14 Traffic-Boosting Blog Title Examples to Inspire You

A great blog title does several things, all at the same time – and all with a limited character count. Your blog title has to capture your reader’s attention and pique their curiosity, all while clearly communicating what your blog post is about and why they should read it.

To this end, ensure your blog title is:

• Clear, concise, and relevant: ensuring that it avoids ambiguity and accurately represents the information or story readers will find after clicking through.
• SEO-friendly: making sure it includes the keywords (which you’ll need to research) that people might use when searching for information on the topic.
• Unique: a great blog title has to stand out. Can you give it a unique angle? Some eye-catching wordplay? A memorable creative twist? All of the above?
• Actionable: if your blog post presents solutions to a problem, actionable blog titles encourage readers to click through by promising them practical advice or steps.
• Audience-focused: don’t just ask what, or why – ask who! A great blog title resonates with the needs, interests, and emotions of its specific audience. So make sure you know exactly who they are, and what kind of queries they might be coming to you to solve.

Find Out More

There are plenty of things you can do to get your blog title and post right, but what about the things you shouldn’t do? Check out our article, 15 Common Blogging Mistakes to Avoid, for the answer to that!

Ready to explore the 14 best blog title examples from across the internet? Let’s go!

These blog titles include the main keyword or phrase your readers are searching for when looking for information on this topic.

Let’s say, for instance, that you run a travel blog. You’re interested in writing about Madagascar, so you use a keyword research tool – such as Wordstream – to learn about the phrases your audience is searching for.

You see that the most-searched-for query is “best month to visit madagascar”, so decide to write an article about that. Here, the title of your blog would be:

“The Best Month to Visit Madagascar”

Of course, to make this more engaging, you could combine this keyword-based title with one of the other blog titles we list below.

Read on, and we’ll explain how.

Question-based titles are ones that pose a question to the reader.

These titles can be highly effective, but only (for obvious reasons) if they’re questions your readers are actually interested in knowing the answer to. This is, of course, why doing your keyword research is so important – because it gives you an idea of which queries and search terms your audience is using to answer their questions online.

Sticking with the example above, then, a good question-based blog title could be:

“What’s the Best Month to Visit Madagascar?”

Popularized by Buzzfeed, the ‘listicle’ is still one of the most enduring forms of blog types.

It’s easy to see why this form of article, and its title, works so well. The reader can derive from the headline alone roughly how long the article will be and knows exactly how many tips, tidbits, or techniques they’ll have learnt by the time they finish reading.

A numbered or list title is simple to put together. Simply include a number – and make it compelling! For example:

“The 9 Places in Madagascar You Can’t Afford to Miss”

How-to titles tell the reader that they’re going to learn exactly how to do something.

These titles are reassuring. They take the perceived cognitive load away from the reader by assuring them that you, as the writer, have researched and understood the topic or process they’ve been grappling with and have distilled everything they need to know to be able to understand or complete it.

How-to titles are even more effective when combined with a numbered or list title, as they promise distilled, digestible insights: promising the reader they’re getting a straightforward point-by-point list, rather than an essay!

So, for example:

“How to Stay Safe While Travelling Madagascar: 5 Things to Remember”

These titles claim that the blog you’ve written is the ultimate resource on the topic you’re writing about.

Unlike listicles – which tend to conjure up visions of shorter, more bite-sized insights – ultimate guides set the reader up for a lengthy, comprehensive article.

The only catch, then? That, if you’re going to be labeling something as the “ultimate guide”, you’ll need to put in the time and effort to make it so!

Here’s an example of an ultimate guide title:

“The Ultimate Madagascar Travel Guide 2024: Everything You Need to Know About Africa’s Island Gem”

These titles share the results of a case study or experiment you undertook. They suggest to the reader that, rather than writing more informationally or generically on a subject, you’re writing from personal experience.

They suggest originality because, rather than conduct armchair research or rely on third- or fourth-hand sources, you’ve done the research yourself – and that’s valuable to readers.

We’ve stuck with our Madagascar travel example so far, so – continuing in that vein – an example of a case study title might be:

“How I Traveled Madagascar for a Year – on a Budget of a Dollar a Day”

Comparison titles are ideal for blogs that pitch two contrasting products, services, or ideas against each other. They’re common in the SaaS spaces, and we write plenty of them (Wix vs Shopify, for instance, or Weebly vs Squarespace).

