Web Headlines

I spent years writing captivating headlines with catchy phrases. In addition to brainstorming them, I loved picking one to use. Guess what, that is not what works online.

The web wants keyword/s that are rich and benefit-oriented headlines. For someone like me, that is boring. The good news is you can put your catch headline in the first sentence.

– Having a keyword increases clicks.

– Having a benefit increases clicks.

Have you ever noticed that many headlines of posts or some article have goofy symbols in them? That happens because the author used symbols.

Avoid anything in a headline except letters. That means eliminate & (a favorite of mine), @, #, $, %, *, +, –, _, !, “, ‘, ?, /, and commas. They cause undesired symbols to show up. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way.

Avoid all CAPS for titles. Readers tend to view those as shouting. I’ve been guilty of that too when copying and pasting. It is quicker, but I need to make myself slow down and change it. You can capitalize the first letter of each word.

Try to use welcoming words. In general, the words, don’t, learn, habits, and similar ones frequently turn readers off. Whereas, consider, avoid, discover, behaviors, are more positive.

Keywords in a title do help increase traffic and drive more to your website. Here are some suggestions for keyword research sites:

– GoodKeywords.com

– Keyworddiscovery.com

– Wordtracker.com

– Google Insights

– Google Suggest

Titles matter for books too and so do key words. When I co-authoredSuccess, Your Path to a Successful Book, with Brenda C. Hill, we thought we had a great title. We got terrific reviews and were a finalist in the INDIE Publishing Competition. What did we lose points for? The title. It would have been better to call it, Success, Your Path to Writing, Marketing and Publishing Your Book, or Success, Writing, Marketing and Publishing Your Book. Either of the last two titles have the three key words of the book, writing, marketing, and publishing.

An example of some great article titles are:

– Blogging Tips for Fiction Authors

– Making it BIG as an eBook Author (BIG was capitalized for impact).

– Why is Amazon Author Central so Important for Authors? (I realize this has a question mark, but it was done in html).

– How to Use Facebook to Market Your Book

It would be nice to take credit for these, but I can’t. They were blog posts on our Success With Writing Blog written by contributor Sherrie Wilkolaski. What I would like you to notice is that each title provides both keyword and benefit.

I’m in a continual process of learning. There is much more to say on this topic, but this summary should give you a comfortable start to understand web titles as well as books.