5 tips to dramatically increase the performance of your headlines

Quality content but no traffic? Trouble could be the headline. 

A headline serves as the appearance of a dish, no one will eat the food, no matter how tasty, if you do not present it well. One can say the same about headings, 

No matter how useful, entertaining, or well-researched your content is, it won’t receive views if the headline is unable to capture the reader’s attention.

If you’re struggling with this, here are five tips that will help you create better titles for your content and drive more traffic and views.

Incorporate clear benefits 

When scrolling through an everyday feed, either of news or social media posts, people are selective in giving away their attention span to the whole content. 

It is mostly mindless scrolling until they jump at a header that addresses to their benefit. Your headline should communicate those benefits succinctly and powerfully. 

Your promised benefits can be in the shape of:

• A piece of new information
• A question, not mind-numbing but enticing enough to induce sudden curiosity 
• Useful solutions that would serve as unique rationales to common issues 
• Unique perspectives to generic ideas 

Remember, the level of expectations they hold for your content would be staged by your headlines. People have low attention spans, so a headline relating to their benefit shall certainly catch their eye. 

Use search results and see what’s working

Internet users seem to be accustomed to clickbait-y phrases that mark half of the content on their timeline. So work on the keywords you are going to utilize. After that, know what you are competing against. The Internet is flooded with numerous articles. To stand out and be better, you must have a thorough knowledge of what’s already there.

What’s more appealing for the audience? Is it commercial content or blogging? How-to questions, guide headlines, or infographics? What makes their content appealing? 

To know what you are getting involved in, scan the google search results and try to filter the articles that stand out. Now it’s time to produce a much better design for your exceptional ideas to get your content to Page 1. 

Additionally, if you notice a pattern on what’s working (by analyzing the top-ranked articles on Google SERPs), you can also take inspiration from those headlines and reverse-engineer their methods, saving yourself a lot of time and effort.

Emotionally charged headlines 

Bring emotions to your headlines by using a list of powerful words that evoke your reader’s emotions and complete your mission of making them click on your article. However, provoking emotions through such headlines must be done subtly. Read below and see how crafting an emotional headline can glide up a reader from their mind-numbing scrolling:

From: “Five reasons to give us your donations…”

To: “Become a donor. Save a child’s life today.” 

See how by a careful selection of words, you can evoke an unconscious desire in people to click on your article and even donate after some skimming. 

Use numbers in your headlines 

With an everyday explosion of information on the internet, there has been an ongoing growth of the total volume of content creators. As a result, it has become a huge challenge to stand out. 

80% of readers never make it past the headline. It is estimated that, on average, eight out of ten people will only read the headline, and only two out of ten will read the rest of the web page.  

After extensive research on content that resonates with viral sensations, it has been seen that headlines including “numbers” in them are more attractive to readers. The number suggests that the content can be quickly skimmed, it’s comprehensive and, therefore, will save time. 

By giving a clear expectation of what the content holds, your reader gets engaged quickly. Furthermore, it will be implying that the article is going to be well-organized and sequenced in logical order. And who doesn’t like to save time by reading comprehensive and organized content? Some quick tips on how to put the use of numbers to even better use:

• Use digits. 
• Try putting the number at the start of the headline.
• Multiples of 5 or 10 or odd numbers are the most-read ones for listicles.

Create and test multiple headlines 

Now that you know how an effective and attractive headline should be, it’s time to be creative! Keep in mind that one cannot achieve perfection on the first attempt. You will be discarding many headlines; there will be many drafts until you improve the final headline for your article. 

But hey, don’t be too harsh on your brain. Conduct A/B tests and rely on the test results instead of going by “gut feeling” that may not always be correct.

Conclusion 

There is no doubt that the headline of a post is the most important part of online content. Before publishing any article, look for any improvements in your headline, keeping the above-mentioned tips in mind.