5 Top Tips and Tricks for Writing Killer Headlines: And Why They Will Increase Your Website Traffic

There’s something special to writing killer article headlines. There’s a difference between your article title “The best way of writing a headline” and labeling the headlines you offer in the article with a super strong adjective like “killer”.

Confidence and cognitive dissonance between words that usually don’t go together can draw a lot of attention while also conveying the right message to the reader. And we all want to read texts from confident people, don’t we?

But adding strong adjectives isn’t the only tip we’ve got when it comes to coming up with your blog headers. Let’s see what other tips there are.

The Importance of a Compelling Title

A headline is the first thing a reader sees about your blog. Whether they’ve specifically been searching for your article or not, and it just makes an impression on them, the title has to make them gravitate toward it.

Headlines play a very important role in search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines like Google utilize headlines to interpret a blog post’s subject matter and assess its relevance to a given search query.

A carefully constructed title with chosen keywords in it can improve your blog post’s search engine ranking and increase site traffic.  Moreover, headlines may establish the mood of your blog article and let visitors know what to anticipate. A compelling title may spark a reader’s interest and encourage them to continue reading, but a dull or deceptive headline may leave them feeling let down or deceived.

The Elements of a Killer Headline

The Elements of a Killer Headline

There are several weapons a good writer has in their arsenal which could help them write a killer headline. We will list a lot of tips below. Combine 3 or more of these to achieve solid results.

  • Use active tense, instead of passive, use verbs, and be the protagonist in your headline urging someone to take action. Push the reader to action right from the start. “Discover The Mysteries of Oak Island’s Hidden Treasure.”
  • Curiosity is very easy to implement in titles. Just find a search term, and go for it. “I Drank only Milk for 12 months, and This Happened.” Although this is an example more suitable for YouTube videos, paired with a thumbnail, it can also work well for blogs.
  • Be Concise, don’t go overboard with 15 words for a heading unless you absolutely know what you’re doing in terms of keywords and SEO. That’s why our heading is a bit longer.
  • First 8 words matter. If you go for a longer heading, make sure the reader can know what’s going on from the first 8 words.
  • Humor can also be used in some cases, depending on the topic you’re writing about.

How to Craft the Perfect Title

Use 2 or more of the work-frames below in order to craft the perfect title to capture the attention of any audience:

  1. Curiosity (You Won’t Believe…)
  2. Negativity (Best Writer Avoid…)
  3. Make the heading a List (Top 5…)
  4. Use Timeliness (Fix Your SEO in 5 minutes:…)
  5. Use Authority (This is How Gary Vaynerchuk Writes his Headlines…)
  6. Target Deep Desire (Reach Millions by…)
  7. Beginner-Friendly (Best Beginner Tips…)
  8. Extreme Scenario (I Climbed Everest Naked…)
  9. Reject an Objection (Shampoo isn’t the Best Way to Wash Your Hair…)

Once you’ve chosen 2 of these, combine them and get good results. For example, combining #7 and #3 is quite common in any space. There are many other combinations you could use for great results. Experiment! Here are some cool examples.

Always  A/B Test Blog Titles

Use analytics to compare different versions of your headlines and how they perform. It’s a mystery. Sometimes you write a perfect headline and another one that you didn’t really like performs twice as well.

Don’t underestimate user-friendly and simple headlines, the can often beat complex and smart titles, that not everyone can grasp. After all, we’re trying to reach many people here, come on!

Avoid These Mistakes at all Costs!

There are plenty of things that can go wrong while writing headlines. So, what to avoid when writing headers for blogs?

  • Avoid click-baiting people all the way through. If your title is a bit over-enticing, make sure you deliver in the article you are offering.
  • Don’t mislead people with inaccurate information to make them click on your blog.
  • Never use all caps in headlines or a lot of punctuation.
  • Avoid insider language and jargon, that only your readers would know. That limits your audience to your already established fanbase.
  • Try to steer clear from writing unclear headlines, which don’t give out the essence of what your blog is about right away.

What Comes Next After Killer Titles?

After you master the trade of writing great titles, there’s another step of the blog optimization journey. It’s called Ad Optimization. Cash flow is essential for any website, and if yours isn’t generating enough, you should seriously start thinking about it. Get a closer look at how easy it is to optimize the Ad placements on your website and increase your revenue with Publir’s solutions.