You may not have realized it but when writing a blog post or any content whatsoever, 70% of your work should be focusing on creating an irresistible title. You may have written an awesome title, but people still need to open it to read it. Unfortunately, that can only happen when you have a title that interests them.
Imagine this: You spent days researching and then write a really helpful article. You go ahead to post it on your Facebook page and then wait for traffic to come in. A few days later, there is no single hit or just few hit. Now you are sad, you think no one is interested in what you are saying.
It takes more than good content or great design to get people’s attention. If you master how to write catchy titles, you have already done more then half of the work.
Why Is Creating Catchy Titles So Important?
Your headline is what sells your content. The search engine takes them serious and humans take them even more seriously. Whether you are writing an email or preparing a post for social media, you need to learn how to get attention with your headline.
Having a catchy title is your golden ticket to increased traffic and wider audience. For your title to be effective, it needs to elicit interest, curiosity, and emotion in your potential readers.
Check out these two samples below:
- How To Create A Website
- 3 Easy Steps For Creating E-commerce Website In 20 Minutes
Obviously, these two titles are dealing with the same problem but with different titles. When faced with both options, a reader will gladly choose the second title. The first title looks stale, too plain, boring, and failed to elicit any emotion. In the second title, the user instantly believe that 3 steps will be very easy, he wants to make money, and he doesn’t want to spend the entire day creating a website, he wouldn’t think twice before clicking on the second title.
Now your turn!
Below, I have written techniques you can use to create catchy and irresistible titles to boost your open rates.
Top 7 Ways To Create Catchy Titles (Headlines)
1. Be Accurate
There is a reason why I chose this first. Your greatest mistake will be to mislead your audience. When that happens, he will never take you seriously again. You will lose credibility and end up tarnishing your image. Avoid the temptation to make promises your article won’t deliver. You must ensure that whatever your title promised is delivered in the article body.
2. Use Numbers
Emotionally, we can easily relate to numbers. It is a great way to draw people’s attention and allow them to do a brief mental calculation. Just like I explained in the example above; when a user sees 3-step to creating a website, mentally, he will feel that creating a website in 3 steps will be awesome compared to a vague headline that doesn’t give how many steps it takes to create a website.
3. Use Catchy Adjectives
Now, this is where it gets interesting. Learn how to make use of catchy adjectives to color your title. You need thought-provoking adjectives to get people’s attention.
Some of the adjectives you can use include:
- Free
- Fun
- Incredible
- Amazing
- Effortless
- Strange
- Absolute
- Essential
If you need more, there is a really big list of power words on this page.
4. Use Trigger Words – “Why, What, How, or When”
Ideally, we form a question in our mind when we are looking for solutions. Let’s take, for instance, someone that is looking for the best real estate manager in New York will probably have the question like “Who is the best estate manager in New York” in mind. Moreover, this will also help you attract the search engines ranking.
5. Keep It Short And Sweet.
Absolutely no one is interested in reading long headlines. You must learn to keep your titles very short and sweet. However, don’t sacrifice being descriptive. Another important point to mention is to include your most important keyword in your short title.
Ideally, the recommended number of characters is 70 (and no less than 50); Google will cut off anything longer than that. You can use character length counter to check your title count!
6. Try To Optimize For Local Search
In most cases, you will get more result when you narrow down your target to a particular area. This strategy is effective not just in attracting potential reader’s interest but also helping you rank in local search.
A New York resident searching for the best plumber will likely settle for a title that says “The Best Plumber in New York” to the one that says “The Best Plumber in the United States”.
7. Make Use Of Free Headline Generators
Even the best of us need inspiration in some cases. If you are unable to think of any idea for your article title, using free headline generator will get the juices flowing again.
Some of the best popular headline generators include:
Conclusion
I hope you learned something from this article. You need to pay more attention to your title whenever you are writing a post. Don’t worry, it is not that difficult, it takes little practice and with time, you will definitely master it.
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