Catchy title vs. Keyword Title

Well, I guess that would depend on the actual content. If you've seen that title a thousand times, have you also seen the content in your article a thousand times before? If so, why bother writing it?

If your 7 Steps are different than other people's steps, maybe tweaking the title is what you should do, enabling you to do both. It all depends on the article, but here are 7 tweaks to that title that might draw more interest ...

7 Steps to Get Out of Debt IMMEDIATELY
7 Steps to Get Out of Debt You've Never Heard Before
7 Steps to Get Out of Debt that Banks Don't Want You To Know About
7 Steps to Get Out Of Debt That Won't Hurt Your Lifestyle

Writing great headlines, just as writing great copy, takes a particular skill set, lots of practice, and probably many failures as you go along. I've heard some great copywriters say they write 100 headlines for every separate piece of copy in order to find the very best one possible.

My advice is to focus on stopping the reader in his tracks, getting his full attention, and making him want to read further. If you do that, your headline will be a good one. To me, making sure your headline is search engine friendly is worth doing ... but don't stress over it. It's not as crucial as writing the headline that will appeal to your audience.

I have found that if you cater to your readers primarily, and the search engines only secondarily, you will have a stronger piece of copy.

I have amassed a swipe file of over 1,000 winning (profitable) headlines and I use them all the time by simply adapting them to fit the copy I'm using. You should do the same - it saves a lot of time.

Steve

I'm not sure how important SEO is for you where you are trying to rank your articles in Google. However, SEO can be very difficult and time consuming.

Personally, I write headlines more for getting the click. I have found that creating curiosity within your headline gets more people to investigate whats inside. I also like to end my headlines and subject fields with ... This lets people know there's more within and helps get the clicks.

Just small things like this can make a big difference. However, if you can create curiosity with keywords inside the same headline, it should do pretty well I would think. Hope this helps!

Switch up between the 2. Some posts more keyword rich, others catchy. I do this on my blog. Works well. When I went only 1 way I did not drive as much search and other sources. But when I did mix the 2 things picked up.

I'd go for what would peak the interest of your targeted audience first and foremost. SEO always comes second IMO.

If you have done proper KWR, then you will need the Key word/s in your title. Work around the keywords to get a catchy title. You will need to rank for the keyword, that is, if you combine this with other SEO tools and activities.

Little bit of both, bud. Craft your titles in a way which are both provocative and contain your required KWs

You should also look at the competition when choosing you keywords and title. Search for the keywords you are planning to use. I you get 1 million hits, it means 1 million other sites uses the same keyword, and the competition for first page ranking would be huge. Try to find keywords with less than 30.000 hits. (Sorry about introducing a third element to the equation, but good luck anyway )

Yea, it is true Catchy title draws people attention but your content must relevant to your title otherwise people will leave your website immediately that will increase your bounce rate and low time on site.

Please make sure whatever you want to do, do carefully because people are smart even Search engine also became smart this days.

So avoid fuzzy title and stay relevant with your post.

A key is to make sure that being catchy is not...

... in the expense of being clear.

That's the common problem.

It's witty, but someone skimming through Google or Facebook would not get it in an instant.

If you don't get the click, the catchy headline will no stick. It will never even be understood as it's dismissed immediately.

Catchy titles attract the user to visit the site. If you use an attractive title, you will get more clicks rather than the normal title. But you must include your targeted keywords into that title so that this will rank on search engine.

The title has two most important things. One is it is a ranking factor and it influences the people to click your link.
Both issues are related to each other. Because if you will not rank with SEO optimized title how can you get clicks and You will rank in Google but if you haven't written the catchy title, people will not click you since there are more options.
So you must produce SEO optimized catchy title. It is possible to create a catchy title that is fully SEO optimized.
You can easily make keyword title just add your keywords in the title, try to add at the beginning if you can, remove stop words then you can add other attractive words for making your title catchy.
Thanks, Mytechgoal.

I think if we are talking about a blog where you 2sell" content Catchy title is better because will allow you to get more traction, more social share and in general more buzz.
Now if you are talking about an ecommerce web page then you should go for the keyword title to get better indexation and sell more.
All depends what you do.

In your case since you are looking for people to see and share your content you really have to make it Catchy.

Try both in a same title.. when i write for my craigslist posting website.. i use titles like this:

How Craigslist Posting can help real estate businesses to increase leads
Why craigslist posting is important for lead generation..
etc
etc..

My keyword is craigslist posting service

I have also used the Meta Title to be Keyword Focused and the Meta Description to be catchy and "clickable". The meta title is one of the easiest and most effective ways to help a web page rank for a certain term, and with only 60-70 characters I would recommend using it to help with keyword rankings.

Keyword + catchy part

Give it a try.

Get out of Debt - 7 Easy Things You Can Do Today To Be On Your Merry Way To Being Filthy Rich By Next Week

You present them as mutually exclusive... They ain't.

If you have a list, split test the two headlines n measure the result