These titles work because they hit a very common reader pain point: unbiased, no-nonsense comparisons of the respective features, merits, capabilities, and drawbacks of two very similar offerings. A comparison title might, for example, look like this:

“Madagascar vs Mauritius: Which African Island Should You Visit First, and Why?”

Review titles tell the reader that you’re going to be reviewing something, be it a product, service, book, film, or something else entirely.

The word review suggests a healthy dose of critique – so if you’re being paid to promote a company, you can’t write a glowing endorsement of it, and then sell it as an impartial “review”.

All reviews need to have a balance of upshots and downsides. If you’re coming from a biased point of view to begin with, that’ll soon show up in the copy – and your readers will soon find you out!

One example of a review title is:

 “A Review of the Hotel Carlton in Antananarivo: Is Madagascar’s Finest Five-Star Hotel Everything It’s Made Out to Be?”

News and trends titles cover the latest movements in your industry.

Unlike the evergreen titles (which we’ll get to shortly), these titles are designed to be contemporary and topical – to discuss the latest happenings and place you and your brand as experts with your fingers firmly on the pulse of your sector.

One example of a news and trends title is:

 “The Top 7 Travel Trends You Need to Know About Going into 2024 – and How They’ll Change the Way You Travel”

As the name suggests, controversial titles are those that adopt more of an alternative stance on a topic. Like the classic concept of the “shock jock”, (a radio DJ who is purposefully inflammatory to generate debate and call-ins) controversial titles are designed to drive clicks through deciding what the mainstream stance on an issue is – then taking the opposite one.

Generally, you should preface a controversial title with a pronoun (“I think”, for example, or “I believe”) to reaffirm that the eyebrow-raising take you’re presenting is your opinion. And yours alone! A controversial topic in 2024 might be:

 “Here’s Why the USA is a Terrible Place to Live – and Why I’m Off to Make a Life in Madagascar”

Personal story titles are ones that relate to experiences or events that have happened in your life.

There’s no strict formula for this one, as you’ll want the space to come up with a title that’s the right fit for the style, nature, and contents of your personal story.

However, you can combine personal story titles with elements of the other titles we’ve discussed here – such as the how-to title, or the number/list title – to demonstrate the tangible value your personal story will offer the reader. For example:

 “What a Year in Madagascar Taught Me: and the 10 Things it Can Teach You”

These titles use humor and/or wordplay to get the reader interested and entice them to click.

Importantly, these titles also set the tone for what’s to come. A good humorous title will attract readers looking for a fun, lighthearted read – and tell those looking for boring, long-winded articles that take themselves too seriously to go and look elsewhere!

“Mada-GASP-ar: 7 Things That Will Shock You About Africa’s Biggest Island”

Evergreen titles are ones related to topics that remain relevant and interesting to readers over time. They address common issues or questions that don’t quickly become outdated.

 “Madagascar’s Hidden Gems: Exploring the Island’s Most Off-the-Beaten-Path Destinations”

One of the golden rules of copywriting is to sell not the features, but the benefits of something. In other words, you’re not selling the mattress, you’re selling the good night’s sleep.

Benefit-driven titles do the same thing: informing your readers of the specific advantages or solutions they can gain from your blog post. These titles are often actionable, and pledge to solve a problem, offer valuable insights, or play to a particular pain point or need.

 “Explore Madagascar Like a Local: 15 Insider Tips for An Authentic African Experience”

So, there you have it – 14 brilliant blog title examples that you can riff off and play with to answer that all-important question: how to write a blog title?

But remember, the blog titles we’ve listed here aren’t inflexible or mutually exclusive. They’re designed to be malleable. This means that you can merge them, mash them up, and remake them into varieties that combine the best elements from several blog titles.

With that said, we’ll leave you with some FAQs, and a list recapping the blog titles we’ve covered above. Enjoy!

How to write blog titles, recapped:

1. Include keywords
2. Ask a question
3. Put a number on it
4. Tell ‘em how
5. Call it the ‘ultimate guide’
6. Share your own experiments
7. Compare and contrast
8. Review it!
9. Tap into what’s trending
10. Rattle some feathers
11. Get personal
12. Make them laugh!
13. Write it so it’s evergreen
14. Explain the benefits