If you’re the type of blogger who struggles to come up with a post title, you’re either going to love or hate what I’m about to describe. That’s because, when titling a blog post, you actually have the option to use three or four different titles.
How?
Well, as we’ve described in another post here in our Resource Center, it’s important to keep in mind that your blog title appears in more places than just your blog. That’s because your post is shared and distributed in more places than your blog.
And, in a few of those spots, you can control and differentiate what those are.
Now, obviously, you have your traditional post title. You know how that works. You know what goes there—for the most part.
But, when you’re in the post editor, head on down to the Yoast SEO panel to control a few others. And I’ll explain what you should be thinking about.
SEO title
Now, while the name of the tool is “Yoast SEO,” there’s more to it than SEO—though that is one aspect, for sure. I have to say, with any tool that aims at improving SEO, do not stuff it with keywords. Don’t try to trick Google. It won’t work, and it’ll do more more harm than good.
What to think about, though, is what may be lost on Google when your post appears outside the context of your law blog. Is there a term that may be a little on-the-nose on the blog that would work well on Google.
For purposes of this post, I’m gonna do this as I describe it.
The official title of this post is: Use your blog’s Yoast SEO settings to target post titles to your audience
That makes sense in the LexBlog Resource Center. But how could it be slightly altered to work better for search? How about:
Use your law blog’s Yoast SEO settings to adjust title for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
It isn’t spammy, and it hits terms that folks may search for when trying to do exactly this. And here’s where you change it.
When you first take a look, you’ll see what the tool calls “variables”—specifically, an oval with [Title] [Separator] [Site Title], which means that’s normally what you’ll see with no adjustments, the value for those terms.
So when you are adjusting these spaces, just delete the title and type in what you want—as you can see I did there.
Below there, you can also control the meta description. This has no bearing on search rankings, but does display in those rankings. By default, it’s the first sentence or so of your post. But, as I did here, you can control it.
Social titles
Just as you did with your search title, you can change how your title appears when the post is shared on social—specifically as an embedded link.
What to remember when adjusting your title for social:
- Shorter is better as long titles are cut off
- You have your post’s whole caption to work with when providing context—a ton of characters on Facebook and LinkedIn, and still a decent amount on Twitter
- This is a spot where you can be a little cuter, attention-grabbing or provocative, since the actual words are a little less important for an algorithm and more for actual humans
When it comes to changing this, just hit the ‘Social’ tab under the Yoast SEO tool and adjust as needed.
For example:
Quick and to the point, with a question in the description.
As you can see, there’s also a spot to designate an image. By default, social media platforms will grab the first image in a post, but if you want something different—or even more specifically cropped—you can add it here.
I usually use the same title for both Facebook and Twitter, but you do have the option to differentiate those.
For those who want a little more control over things, this is a nice little tool. But if this isn’t your thing, we at LexBlog make sure the default settings are such that everything still looks great regardless of whether or not you take the extra time to adjust these settings.
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For more information on blogging fundamentals, blogging strategy and social media, check out the LexBlog Resource Center.