How To Show Different Post Titles To Readers And Search Engines

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Show Different Post Titles To Readers And Search Engines
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As bloggers, when we write a post, we write a catchy title in the hope that it increases the CTR (because readers love to click on things with catchy titles).

But one problem with this approach is if you optimize your post title for readers, you miss out on one of the most important aspects of post titles: Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO).

I have talked a lot about the importance of keyword researchhow to perform keyword research and tools you can use for keyword research. Once we have our target keyword(s) in hand, it’s time to write some high-quality content keeping both – readers and search engines – in mind.

Our target is to write content which is reader-oriented, but also search engine friendly. We should apply basic on-page optimization techniques, and use plugins like SEO Writing assistant.

One Title For Readers, One Title For Search Engines

Suppose you write this post title:

“Make Money Online with Infolinks”

Competition in search engines is very high for this title because it contains the words, “make money online”.

But you can optimize this title to make it rank higher on search engines by keeping it about Infolinks (our main keyword).

So now we have two titles:

  • User-friendly post title: Make Money Online with Infolinks
  • Search engine friendly title: Infolinks: In-text Advertisement Program (Review)

And how do we create these two titles?

Optimizing Post Title for Both SEO and Readers in WordPress

Most of the WordPress SEO plugins like SEO by Yoast, All In One SEO, the inbuilt SEO features of offering you the option to write a different title for search engines (technically called a “meta title”).

Here’s the difference between a meta title and a post title:

meta title vs Post title
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If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, head over to this post:

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Now, whenever you write an article, after writing the user-friendly title, go down to the end of the page to the SEO section.

Add in your “SEO title”, which is what will be displayed on search engines. Also, don’t forget to add a unique meta description in 158 characters to make your post even more search engine friendly.

I recommend you read this post which talks about how to make your blog post targeted for certain keywords.

Make it a habit to optimize your blog post for both readers and search engines. This will help you rank better and increase your readership.

When you write a meta title for search engines, always keep CTR in mind. A catchy post title will help you get a better CTR, and search engines follow click patterns to judge the quality of a page. This will ultimately help you rank higher.

For more SEO tips, refer to the following articles:

If you have any other questions related to creating meta titles, let me know in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer your query.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

29 thoughts on “How To Show Different Post Titles To Readers And Search Engines”

  1. Borislav

    Hello Harsh. Thanks for that article. I find it very useful. I’m starting with SEO optimization on my site and that helped me.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      You are welcome, come again.

  2. Ravi

    Following your blogpost becoming such a challenging task 😉 while we finish reading a post, have to open at least 3-4 tabs to read linked posts.

    Your blog is so awesome, and so informative.

    So much to do after reading every post, thank you!

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Ravi
      That comment made my day 🙂

  3. Deepak Raghav

    Hey Harsh, i want to ask you can i use seo title differ from my blog post title. plz help me. and i want a support for my website

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Deepak
      Yes your SEO Title could be different than post title!

  4. Lee Finberg

    Hi, Just discovered your wonderful site and I have a question that I’ve struggled with for a long time re: title vs headline.

    I use All In One SEO to create blog articles, and I know where to enter “title” in ALL In One SEO and good practices for creating the title with search engine in mind.

    But I cannot find where I enter “Headline” to capture reader’s attention.

    For example, in my blog posting

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Lee
      Your Title is your headline.. What you type at title is your headline. If you don’t use anything in All in one SEO title field, your post title would be shown in search. If you use a different title in all in one SEO field, that will be visible to search engine.

  5. Joseph Nirmal

    Hey Harsh,
    If I use same keyword in yoast SEO posts for two posts. It hurts my post SEO or not?? Because my site is job site. That’s why Iam asking. Guide me.

  6. Mukul Bansal

    I have been using WordPress SEO by Yoast but never cared to change the SEO Title. After reading this post I think I should Start Changing the SEO Title for every post I compose in the future.

  7. piyush

    what about the title tags we should write title tags like abc,abc,abc or another way i.e we should use commas in title tags or we use – or | ?????

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Piyush I would prefer using ‘-‘ as it looks nice.. Or using ‘|’ is also good.

  8. Ashokkumar

    Thanks dude..It’s really did great change in my blog thought’s,,,,thanks for your nice sharing..but whenever i made new post i’ll not indexed for two days why? please help me??

  9. Avadhut

    Harsh,

    So far, I thought you have to use description in your post only. But now I came to know that you can use the description in different words that is related to your post.

    Thanks

  10. Xeobits

    all in one seo is a life saver. Earlier i used to ignore titles all together but now i take some 5 mins extra time to think a suitable title for each and every post.

  11. Shahab Khan

    Already installed on my blog!
    Its really a great plugin. After installing this plugin i noticed great increase in my traffic (almost double)

  12. Akshay

    i prefer Headspace over All IN ONE SEO PACK

  13. Michael Aulia

    I do this almost every time unless when I’m making a “crappy” post and didn’t bother to optimize it for the search engine 😀

  14. Jacob Yap

    A good post. I think All in One SEO plugin is a must for wordpress users.

  15. George Serradinho

    This is a great thing to do, you can optimize your title found on search engine and make it more appealing. I know Thesis has an extra panel when writing posts that one could fill in like title, description and then keywords.

  16. Manpreet Singh Rehsi

    I have spent most of the time today in reading your articles on wordpress SEO, and implemented most the tip you have suggested like permalink changes, plantinum seo plugin etc. Hope I get positive results from today’s work. All credit goes to you Thanks.

  17. Stefan

    I would also recommend everyone to use different permalinks and title. For an example:

    How to sell cars online
    /sell-cars-online/
    .

  18. IndianCashMaker

    is there any such service available for blogger or not? this is a really good tool.

  19. Manpreet Singh Rehsi

    You are right but the optimization of Post title comes with experience. The more you study and try out different ideas better are the results on search engine. In my case I have learned a lot about SEO and Blogging in past seven months and still learning.

  20. S.K Sharma

    All in one SEO is the best plugin. Really traffic building plugin…

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