Some headlines do nothing but bore potential readers and drive them away, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Help your clients turn those bland headlines into click worthy titles without resorting to click bait tricks. Your clients will be happier and so will their visitors.
With practice, your clients will start creating better article headlines worthy of the stories they post. It all starts with the right advice from you.
Start With Keywords
Readers usually come across content by searching for keywords. If none of the story’s keywords are in the title, readers may never find the story to begin with. Advise your clients to analyze their stories and determine what the main keywords are. For instance, the keyword for this post is “better article headlines.”
Work the main keyword phrase of the story into the headline. This tells readers what the main point of the story is and provides a better way for search engines to connect readers with your clients’ stories.
Focus On The Start And End
Studies have found that readers are most attracted the first three and last three words in a headline. This means your clients have to make the start and end of their headlines extremely strong and eye catching. Ideally, headlines shouldn’t be much longer than those six words to begin with. The longer the headline, the more likely a reader is to just move on. Remember that search engines only show the first 65 characters of a headline in search results.
Longer titles work best if it’s two separate statements separated by a colon or dash. For instance, this title could’ve been longer if written this way “Deciphering The Formula Of Better Article Headlines: How To Create Headlines That Amaze Every Time.” The first half makes a promise and the second half further describes the story’s purpose.
Never Keep The First Title
Your clients might want to save time by going with the first title that comes to time. Explain to them that on average, 80% of site visitors read the headline. Only 20% read the article. To improve that percentage, you need better headlines. This is a good reason to spend more time on the headline.
Advise your clients to create a simple, straight forward title to begin with. This is the working title. It can then be tweaked to be more catchy, descriptive and click worthy. Many sites spend nearly as long crafting a headline as they do an entire post.
Make Titles Clear And Accurate
The last thing a headline should be is untrue. For instance, if this post was title “The Single Formula For Creating Better Headlines,” that would be misleading because there isn’t one single formula. Tricking your visitors into clicking a headline and then not delivering what’s promised only causes visitors to leave the site permanently.
No matter how the headline is phrased, it should always be clear and accurate. Any promises made should be delivered somewhere within the article.
Prove An Article Is Valuable
Readers are far more likely to click on a headline if it appears to contain something valuable. The key to this is to use specific words in the headline. Numbers always work well. It’s one of the reason you see so many list style articles. In fact, some studies have shown as much as 73% increase in social sharing on articles with a number in the headline. Readers usually prefer odd numbers.
Outside of numbers, words such as tips, strategies, lessons, ways, ideas, tricks, facts and secrets, promise something useful in an article. For instance, “9 Tips For Writing Better Headlines” sounds catchier than “The Headline Writing Guide.”
Conclusion
Writing better article headlines is crucial to increasing traffic and social shares. Guide your clients on how to make their headlines more enticing to visitors. Advise them to try A/B testing to see what types of titles get the most clicks to see what their audience prefers.
Now that you’ve helped with headlines, help your clients get better layouts to make their headlines stand out. Install the Conductor plugin today for the easiest way to quickly change site layouts.