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Your headline must work hard in our fast-paced digital world. It only has a moment to capture the attention of your target market.
If it’s not immediately eye-catching, creating a desire to read more, you may lose a lead.
Your headline needs to make your audience want to know more. It needs to evoke an emotion. Touch their pain spot. Create a desire.
But it’s more than just attracting attention. Your headline also needs to be optimised for SEO.
“What?!” I hear you cry. “How do I do that?”
Here are my seven tips to help you write compelling, optimised headlines that attract your target audience and drive more traffic to your website:
Keep it short and simple. People tend to take action if the headline is direct. For instance, ‘Download your free marketing e-book now’, or ‘Grab 50% off our glowing skincare range today’.
Less sensational, more facts and a sprinkle of emotion. Overly sensational headlines are a thing of the past. Thank goodness! Short and to the point always wins.
The optimum title length is around 70 characters (11 words) or less. Why? Because this is the number of characters that show in the search results.
Using keywords for SEO not only improves your search rankings but also attracts your buyers because your primary keyword will be what your customers are searching for.
Using ‘How to…’, ‘Guide for…’ often reflects what people are writing in search engines to find what they need.
Solve the issue. If you’ve developed a new product that solves an issue, avoid using your new product name. Instead, use words that describe the problem it helps or solves.
Use power words! Adjectives that describe your offer or product help to evoke an emotional response. Words like ‘surprising’, ‘fast’, ‘easy’ or ‘free’.
Your headline is your first big selling opportunity. However creative and fun you want your headline to be, it’s more important that it includes the words your target audience are searching for. But if you can combine fun and creativity into your optimised headlines, then you’re winning!
Here’s a really insightful recent blog by BuzzSumo that delves far deeper into writing really effective headlines, with lots of statistics and examples. And here’s a much shorter blog about headline writing that may help too.
If you’d rather not have the headache of writing headlines, or just want help with your copy and content writing needs, then get in touch. I’m here to help!