We all have grown up listening to the old adage, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply on the majority of the internet audience. We live in an age where we’re bombarded by content, and let’s face it – no one has the time to read every piece of content that they come across. There is a reason why they call this the age of headline surfers.

Most people spend only a few seconds to decide if they should click and read through a piece of content. Even if they do click, hardly a few people read the entire body of text. Most readers just scan and skim through the body to decide if the content provides any value and whether or not they should engage with it.

But, what makes them reach this decision when they are not even reading the content?

Headlines!

While everyone agrees on the importance of quality content, a lot of people do not realize that headlines are equally, if not more important. While you cannot keep a reader engaged without providing quality content, how do you make the reader click on your post in the first place?

The advertising guru, David Ogilvy, had realized the importance of headlines long before the internet took the world by storm, and advised the writers to not skimp on content headlines:

“On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”.

When asked what can help a content creator or blogger stand out from the crowd in today’s highly competitive world, with so much content and noise, the renowned marketer and business strategist, Jay Baer said:

The headline of your content piece is your biggest, and probably the only opportunity to make an impression on your prospective reader. If your headline fails to impress the readers enough to make them click through to your content, all your time and effort that went into creating a great article or blog post goes in vain.

To effectively get your point across, make sure that you craft headlines that hit the right chord and connect well with your target audience.

Headlines Are Also Important For SEO

In addition to being appealing to your target audience, the headlines should also be optimized for search engines. This is important to make sure that your content is visible to the prospective readers. Headlines are one of the factors that search engines consider to determine the ranking of a page or post.

Why Do People Have Difficulty In Crafting Strong Headlines?

While writing good headlines may not be too hard in case of traditional publications, the task becomes quite difficult, for many people, when it comes to online content.

Why?

Because the headlines for online content need to be optimized both for search engines and the target audience at the same time.

The New York Times aptly described the struggle that is created as a result in a 2006 article:

“Search engine bots are not your ordinary readers: they are blazingly fast yet numbingly literal-minded. There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor, or stylish writing. The software is a logical, sequential, left-brain reader, while humans are often right brain.”

Writing a headline that both bots and humans will love is what makes the task a little tricky. In the struggle to create a balanced headline, many people end up making mistakes.

How to Write Good Headlines for Your Content?

Creating headlines that are just correctly optimized for both readers and search engines is a process that requires time, thought and research, just like the content creation.

While there are many ways, useful tips and techniques, here are some of the most important ones that you should follow in order to come up with headlines that grab the attention of search engines as well as your prospective readers:

• Identify and Include Strong Keywords in the Headline

The importance of keywords for success of any content marketing strategy has already been established.

Identifying and using popular keywords in headlines is as important as it is to use them in the body.

But, how do you find keywords?

Keyword research isn’t as difficult as it sounds. There are many online tools that allow you to search for keywords easily. In addition to providing multiple keyword suggestions, many tools also provide other useful details, such as their popularity, strength, and even ranking.

While there are many keyword research tools, here are a few that we find helpful:

1. KW Finder

This keyword research tool not only gives you suggestions, but also provides information about search volume, trend, average CPC and PPC, and keyword difficulty. It even provides the list of top ten Google search results for the keyword, and a few other details about each URL, such as the strength, Facebook shares, and estimated visits.

The tool also allows you to modify search according to the region and language as well as the type of keywords you are looking for, such as general suggestions or questions.

2. Soovle

In simple words, Soovle can be defined as the advanced version of Google’s auto-complete feature. It gives you auto-complete suggestions from multiple sources, such as Amazon, Yahoo, and Bing.

Using Soovle is as simple as using Google. This is how it shows you suggestions, when you type in a head term:

Investing a little time and effort in keyword research will help you understand customers’ behavior and allow you to target their needs in a much better way.

• Avoid Vague and Complicated Headlines

The headlines should be simple and direct – your reader should be able to understand what they are going to get from the content just by reading the headline.

The simplest way to come up with effective headlines is to think of the phrases that people generally use to search online for your keyword(s), the questions your content is providing answers for, the problems you are solving and the needs you are fulfilling, and use them as headlines.

This is exactly what content marketing experts do. Take a look at the screenshot of Jeff Bullas’ blog:

Jeff Bullas could have crafted the most creative headlines, but he opted for simple and direct ones because being a content marketing expert he knows what headlines will get him more traffic.

Google also prefer clear and simple headlines; vague headlines rarely make it to top search results. To get an idea, take a look at the top results for the term ‘blog writing’. All of them are very simple, clear and direct.

Here’s what Colleen Gordon and Ann Handley have to say about headlines:

Save witty headlines for social and email. Google doesn’t laugh and people don’t search that way. Create content that will be found. – @blakepappas22 #dsbos #digitalsummit

— Colleen Gordon (@here_she_stands) August 15, 2018

“Google doesn’t laugh.” Sad and true. #DSBOS https://t.co/TeRBPG218i

— Ann Handley (@MarketingProfs) August 15, 2018

• Analyze Your Headlines

Just like keyword finders, there are many online tools that analyze headlines and tell you how strong and engaging they are.

Share Through is a free headline analyzer that provides you an overall headline quality score as well as engagement and impression scores. What makes this tool more useful is that it tells you about the strengths of your headlines and also gives you suggestions to improve the headline quality score.

Take a look at an example:

• When In Doubt, Use Proven Formulas

During the times when you are having difficulty in crafting a strong headline or do not have enough time to create and analyze multiple options, go for formulas that have been proven for efficiency. Following are some types of headlines that can be lifesaver during hard times:

• How tos
• Numbers
• Questions

While these formulas have been widely used for a long time, Google still seems to like them:

• Use Headline Generator

Using a headline generator is another way to get headline ideas for your keywords and it can be your best bet during the times when you are struggling with a creative block, but have to meet a deadline. Although they do not provide you with the best of titles, they help you to get started – you will be able to find a working title, at least, which you can tweak or modify to suit your needs.

Conclusion

According to content marketing and SEO experts, headlines can make or break your content.

One of the reasons why a large number of content creators and marketers fail to achieve their targets even though they create great content is because they don’t put in much time and effort into creating headlines.

Remember, headline is the only thing that the majority of people read when they search online. No matter how much time you spent or how much research you did to write an amazing blog post, it will all go waste if the headline of your content doesn’t entice your target readers to click on it.