We can unanimously agree to the fact that the headline is one of the most important aspects of any piece of writing.
Be it a sales copy, a blog, an article, an email, or a business report, we need to know how to write good headlines that can grab the reader’s attention; this will make all the difference.
What difference are we talking about here?
The difference between someone reading your writing piece and completely ignoring it. Sounds harsh, doesn’t it?
So, whenever you’re writing an article or a blog for your affiliate site, make sure you set aside enough time to think about a punchy headline.
After all, an effectively written title serves as the starting point of a compelling copy that urges your reader to buy whatever you’re selling.
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How A Great Headline Will Make Conversions Soar
Are you experiencing high bounce rate on some of your posts? This phenomenon might be occurring because your headline is not good enough. Good headlines not only urge the reader to take an interest in your article, but also make sure that the idea sticks to their brain.
But why are people so attracted to headlines, not the content itself?
Well, in the age of information overload, it’s not possible for everyone to set aside a specific time to accomplish all the tasks they have on hand. Most people keep their lives manageable by instantly deciding if something is worth their time or not.
It is your job to write a headline that entices and engages them enough so to read more about what you have to say without getting distracted. It’s frightening when you think that a process that takes hardly one or two seconds make so much difference.
By the time a reader flips a magazine page, opens an email, or a web page loads, he or she has already made an instant judgment whether to read further or move on. Believe it or not, the headline is often your only chance to make an impression.
They’ll take one look at the headline and boom! Decision made. No second chances. No appeals. And no going back to reading your article no matter how informative and amusing it might be.
How To Write Better Headlines
Lucky for us, writing attention-grabbing headlines isn’t a difficult task. If you spend a few minutes figuring out how to make the headline better, it’s likely that you’ll come up with at least one or two ideas.
Don’t worry; we are not going to leave you in the dark on how to write better headlines. Here are some of the golden rules that you should follow:
The 5 golden rules of writing successful headlines are:
- Be clear: The headline is the only place you’ll need to exercise extreme brevity. You only have a few words to get your message across. So, make sure that it clearly denotes what the article is all about. Leave the clickbait tactics to Buzzfeed; they generate more hate than likes.
- Make it relevant: Your headline should be consistent enough with the introduction, or else it might portray discrepancy to the reader. Make the topic immediately apparent in the first paragraph to keep the reader’s attention.
- Keep your audience in mind: Did you know that certain words can act as a trigger to one specific group? So, if you’re targeting millennials, make sure to use words that will make the headline instantly relatable.
- Keep it short: The whole purpose of writing a headline is to give a quick glance at what your article is about. A long line of text kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think? Be sure to keep the headline short and precisely to the point.
- Make it exciting: Nobody likes to read a line that doesn’t spark their imagination. No, we’re not asking you to use clickbait and misleading titles; just come up with something that’s beyond the ordinary.
What types of headlines perform better?
Did you know that some headlines perform better than others? Yes! These are the following type of headlines that have been proven to bring in more traffic and increase user retention:
- The How-To Headlines
There are over 8,000 books that start with “How To” in their title. These headlines are popular because they make the intention and purpose of the content clear straight away. People like it because the title promises solutions to their problems.
Example:
- How to shed belly fat with this simple home-made diet
- How to reclaim lost love and get your life back on track
- How to win friends and influence people
- The “X Ways To” Headlines
Popularized by online media outlets like Buzzfeed, these headlines are all about breaking down a particular piece of content into small points. Here, X denotes a number. These headlines are popular because they give you the impression that the problem can be solved in X number of steps.
Example:
- 10 ways you can save more money in college.
- 5 ways how global warming affects us all.
- 8 ways you can convince your boss to let you take an extended leave.
- The Benefit Headlines
As you already probably know, people are more interested in knowing about how a product might benefit them than what feature it contains. The Benefit-driven headlines capitalize on that emotion.
Example:
- Benefits of drinking green tea before working out every day
- Benefits of practicing Whitehat SEO practices.
Writing Headlines For Readers vs. Writing Headlines For Search Engines
As an affiliate marketer, you always have to keep SEO at the back of your mind. While it’s true that you must always come up with the right content for the readers first, it’s important to acknowledge the importance of optimization for search engines.
There is no point in writing a kickass title if it doesn’t even contain the primary keyword you’re targeting in the article. An SEO optimized title can bring you 30% more traffic from organic results than a non-optimized title.
If your CMS platform is WordPress, and especially if you are relatively new at this, go ahead and install the Yoast SEO plugin to optimize titles, meta description, tags, and a bunch of other stuff. This plug-in is free and will tell you how to optimize the headline in the best way possible.