If you want your posts to get viewed and read, a strong headline is the single most important piece of your post. It’s what drives traffic, shares and comments. It’s also what gets your posts into search results and people’s bookmarks menus.
If your headline isn’t as powerful as it could be, you’re losing readers before they even open your article. You’re wasting your time, money and effort writing a blog or podcast post that no one will read.
Luckily, headlines are surprisingly easy to fix. You can use proven formulas to write headlines that will attract, engage and convert more readers. In fact, most of the top headlines you see on Google or your favorite blogs are probably based on a handful of proven headline templates.
These include headlines that start with a question or an exclamation point, headlines that are numbered and headlines that describe a specific type of post. These are proven headline formats that work because they appeal to common human emotions and reader needs.
For example, a question or an exclamation mark immediately triggers curiosity, and the numbered headlines are often linked to content curation tools that help readers discover new articles to read. Explanatory headlines also resonate with readers because they offer clear value and demonstrate that you’re an authority in your niche.
Finally, headlines that make a promise to the reader are highly effective, especially when they’re front-loaded with impact and benefit words like ace, best, only, guaranteed, ultimate et cetera. This works because the more specific a promise is, the more likely the headline is to generate clicks. This approach is perfect for social posts and title tags