Even the best articles under-perform without catchy headlines. In our content audits, they’re one of the first things we look at once we pull all the data in. Are they marketable? Are they click bait?
But why are headlines so important?
The #1 Traffic Builder Is Catchy Headlines
Have you ever been standing in the grocery store and a title “caught your eye”, making you look twice? Magazines know the best titles are cover material while the rest is for dedicated readers to sort through.
Article headlines are like that cover page: the determining factor in whether someone reads. The success of your content depends on those 5 – 8 words. With less than a second to grab the attention of your site visitor, your headline is the most important element.
4 Headline Opportunities To Grab Interest
- The title draws them into your website – The search snippet title is the first introduction a visitor will have to your website.
- The page title draws them into your content – This is your page headline. It’s an excellent opportunity to draw them into the content.
- The section titles draw them into the important points – Section titles should be spaced to continue drawing the visitor down the page.
- The call to action draws them to act – Take your call to action headline into as much consideration as you would your meta title.
Pro Tip: No headline is any more important, or less important, than another. Give them all the same amount of care and dedication.
Creating The Best Headline
There are different types of headlines. Which headline is best depends on your product or service and your audience. For example, are you writing headlines for an ad campaign, an article, a blog post or a sales page?
Catchy Headlines with Benefits
It’s a mistake to ignore your marketing in your content, even if you don’t want to come across as pushy. (Read about this and other headline writing mistakes). If you want a strong headline without much hype, you can have a benefit-oriented headline that promises something but isn’t too over-the-top. You can also create some curiosity.
Here are a few samples:
- The Real Truth About SEO
- What You MUST Know Before You Hire An SEO Firm
- Insider SEO Secrets To Increase Rankings and Traffic
You’ve created curiosity, you’ve told them what they can expect to learn and you’ve kept the hype to a minimum.
These headlines are effective, but sometimes you need more than that. If your competitors are all promising the same info, yours isn’t going to stand out. You need to step up your game.
Yes, most people are afraid to get bolder in their marketing. No one wants to offend their readers or harm their credibility. And there is definitely something to be said for knowing your audience and targeting your copy. But, there is also a time to push the envelope and see if you can improve your response.
Other Headline Examples
Another way to craft a catchy headline is to talk to people’s pain by tapping into whatever emotion people have based on their need.
Pro Tip: Fear of loss is a greater motivator than desire to gain! That means people are more often motivated by missing out on something than they are by the thought of gaining that same thing.
The end result is the same – they acquire an item – but it’s how you present it: Get This versus Don’t Miss Out On This. When you word it like they may be missing out on something it motivates them more.
Here are some headlines that tap into the “pain” (the emotion behind the need).
- Stop Banging Your Head Against The Wall To Get Top Rankings
- Don’t Miss Out On Insider Secrets To Make Your Quest For Rankings Easier
I’ve addressed their pain and I’ve also promised a benefit and played up the fear of loss angle.
Another sample headline:
- Stop The Insanity: Easy Link Building For Beginners
- My Top Secret Link Building Strategy You Won’t Want To Miss
- Tired Of Wasting Time On Twitter? Learn How I Used Twitter To Generate $39, 872
Notice the specificity of the number. Claims are always more believable when they are very specific. However, audiences differ, so always test headline types and see what works for you.
Catchy Headlines Are Classic AIDA Marketing
You may be familiar with AIDA. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. To break it down further, it means you have to remember to:
- capture your reader’s attention
- arouse their interest
- increase their desire
- lead them to take some kind of action
What does it mean to increase their desire? It means you elicit an emotional response from them. People buy based on emotion. So, the key to remember is that you want to illicit an emotional response from the reader.
Look at this headline:
- Discover 3 Crucial Tips from the Pros To Create Powerful Headlines
The first part can cause people to feel uncomfortable (fear). They don’t want to be the only one that doesn’t know!
Also note that it starts with the word Discover. I could have said Learn, but Discover is a stronger action word. Look at every word and see if there is a stronger one you can use. Sometimes one word makes all the difference.
How Can You Develop Catchy Headlines? Look At The 4 U’s
To develop attention grabbing headlines, let’s take an in-depth look at the 4 U’s headline formula developed by Michael Masterson. Strong headlines contain these four components:
- Urgent – a reason to act now instead of later
- Unique – either saying something new, or saying something old in a new, fresh way
- Ultra-specific – sharing exactly what they’ll find when they read
- Useful – offering a benefit
With any headline you try to write, grade yourself on a scale of 1 – 4 (with 4 being the highest rating), on all four U’s. If it doesn’t rate a 3 or 4 on at least three of the U’s, rewrite until it does.
What’s the Use
The first consideration when creating an attention grabbing headline is how useful the content is, and who will benefit from the information. Dig deep into the subject and determine why your readers will benefit from the information.
For example, toys can help manage overactive dogs. The benefit is less effort and stress for anyone that deals with energetic breeds.
- 3 Top Toys Your Energetic Dog Will Love
- Relax, Energetic Dog Owners: Discover 3 Toys They’ll Love
- Hyper Puppy? 3 Toys to Keep Them Happy
Teach Something Useful
If you offer information with the potential to improve the quality of a person’s life, your audience will be excited to read your content. Starting a headline with “how to” is an excellent way to let readers know your article or blog post contains valuable information.
Determine the biggest problems your customers are facing. You can use any number of tools to discover the terms and phrases your audience has been searching, and you can use that information to create irresistible headlines.
