Medium: hook title or seo title for your stories? well, both!

bySuomii1

521 followers

6 months ago

Writing some stories or articles could open new doors if you don’t rely only on inspiration and enrich your text in all possible ways to reach more potential readers.

If you are on Medium, you will see hundreds of articles written around the “HOOK TITLE” theme.

If I write, “How you could subscribe to Benable and create optimized lists”, it's very different from writing, “This is how I made 22 dollars in a month with no followers and no ads. You can do that too.”

The difference here is pretty obvious: we are trying to catch the reader’s attention, forcing them to stop scrolling and give our story a try.

THE HOOK TITLE NO-ROCKET SCIENCE

Behind a well-written title, there’s no rocket science, but there is labor and expertise.

• First of all, you have to clearly understand the keyword you are targeting.
• Second, you need to address a specific target with problems to solve.
• Third, you want to provide solutions and value.
• Fourth, you want to show your audience you are the right person who can guide them through that learning process thanks to your expertise.
• Fifth (don’t worry, I’ve almost finished), the title must provoke some emotions or reactions.
• Sixth — well, if you’ve arrived at this point, surely you’ve figured out how to write a good title: having fun writing it is surely a key to success!

ONE VERY IMPORTANT TIP

One important tip based on my experience is:

• Never rely on the first title you write.
• Write at least 5 different versions.
• Read them aloud to see which one has a better “sound,” and then
• allow your intuition to guide you.
• You will get better and better with time!

Wait, we were talking about the HOOK title — and the SEO-related ones?

SEO-DRIVEN TITLES

The good news is: you don’t need to struggle to combine the two.

Instead, you can create a specific SEO-driven title in the advanced settings of your story.

• Go to Edit Story > More Settings > SEO Settings, and there you can add a specific SEO-optimized title that will appear in Google and other search engines.
• So, you can keep the “hook title” as it is to drive more readers inside the Medium community and
• create a specific SEO title and description (YES, you can customize the description too!) to rank organically on Google and attract readers outside of Medium.

Here you have FULL control of your creativity!

• You can create just one title for both purposes,
• or diversify the two titles for exponential reach.

Happy title writing, then! If you have any questions, leave a comment below so we can all learn together!

Suomii

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