Three Best Practices for Writing Headlines That Drive Web Traffic

How much time and effort do you put into writing headlines for blog posts and pages?

Page and post titles are your first impression to website visitors. A potential visitor will see this before they ever click through to your website. Which means web visitors will see the headline long before they see your design or read your content.

This makes writing headlines a critical part of content marketing!

Titles are informative and are used to describe a piece of content to potential website visitors. They are also designed to grab attention and to entice a website visitor to visit your website and read your page or post. They force the reader to decide if the content is worthy of their attention.

The best titles or headlines are capture a reader’s attention, are easy to digest, and create an emotional reaction. By doing this they will entice a reader to the point of clicking on the link and reading the article or web page.

How do you create killer titles that convert traffic? You follow a few simple best practices.

Best Practice #1 – Write an Eye-Catching, Well-Written Headline

The title or headline must do one thing well – capture the visitor’s attention. It should get inside the reader’s brain and spark interest. It can excite, scare, be controversial, drive curiosity, invoke emotion, educate, or be intriguing. What it cannot be is boring.

When writing headlines I try to be unique, but not so obscure that I confuse readers or drive away visitors. Once you have a group of loyal readers, you can branch out and be more creative, because the potential readers know solid content is awaiting them. They’ll take more of a chance with the title and give your content the benefit of the doubt.

Examples of some creative titles:

• The Marriage of HTML5 and Genesis
• The Puzzle of Home Page Design
• The Yin and Yang of SEO and PPC
• Creating a Corporate Blog That Sells
• One Page Websites and Templates: 3 Reasons Why I Hate This Trend
• Website Content: Addressing the Elephant in the Room
• Social Media Mistakes: Don’t Be “That Guy”
• Seven WordPress Performance Tips for the Everyday User

These headlines are different. Each title tells you about the blog post, while also entices you just enough to click through to read more. Each were very effective in driving traffic through organic search and social media networks.

Best Practice #2 – Use a Keyword or Keyword Phrase in the Title

To garnish the most web traffic to your content, you need to research and include keywords when writing headlines. If you think this is difficult, let’s review my titles and highlight the keywords for each.

Examples of some keyword based titles:

• The Marriage of HTML5 and Genesis
• The Puzzle of Home Page Design
• The Yin and Yang of SEO and PPC
• Creating a Corporate Blog That Sells
• One Page Websites and Templates: 3 Reasons Why I Hate This Trend
• Website Content: Addressing the Elephant in the Room
• Social Media Mistakes: Don’t Be “That Guy”
• Seven WordPress Performance Tips for the Everyday User

The italics words represent keyword phrases. Each has been used to craft a creative headline that is designed to capture the attention of users and search engines.

Below is an example of one of these blog posts and how it appears in Google. Notice how the keyword phrase is highlighted by Google.

When writing headlines for SEO, it is best to utilize the following steps:

• Research your keyword phrase to verify traffic actually exists. You can do this via Google’s Adword tool or via a WordPress plugin like WordPress SEO from Yoast.
• Keep the title to 55 characters or less so the entire title appears in the search engine results page.
• Place the keyword phrase towards the start of the title if possible. You’ll see I didn’t do that in every example and that is because sometimes it just isn’t possible. Never compromise usability for SEO.

Best Practice #3 – Don’t Be a Spammer

Writing for SEO is great, but make sure you do it with class. Don’t make yourself look unprofessional by spamming search engines and aggravating visitors.

Examples of spammy techniques:

• Using the keyword multiple times in the title.
• Including a URL in the title.
• Writing a title that doesn’t read well or make sense – all designed to get your keyword into the headline.
• Writing a title that isn’t relevant to the content.
• Placing words in all caps.
• Forcing in a geographical reference in an attempt to score in local search.

Keep in mind the search engines will override your title if they don’t feel it is relevant or of quality. Try and circumvent their rules and the search engines will simply ignore you and do what they want anyway. Thus it is better to play by their rules for maximum exposure and web traffic.

The Golden Rule of Writing Captivating Titles

Do the right thing. I say that a lot when it comes to SEO, but it applies to headlines as well. If you have to at all question your proposed title, it isn’t a good one. Throw it away and come up with something else.

Think of content titles as newspaper headlines from years ago. They can excite, bore, or confuse potential readers. They can also have a huge impact on click through rates from search engines or social media networks.

Put time into crafting a strong headline and you will be rewarded with website traffic, social media shares, and conversions.