Guide: How to Write Great Headlines

Ask
Posing a question remains one of the best ways to engage a reader.

Benefits
Make an emotional appeal by putting benefits in your headline.

Colon - Dash
A proven headline approach is, to begin with, a topical keyword phrase, followed by a colon – or dash – followed by a statement or question.

Do’s and don’ts
A headline using “do” or “don’t” indicates your content is going to advise on what does or doesn’t work for a task your audience needs to accomplish.

Emotion
Decisions are based on emotions. Capitalize on that power using the headline to create a feeling or to describe one.

Facts
A well-timed, topical, or provocative fact (or list of them) can be the ultimate hook for your story.

Greats
No matter what you’re writing, you likely can attach “greats” to it – great accomplishments, great leaders, etc.

Help
Help is a universal foundation of content marketing. Identify how the content will help your readers.

Inspiration
Similar to the appeal of emotions, encouragement, and inspiration are very effective and useful for your readers.

Keywords
Craft your headlines to include keywords and phrases people use when searching.

Lists
Lists work. Readers instantly know what they’re getting and appreciate the lists very much.

Mistakes
Mistakes, misconceptions, myths … negative headlines have tremendous pulling power.

Numbers
Add intrigue to your headlines by citing results, time frames, measurements, or anything that can be enumerated.

Opinions
Indicate you’re going to express your opinion.

Power words
Use more powerful, energetic, emotional, or descriptive words.

Quotes
Use a quote from a speech, interview, research report, song, movie, or anything you believe makes the headline more effective.

Roundups
Headlines for roundups almost write themselves.

Starting
Getting started tends to be the hardest part of a task. Indicate that your content presents the reader with an effective way to begin that task.

Teasers
The curiosity gap is a proven headline technique. Simply write a headline that teases the reader.

Uses
A derivative of the how-to headline, write it to reveal how x can produce y.

Verbs
Start with a verb. Make the verb urgent and interesting. Inject action into your headlines with interesting verbs.

Who, what, when, where, why
Whether your headline is a question or a statement, these five “w” words can help shape an interesting one.

eXamples
eXamples give an exciting way to tee up your content. Showcase a person, group, companies, accomplishments, or any type of relevant example.

You
Your headline can’t call the reader by name, but the word “you” is the next best thing.

Content and Search Engines

Every online business owner wants their website to rank on top of search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the best tool you need to use for higher rankings.

What Type Of Content Ranks Best?

Google and other search engines love high-quality and fresh content. Google wants to deliver its users with the best possible results. There are two main things that it looks at to identify if the content is of good quality.

1. Engagement

How interesting is your content? Are people really reading the whole article or are they pushing the back button the moment they see it? This is the way that Google measures engagement. They want to know how long people are staying around to read your content. If they stay around for several minutes, they know you are providing value.

This is what's called your Bounce Rate. A lower bounce rate can help rankings. If users generally click back, and your website has high bounce rates, this can affect your website rankings in Google.

1. Backlinks

The second thing that Google looks at is linking behavior. The search engines know that people link to content material they consider valuable. Content that is regarded as useful or interesting more often than not is shared by users. Content that is considered worthless doesn't get shared.

Write Content For Users Not Search Engines

Avoid black-hat techniques. If you produce website content just hoping that it can get high rankings, you can get caught up stuffing your content with too many keywords. This then becomes unreadable to the human eye.

These type of underhand SEO tactics rarely work and even if they do, the result is only short-term. The search engines will spot this and will penalize your website. Don't forget that search engines now are pretty smart!

Useful content leads to happy users and a low bounce rate, happy users link back and share the content, which leads to more traffic, which leads to better rankings in Google.