Why I Rewrite the Title of my Articles at Least 10 Times

I admit I don’t make use of any resources to produce an SEO perfect headline that may or may not trigger an ‘article clicking’ frenzy. I do mine the old-fashioned way — by going with my instinct. And I’m happy to say that it works for me with regards to views and helping me qualify for the Medium bonus.

This doesn’t mean my articles have achieved viral status yet but hey I’m not complaining.

Even though I have been writing for about 5 months on this platform, my MO for the first 3 months used to be spending less time pondering what to put for a title and more time on finessing the body of my article. Truth be told, I can see a marked difference with regards to views and chosen for further distribution after I started paying more attention to my titles.

Let me give an example with my article published in Hello Love titled “My Friend Was The Trophy Boyfriend Of A Narcissist.” The initial working title I put in for this article was quite basic “ The 3 Stages of Narc Abuse”. I wasn’t happy with it so I tried a few others:

“6 Signs You Are With A Narc”

“My Friend’s Experience With A Narc”

“Red flags Of A Narc Relationship”

“Signs You Could Be Dealing With A Narc”

“How A Narcissistic Relationship Affected My Friend”

I felt all the above were lacking — either too broad or too generic & impersonal to boot, so they were discarded in favor of something that personalized the story I was telling. But then the fact that my new choice of title veered so far from my usual style bothered me and I hesitated to hit publish. So I reached out to my friend & guide, Vishnu’s Virtues for his feedback, which he kindly provided and that made me feel more confident about going with this new title.

Did reworking my title at least a dozen times ultimately make a difference?

You bet it did!

This is the stat details of said article.

Image by author

3 helpful insights:

1. Does the length of the title matter?

In his article for the StartUp, Manuel Amunategui writes that the ideal length of a Medium title is 5 to 10 words.

Why does he think so?

He arrived at this by analyzing the ideal title length of Amazon best selling books and Medium’s most clapped articles.

Let’s explore this a little further.

According to the content discovery platform, Outbrain “The sweet spot is between 12–18 words, so aim high.”

Yet another interesting study, this time by Sharethrough discovered that 21–28 words were needed to maximize reader engagement!

Personally speaking, my article titles tend to be within the 2 to 15-word range.

2. Tom Kueglar’s tip to writing a better title: In an article, Tom talks about how he finds the subtitles sound way - like 75% to 80 % — better than titles written by beginners.

Why does he think that?

He attributes it to the fact that beginners tend to put so much effort into writing their titles that by the time we get to the subtitles, we have gotten the hang of it and can now come with gold subtitles.

So he suggests paying attention to the subtitles and seeing if it makes a better title. And guess what, I have noticed this to be true on several occasions.

3. Clickbait vs Non-clickbait headlines: Clickbait headlines are those headlines that are very catchy but then fail to follow through. I have to admit that I have clicked on deceptively appealing titles only to find out there is little or no meat to the matter.

An article published by the medium blog emphasizes that this platform is now committed to ‘disincentivizing clickbait.’ Mathew Savener further elaborates on this “Clickbait works great in a system that’s designed to engage as many eyeballs as possible. That’s not our system.”

In my experience, headlines work when they are engaging and clearly communicate what the article is offering to the reader. It becomes a win-win when the article delivers what it is offering in the title. Also, doing this on a consistent basis helps build the trust of readers, driving traffic and being chosen for further distribution.

Originally published on Medium