April 7, 2016
Searchenginewatch.com
10 tips for writing effective headlines for the web
The importance of headlines should
never be overlooked, a little time spent finding the right headline can make a
lot of difference.
A good headline
means more people will click on your article wherever they see it, it ensures
that the effort you spent in writing an article doesn’t go to waste, and it can
also help your content to be picked up by search engines in the weeks and
months after publishing.
Here are a few
areas to think about when writing headlines. It should be noted though,
that its not about writing sensation headlines for short-term traffic gains,
it’s about ensuring that, if you write a quality article, the headline works to
sell it.
1.
Headlines should be descriptive
As I mentioned in a recent post on journalism and SEO, some lamented the
passing of the pun headline with the coming of the web.
They were fun, and there’s nothing
to stop them being used in print, but web headlines do need to be descriptive.
Who knows, maybe you can manage both in one headline.
The problem is
that non-descriptive headlines don’t work so well out of context. The headline
has a big effect on rankings too, so they don’t work for SEO.
It short, it
needs to tell people what they can expect from the article.
2.
Avoid crappy clickbait headlines
Definitions of
clickbait will vary, but I think many people will agree on what crappy
clickbait is.
There’s this
kind of garbage which appears on many news sites these days. There’s worse
out there, but this is from a Washington Post article on Syria, very relevant…
Clickbait can
also refer to headlines that don’t deliver on their promises. Too much
hyperbole, tips on SEO that promise to revolutionise your marketing strategy,
and so on.
Yes, headlines
need to be enticing, but there’s a balance to strike. Don’t overdo it.
Headlines which promise the world and bring in traffic only to disappoint will
not work as a long-term strategy.
3.
Headlines have to work on their own
When we write
articles, it’s easy to think of them placed on top of the article and forgot
that they’re often seen out of this context.
They’ll be seen
in tweets, newsfeeds, newsletters, search results pages and more.
They’re often
competing for attention with other articles, and your potential readers will
scan and decide whether to click in a relatively short space of time.
So, the
headline needs to work alone as, hopefully, these examples from SEW’s
Twitter do:
4.
Think about headline length
The web, in
various ways, limits the length of your headlines:
§ Google will
only show the first 55-60 characters of a page title, so bear this in mind when
creating headlines. Keep it under 55, or consider what will happen if it cuts
off at that point. We’ve just about made it with our internal linking article,
while Moz and SEOmark are well within the limit. As for the KISSmetrics post,
we’ll have to click to find out what these commandments will do…
§ Social
media. Consider the character limits on social posts. For
example, if you want to tweet an article, adding the URL and image, then the
headline shouldn’t be too long.
§ Email
newsletters. It varies according to the device or email program
your subscribers are using, but shorter headlines are more likely to be viewed
in full.
§ Readability. Sorry
to state the obvious, but it’s easier to read and digest a shorter headline
quickly. Make it too long and people are less likely to read it.
All in all, my advice would be to
keep headlines under 60 characters where possible, especially if you’re looking
to create evergreen content which works well in
search results.
Which is why the following headline
is 103 characters long ;)
5.
Don’t promise what you can’t deliver
This ties in
with the clickbait point to an extent, but you can write a good headline and
not deliver on the content.
Now, some of
this comes down to quality. If you offer what you bill as ‘killer tips’
and they’re just collated from a bunch of posts around the web, without much
original thought or detail, people will feel like they’ve been had.
There’s a
tendency towards adjectives in headline writing that can sometimes oversell
content -‘amazing tips which will supercharge your content marketing’ etc.
6.
Be concise
As we know from
point four, there are a number of reasons to keep headlines relatively short.
Take time and
look at your headlines. Is every word essential? If not, remove it.
7.
See what works and learn from it
Take a look at
your analytics, and look at the articles that are being shared more on social
media. Can you spot a few common features?
For example,
these are the five most shared SEW articles from the past six months, as shown
by Buzzsumo.
I’d say in
all cases the title tells the user what to expect if they click on it. They’re
all relatively short too, and of course, we have a couple of lists in there.
It’s good to
look at a mixture of tools to get the right idea. What works on social isn’t
necessarily the same as what works in terms of traffic, or in terms of leads or
conversions.
However, some
common factors should emerge that will help you create better headlines.
8.
Add keywords to headlines
The rule was
always to front-load keywords, but this is supposed to be less important to
Google now. I’d still want to get my keywords in the title though.
It will help
with ranking, it’s more likely to be used as anchor text if people link back to
your site, and these keywords can also catch the attention of your target
audience on social sites, in newsletters or in search results.
9.
Don’t be afraid of lists
It’s easy to
mock the listicle, but the plain fact is that they work well online.
People like
lists, it tells them that the article has a defined structure and should
therefore be easy to read and digest.
These are the
top ten pages from the past year on SEW. Five are number, six are lists. If I
stripped out the homepage and category pages, there’d be more.
‘How to’ also
works well for us – four of the top 20 fit this pattern. Then there’s asking
and answering a question – these work on people’s natural curiosity and,
if written well, are useful to the reader.
10.
Collaborate on headlines
Sometimes I’ll
come up with headlines alone, but I find it helps a lot to discuss with
colleagues and bounce ideas around.
You may think
you have a good headline already, but maybe someone else has a better idea.
In
summary
While you’ll
find plenty of headline generators and formulas around, headline writing
shouldn’t be too automated.
There are key factors
to consider, rules which are worth following (most of the time), and some
things to definitely avoid, but headlines also have to reflect the personality
of the site and its audience.
Also, you’ve
got to mix it up. If every headline is a numbered list, won’t look good even if
it works for traffic (unless you’re Buzzfeed).
Graham
Charlton is Editor in Chief at ClickZ Global.
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