Blog Title Generators: Are They Useful?

December 28, 2018
 
When you’re stuck for blog topic ideas, a blog title generator might seem like a good idea. Simple, you think, you plug in a word and it gives you a list of awesome blog topics to write about.
 
But are blog title generators useful? Are they going to help you come up with awesome blog content topics? I’ll say upfront that I’m not a huge fan, but I do think they have their uses – to a certain extent. They’re not all the same, either, so some work better than others.
 
Let’s take a look at some, what they do and how they could help you, as well as their limitations.
 
I’ve put similar terms into different generators to see what the results are.
 

Blog topic generator: HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator

What it does: Allows you to plug in up to three nouns and spits out ideas. They’re upfront about titles needing to be adjusted to be grammatically correct, as with pretty much all generators.
 
Results: I put in “cat bed”, “cat toy” and “cat food”. Here’s what I got back.

Conclusion: I suppose these all could work with a bit of adjustment. They would mostly just work better with plurals – which I guess is kind of my fault. They’re fairly standard ideas/title structures. Not amazing, but not terrible.

Blog topic generator: Portent’s Content Idea Generator

What it does: Gives you one idea at a time based on a keyword and gives tips on how to structure the title. Again, they warn you that the generator might not speak English very well, with an added Simpsons reference.  

Results: To make it a fair comparison, I did it five times. Here’s the first one:

  • The others were:Why cat beds are scarier than Tyra Banks
  • Save your marriage using only cat beds
  • 20 ways cat beds can increase your productivity
  • How cat beds can help you win the Game of Thrones

Conclusion: Well, you have to give them props for creativity. I could probably twist some of these into a wacky post about cat beds, but they are all kind of nonsense. I’d love to hear some songs about cat beds if you have any, though. The aim here is clearly creative clickbait type headlines but what the content of these posts would be is a little harder to grasp. But they might help you start thinking outside of the box when you’re stuck for ideas. To be fair, they might work a lot better with different keywords.

Blog topic generator: Build Your Own Blog Ideas Generator  

What it does: No keywords with this one. Just click “generate blog post idea” to get some inspiration.

Results: You get the beginning of a title, one at a time. So here are five it gave me:

  • Something to think about is…
  • My goal for the coming month is…
  • Some blog tricks I’ve learned that actually work…
  • How I started blogging after I bumped into buildyourownblog.net
  • Here is what I did last week that seemed to work well…  

Conclusion: Probably more suited to anyone trying to make money just from blogging. Even then, I couple of these are about actual blogging (even with a cheeky plug for the site) so if your blog isn’t about blogging successfully, they wouldn’t be much use to you. The more open-ended ones could help you come up with your own ideas.

Blog topic generator: Answer the Public

What it does: Uses information from Google and Bing to give you content ideas in the form of questions. In other words, it tells you what people are asking so you can answer (hence the name). It’s also a good tool for finding keywords, with suggestions for different prepositions (with, for, to), comparisons (vs, or, like) and an alphabetical list.

Results: Lots of information that can inspire your blog posts. Here’s an example of one of the diagrams with questions:

Conclusion: Probably my favourite. It might not give you set blog ideas, but I think that should help you be more flexible and think more creatively. Some of these would also make great posts without changing anything. A post about which cat bed is best, whether cat beds are washable or whether radiator cat beds are safe could all provide useful information for your blog readers and improve your SEO.

In summary, I think that blog title generators can get you thinking. However, it’s best not to rely on them to suggest a fully-formed blog post idea. You still need to use your brain. Sorry, the robots aren’t ready to take over just yet. Answer the Public is the best tool on this list, in my opinion. It gives you a lot to think about and could help you boost your SEO.