stop Wasting Your Morning Before You’ve Had Your Coffee”
The first might sound interesting, but the second immediately identifies a problem and offers a solution.
When readers recognize their problem in your title, they’re far more likely to think, “That’s exactly what I need.”
Start With the Question, Not the Title
Starting with your reader’s potential questions takes practice. If you’re like me, I love dreaming up creative titles on a subject that I want to write about. But I’m learning that if I want to help more people, I must serve them by creating a title that grabs their attention so they read the content that will make their life better, not simply write what I want to write.
So, before you create your title, ask yourself: What question does the reader have that I can answer? Not what you want to tell them. Instead, what they want to know.
For example, instead of starting with the topic “writer's block,” think about the questions you might type into Google if you have writer’s block:
How do I get unstuck when I have no idea what to write?
What should I do when I sit down to write, and my mind goes completely blank?
How do I overcome writer’s block when I have a deadline?
Those questions practically write your titles for you.
“How Do I Get Unstuck When I Have No Idea What to Write?” is more compelling than “Understanding Writer's Block.” The second sounds like a textbook. The first sounds like help.
The Magic Formula: Question + Promise
One of the most effective approaches to writing titles for today’s online communities is to combine the reader’s question with a promise of an answer.
Here are a few examples:
Question: Why does my article keep getting rejected?
Title: Why Does Your Article Keep Getting Rejected? 5 Fixes Editors Wish Writers Knew
Or:
Question: How do I back up my manuscript?
Notice what these titles do. They don’t make the reader work to figure out whether the article is relevant. They make the relevance obvious.
Listen for the Questions Hiding Everywhere
The best title ideas are often hiding in plain sight. Pay attention to questions people ask in:
- Facebook groups
- Reddit discussions
- Amazon reviews
- Book reviews
- Comments on your blog
- YouTube comments
- Conversations with clients or readers
- Google’s “People also ask” questions
If someone asks it, chances are someone else is wondering it, too. And that question may be the seed of your next article.
WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?)
If Jesus were alive today, teaching and healing others, how would He use the internet to spread His message? Have you ever paused to ponder that?
We know He asked people questions. He shared deep truths through simple stories using metaphors His listeners understood. Could He have instead used academic language and advanced vocabulary to impress the religious establishment? Yes, I believe so.
Could He have holed up in His home and written manuscripts that no one may ever find or understand? Yes. But that wasn’t His mission, and neither is it ours.
The mission, then and now, is to convey His healing message in ways and experiences that real people, living in the hard places in life, understand and can receive. He had to speak in ways that made them feel heard and loved.
If Jesus had a computer and the internet, would He shape stories so that AI would place them where readers could find them? Would He strive to answer people’s pressing questions or write content He wanted to write about?
I believe He’d adapt His methods to answer the questions desperate, hurting people need answered. I think He'd meet them online, where they are.
Your Title Is a Doorway
Whether you write about how God grew your faith through a journey of grief, share expert baby development tips for new moms and grandmoms, or how you survived years without a publishing deal, God has gifted you with the experience and the words necessary to be a light for your readers.
Writing titles in a way that works in conjunction with the computer algorithms and gets your content in front of your readers is a skill we all need in today’s online world.
Your title acts as a doorway between your reader’s problem and your solution. A clever title might make them pause. But a title that answers the question in their head makes them want to walk through the door.
So before you publish your next article, stop and ask:
What is my reader desperately trying to figure out, and does my title make it clear that I can help? Because the best titles aren’t written for writers. They’re written for the reader who is searching for an answer.
When you ask, “What are my readers wanting to know?”, what titles do you come up with?
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