Headlines – Their Crucial Role in an SEO Strategy

There was a time in years gone by when one of the most important jobs in the media landscape was that of the headline writer. Even today, many of the most infamous tabloid rags still hire people for no reason other than to come up with those terrible puns that have most of us trying not to barf up our breakfasts. But still, it was and is nonetheless a pretty strong illustrator of how powerful and important the right headlines can be.These days, website content and SEO are intrinsically linked like never before – they technically fall under the same bracket. Why? It’s simple really – getting all the traffic in the world to your site is all well and good, but failing to keep a single reader there long enough to convert renders all such efforts useless. Which is precisely where headlines come into the equation as if you don’t hook their attention in about five seconds, you’ll lose them for good.     Clickable Headlines – What’s the Secret?Earlier this year, Nathalie Nahai told the folks at MozCon 2014 that when writing an article, you should be spending 20% of the time on the content itself and 80% on the headline. Realistically, that’s a bit on the OTT side and perhaps shouldn’t be taken literally but nonetheless goes some way to driving home the point – headlines matter.Here’s a quick summary of some of the key points that were raised on how to come up with genuinely clickable headlines in order to maximise SEO efforts:

• Trigger Words – There are certain words that trigger an immediate and often subconscious reaction by playing to general human nature and desire. For example, to include words like ‘free’ or ‘unbelievable’ or ‘shocking’ for example never fails to garner attention. The same also goes for ‘exclusive’ for obvious reasons.
• Questions – A crafty way of taking a totally ignorable statement and making it compelling is to turn it into a question. So instead of using “Increase Revenue 50% Today” it might work better to try “How Can You Increase Your Revenue 50% by the End of the Day?”
• Curiosity – Making the reader think you know something they don’t is also a good way of generating clicks and holding attention. Examples like “Why your bank manager is lying to you” or “Why you’ve always been wrong about your approach to content marketing” and so on.

Of course, the trick in any and all cases comes in the form of delivering on the headline as to put together a great title with no substance is the same as having a great SEO strategy in place for a crappy website – 100% worthless.Beware ClickbaitThe problem with clickbait titles these days is the way in which most of us are becoming somewhat immune to them. Chances are that in most instances where you read a genuinely jaw-dropping headline or statement that links to another site, you immediately write it off as spam…even though it might not be.As such, while it’s important to take the above points into account, it’s equally important not to get carried away and have your work be interpreted as little more than spammy clickbaiting.It’s a tricky balancing act to pull off, but pull it off and your SEO efforts will shine as a result.