Everything happens in the headline. As content marketing efforts continue to increase for modern brands, so has the need for enticing, clickable headlines in online copy. First impressions matter – and articles are no exception. Whether you’re creating a long-form thought-leadership article, a pithy press release, blog post or email marketing campaign, the title should not only grab the reader’s attention, but also lead them further down the yellow brick road to conversion.
Aside from attracting potential customers, copywriters need to also think about relevant keywords and character length in order to climb the ranks of Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).
So, how do you seamlessly cater to the needs of both customers and Google bots? Fortunately, Wordsmith has 3 top tips to craft engaging headlines that will get your content noticed. Read on!
1. Bridge the curiosity gap
American news website, Business Insider, effectively piques readers’ curiosity with headlines that entice them to discover “how” or “why” in the body copy.
In 1963, one of the world’s most famous advertising gurus, David Ogilvy wrote in “Confessions Of An Advertising Man”: “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you’ve spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” And the same stands true today. There’s no concrete research that tells us how many of our readers read the headline, and how many go on to click-through, but what we as copywriters can do to increase the likelihood of click-throughs is by effectively bridging the “curiosity gap” in our headlines.
Leading economist and researcher, George Loewenstein in The Psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation explains that when the curiosity is aroused, our minds fall into a psychological state where our attention is focused on filling the gap in our knowledge. When we discover the information we need, our brains treat this as a reward. Copywriters can use this method to create this sense of intrigue by piquing the customer’s interest with a “curiosity gap” headline.
Striking the right balance can be difficult, as you want to lure the reader in before you bridge the curiosity gap within the copy itself. American financial and business news website, Business Insider, know exactly how to portray the perfect amount of curiosity and benefit-led copy within their article’s headline: “The Countries Where It’s Easiest to Become a Self-Made Billionaire”. The reader is not only is interested to see which countries made the cut, but also to discover how they can become billionaires themselves.
At the same time, pages that get clicked on more often in Google searches are given preferential treatment – allowing them to rank higher in Google search results and Facebook newsfeeds.
2. It’s a numbers game
Leading marketing and software developer HubSpot shows the correlation between headline length and social shares.
So, we’ve already covered why numbers and listicles help when it comes to writing clickable headline copy, but how many words and characters should you use when coming up with a headline that will convert your average internet user into an avid reader?
Sadly, there’s no one-size fits all when it comes to headline length, but it can make a difference depending on which social channel and online medium you’re choosing to use. When creating scannable, easy-to-digest headlines for social sharing purposes, HubSpot Analytics claims that 8-12 words in length got the most Twitter shares on average, while Facebook headlines around 12-14 words receive the most likes.
When it comes to considerations for Google, copywriters should keep their titles under 62 characters in length – any longer and the search engine will cut the remainder of your headline, decreasing the effectiveness of your title and your click-through rate.
3. Be playful with the creative, and ruthless with the testing
American Business Magazine Fast Company’s fresh-thinking and intriguing titles come from a battery of A/B testing.
To stay ahead of the curve, businesses are now heavily investing in content software and testing headline formulas. Today’s technology can automatically compare the performance of competing headlines in real time, track headline sentiment before publishing, and even advise on key search words to stand out in a saturated market.
Managing Director at CatalystSEM Jim Kensicki believes in combining creative and data insights, explaining, “At its core, search and social media are the largest, most easily accessible panels a marketer can tap into. Test multiple versions of your creative against the audience segments you want to reach, then leverage the data from these tests to scale across platforms”.
One of the most popular free tools to test the strength of your headline is CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer Tool. Scoring your headline in terms of overall quality, CoSchedule analyzes individual words, structure, grammar and readability; and rates its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic to your website and SEO value. The tool even gives a preview of what your headline will look like in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and as an email subject line.
When it comes to A/B testing, Optimizely offers a fully-featured conversation optimisation tool used to test headlines in terms of click-through rates, conversions, engagement and social media shares.
However, BuzzFeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti claims that becoming too reliant on headline optimisation software is a dangerous game, claiming that, “Realtime click data causes many publishers to over-optimize and manipulate readers into clicking stories they don't actually want to read. In most cases, it would be better for readers if the information was included in the headline so you only click if you actually are interested in reading the whole story.”
In this day and age no one can underestimate the importance of SEO, especially when it comes to headlines. To avoid writing headlines that sound like sensational clickbait, remember that readability is crucial to encourage users to move from search engine result pages to your website. Clickable headlines ultimately drive more traffic, which in turn signals to Google bots that an article is worth reading, giving it a higher ranking on search results.
When you’ve found that sweet spot between data and creative, you can produce the right headline that advertises, without giving everything away and you’ll be surprised how easy it can be to quadruple your engagement, in what long-term writer for Fast Company, Judith Humphry colourfully calls – the “punching-up” process.
Never let your headline be an afterthought. Having the power to make or break the success of your content, headlines are the first, and perhaps only, impression your brand leaves on a prospective reader, so make them magnetic.