Urgently Requires Attention
With so many articles out there, readers pass up helpful information because it doesn’t seem important right now. Your article might sound useful, but unless there’s a bit of urgency to it they’ll just note the reference and move on. Most of your audience will need extra incentive to apply the benefits to themselves personally.
Think about the benefits again, but reverse them into consequences. What can you promise to solve for the reader that hits home for your target audience? For our example, the toys are an alternative to hours of walking the owner may not have.
Remove Uncertainty
You want to be ‘ultra-specific,’ meaning to take the mystery out of the equation. You may be thinking, “But clickbait works!”
Yes, clickbait does get the click, but it doesn’t get the conversion rates you want. Intrigue only lasts long enough to answer the nagging question before the reader gets bored and looks elsewhere for less ‘scammy’ articles. For conversion rates, you want readers to be interested in reading the content, and that means being as targeted as possible.
Our toy example can be refined to any of these possibilities:
- Toys: Lazy Alternatives To Professional Dog Walking
- Inside Dog Exercises for Outside Rainy Days
- Keep Your Hyper Dog Occupied
Remember to deliver on the promise your title makes, otherwise readers will leave disappointed.
Offer Evidence
People are slowly learning they can’t believe everything they read online, and each piece of content you write must compete against countless other distractions. So if your article promises to teach someone how to do something they once thought was impossible, your audience might be skeptical.
When anything you’re about to say is proven, ensure people know when they read the headline. Using “backed by science” or “proven method” in your headline will get your content a lot more exposure, but you must provide the evidence you had promised if you don’t want to lose trust.
- 3 Toys Proven to Help Your Active Dog Unwind
Add Unique Flare
Though you may already have a good headline, add some flare to make it great. Use numbers, either as a list or for specific time:
- 13 Alternatives to 60 Minute Dog Walks
- Question words and phrases that trigger curiosity work well, too:
- How Much Time Do You Spend Walking Your Dog?
Use Emotional Trigger Words
Although most people like to think of themselves as logical beings, humans are driven by their emotions more than they would like to admit. You can increase the effectiveness of your headlines by using words that inspire positive or negative emotion. For example, rather than including “money” in your headline (negative), use “cash” (positive) if your article teaches people how to earn additional income.
But trigger words don’t have to be strictly emotional. Other words can be:
- Rhyme
- Alliteration (Start words with the same letter)
- How-to
Creating a catchy headline that grabs the reader is challenging, despite its simplicity. What seems simple isn’t necessarily easy.
The effort you spend in designing interesting, attention grabbing headlines will show in your traffic numbers and bounce rate. If an article isn’t performing very well, rework the headline and see what happens. You may be surprised how much of a difference it makes.
Improving Your Headlines: Step By Step
Writing headlines is often a process, you get the basic gist down and then you go word by word and see how you can improve it. Let’s walk through a sample.
Starting point…
- Information About Headlines
– Short, to the point and tells people what they can expect, but it doesn’t have enough of an impact.
Draft 2….
- Information You Must Have About Headlines
– This is getting better. You have information and they need it. It’s still too vague though.
Draft 3…
- Top 3 Things You Must Know About Headlines
– This is more direct and makes people feel like there are some very important and specific pieces of information they need to have. Of all the things there are to know, these 3 are the things you must know, no matter what.
And finally, the last version…
- Stop Losing Sales: Discover The Top 3 Tips To Creating Powerful Headlines
– We’ve added another element. Not only is there something to know, but you could lose sales because you don’t know it.
So that covers step 1 (using AIDA) Now on to step 2….
Use Action Words
Verbs encourage readership and guides them. You can use words like: Discover, Find, Get, Learn, Join, See, and so on. An example would be: “Discover Top Weight Loss Secrets” instead of just saying “Top Weight Loss Secrets”.
Give And Get
Another approach is to let people know what they have to give up to get the promised information:
- Get Insider Secrets From Top Bloggers For Only $7
A lot goes into creating headlines that grab visitors’ attention. Much of it is psychology – learning what makes people’s minds tick. In fact, a lot of effort and research have gone into writing the perfect headline over the years.
It might take some time to get it right. After all, one person’s catchy headline is another person’s over-hyped headline. It’s possible to get it right more times than you miss.
Ask Questions
Questions need to be answered, and you can use this principle of psychology in your headlines. Doing so is powerful because it makes your audience curious; they’ll find it difficult to resist the temptation of clicking on your link.
- What Insider Blogging Secrets Are You Missing?
This tactic is much more powerful when you use it on social media. It encourages subscribers to share with their friends. You get extra exposure without being forced to pay additional advertising fees.
Place Emphasis
As you compose your headlines, try to place emphasis on any words that could have an emotional impact on your readers. Words at the start or end of the headline will get the most attention, so that’s where you place any powerful words you use. Some people overlook this step, but it’s a vital piece of the puzzle when it comes to helping you get the most from your effort.
Final Thoughts
The main part of writing catchy headlines is a matter of applying the principles above:
- Follow the principles of AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action).
- Check your headlines against the 4 U’s (Usefulness, Urgency, Uncertainty, Uniqueness).
- Don’t forget to spice it up with action words and/or trigger words.
If you want to enjoy the best possible results, test different headlines so you can determine which ones work best. Using social media platforms, you can instantly tell how well your headlines are working by the amount of engagement your posts receive.
No matter your industry, keeping the needs of your customers in mind and using words that inspire an emotional response will improve your click-thru rate and optimize your profitability. Writing catchy headlines is an art, but the above principles, when applied, can act as headline templates to help you create masterpieces.
