Your title is one of the most important elements of your blog post.

A good title will draw readers in, enticing them to click from social media links and feed readers, and will help your post have greater longevity in search engine results.

Titles should be concise (short and sweet) and make proper use of keywords. But can every title follow these rules? What if you want to be a little more clever or creative?

Fortunately, there are ways to create two titles for your blog posts — one to grab your readers’ attention, and one that is optimized for search engines.

Your first step should be to craft a short, powerful, keyword-heavy title. Put your keywords close to the beginning of your title. Your next step will depend on the blog platform you use.

If you are a WordPress user, you can use the little “edit” link (see photo) and edit your permalink. Use your short, keyword title there, then title your post something a bit different if necessary. You can also install the All in One SEO plugin which will let you set one title for display on your blog and set another title (along with keywords and a description) for search engines.

If you’re a Blogger blogger, title your post with your search-engine optimized title, then publish it. Keep it short because Blogger uses just the first few words of your title to create the permalink for the post. Then quickly go in and change your title to something more user-friendly (again, if necessary) and publish your post again. The permalink will not change, but the post title will.

As usual, ProBlogger offers a must-read on this topic: “How to Craft Post Titles That Draw Readers Into Your Blog.”

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