Will a Clever Blog Title Kill Your Traffic?
A clever blog title might make you smile, but if it doesn’t tell a potential reader what the article is about, it could also keep that person from ever finding it.
When I review blog titles for Microsoft Dynamics partners, I want them to immediately communicate the subject of the article, who it is relevant to and what the reader is going to learn. That helps the person scanning search results decide whether to click, but it also gives Google and LLMs much clearer information about the content.
In other words, your title needs to work for people and robots.
This doesn’t mean every title needs to be boring or stuffed with keywords. And, as I’ll show you later, I’ve seen posts with titles I would never recommend perform extremely well. There really aren’t many absolute rules in marketing.
But if you’re trying to get more people to find your content, writing a clear, descriptive title is one of the easiest advantages you can give it.
The Clever Title That Doesn’t Tell Me Anything
I recently saw a blog post from a Microsoft Dynamics partner with a title along the lines of “Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse.”
It was a perfectly reasonable expression, and it might even make an interesting magazine headline. The problem was that the article had nothing to do with horses or carts.
If you saw that title in Google search results, would you have any idea what the article was about? More importantly, would Google? Would ChatGPT?
Probably not.
This is something we see fairly often with Microsoft Dynamics blog posts. Someone comes up with a clever title that makes perfect sense once you’ve read the article, but the title doesn’t tell you what the article is actually about. And that can make a very good article unnecessarily difficult to find.
When Jeff Foreman is talking with a member who wants to improve their traffic, he will often pull up their posts that aren’t getting much traffic and look for opportunities to improve them. Almost every time, he can identify titles that are a big part of the problem.
The article may contain exactly the information a prospect needs, but you would never know it from the headline.
That’s also why reviewing titles is one of the easiest places to start when you’re trying to improve older content. You may already have a very good 1,500-word article. Before you start rewriting the whole thing, take another look at the label you put on it.
Does the title clearly tell a person, and a robot, what they are going to find?
Use the Words Your Prospect Would Actually Use
Imagine you’ve written an article about mistakes companies make when migrating from Dynamics GP to Business Central.
You could call it: Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse
Maybe there’s a clever connection to the article once I start reading.
But someone researching that project isn’t going to Google that term. But they might search for something like:
Action Items Before Moving From Dynamics GP to Business Central
With a title like that I immediately know what the article is about. So does a search engine. And an LLM has much clearer context for determining when the article might be useful.
You haven’t changed the expertise in the article. You’ve simply put a better label on it so the right people have a better chance of finding it.
This is where I think people sometimes misunderstand what we mean when we talk about keywords. I am not suggesting that you take a perfectly good headline and awkwardly stuff “Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP CRM software solution” into it.
Think about the words your prospects actually use when they describe the problem. What would they type into Google? What question would they ask ChatGPT?
Those are often the words that belong in your title.
And Then a Post Comes Along and Proves Me Wrong
Of course, just when I start thinking this is an absolute rule, I find something that reminds me it isn’t.
I was recently looking at the most popular posts on ERP Software Blog and noticed an article from TheTestMart called “Testing Needs Determinism.”
If that article had come to me before publication and the author asked for my opinion, I would have told them to change the title.
Testing what?
The title doesn’t tell me that the article is about Microsoft Dynamics 365. It doesn’t mention ERP regression testing, AI, agentic testing or audits. Those are all important concepts in the article and much closer to the language I would expect someone interested in the topic to use.
And yet there it was on our most-popular-posts list.
So who really knows?
I’ve been doing this long enough to be careful about words like always and never when it comes to marketing. We develop rules based on what we see working, and then something comes along that refuses to follow them.
In this case, the article itself is excellent and extremely specific. It discusses agentic testing, Dynamics 365 regression testing, Microsoft updates, SOX controls, GxP and why deterministic execution matters when testing results need to stand up to an audit.
It also has a much more descriptive subtitle: “Why “agentic” execution fails the audit test, and what AI is actually good for in ERP quality.”
That subtitle is doing quite a bit of work that the main title isn’t doing.
The article is performing well enough to appear on our popular-posts list, so clearly the vague title hasn’t doomed it.
Would I still have recommended changing the title? Yes.
Good content can overcome a weak title. But I wouldn’t intentionally give good content a weak title.
Three Questions to Ask About Every Blog Title
Before you publish, look at your title by itself and ask:
1. What is this article about?
Could someone tell from the title that you’re talking about Dynamics 365 Business Central implementation costs, replacing Dynamics GP, Automating AP, improving CRM adoption or whatever the actual topic happens to be?
2. Who is this article for?
You don’t always have to name the audience explicitly, but sometimes it can make a title much stronger. “How to Improve CRM Adoption” is clear. “How Insurance Brokers Can Improve CRM Adoption” is much more specific if insurance brokers are exactly who you want to reach.
3. What am I going to learn?
This is one reason question-based titles can work so well. A title such as “How Much Does a Dynamics 365 Business Central Implementation Cost?” leaves very little ambiguity about what you’re going to get when you click.
You don’t need to follow a rigid formula every time. But if the answers to all three questions are a mystery, I would take another pass at the title.
Don’t Make Good Content Work Harder Than It Has To
A perfectly optimized title isn’t going to rescue a useless article. The content still has to answer the question, demonstrate expertise and give the reader something worth their time.
And occasionally, a really good article with a title I would have changed is going to show up on our most-popular-posts list and remind me not to get too confident about marketing rules.
But I’ve also watched Jeff review enough underperforming posts with our members to know that unclear titles are a problem we see over and over again.
Fortunately, they’re also one of the easiest things to fix.
So before you rewrite an old article that isn’t getting traffic, or publish your next one, look at the title by itself.
Would someone who knows nothing about the article understand what it’s about?
Would the right prospect recognize that it’s meant for them?
Would Google or an LLM have clear signals about when this content might be relevant?
If not, don’t make your content work harder than it has to.
You can still be clever. Just make sure the people and the robots know what you’re talking about.
By Anya Ciecierski, Co-Founder, ERP/CRM Software Blogs
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