// Blog Post Titles GUARANTEED. TO Drive YOU MORE TRAFFIC. Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Transcription

1 // Blog Post Titles GUARANTEED TO Drive YOU MORE TRAFFIC Image courtesy of Shutterstock

2 Crafting Killer Headlines How much time do you spend crafting a great title for your blog post? Would it surprise you if I said that the headline is as important and, at times, more important than the actual content of your post? Great, I ve caught your attention!! Let me now prove to you how important it is

3 Goal of this Guide My goal for this guide is that you start creating better headlines and generate more traffic as a result of this. This is why the headline really matters 8 out of 10 people that read the headline don t read the rest of the blog post Copyblogger That s scary isn t it!! Imagine seeing a blog post on your Twitter feed. If the title doesn t appeal to you there s no way you ll look at the blog post. In this case the title is more important than the actual content! Ian Cleary Co-founder & CEO RazorSocial.com

4 Different Types of Titles When you re thinking about your blog post title it s important to consider the most popular types of titles. Let s begin by taking a look at some of the most popular and useful types of titles that you could use. It s not a case of using the same type of post all the time, it s important to have a variety of post types and also to test out which works best for your site.

5 List Posts A list post is where you are listing out a group of items one after each other. For example: 7 Ways to Build Subscribers ACTION: Go to and put in a competitor that blogs regularly. I bet you that you ll find at least some of their top posts will be list posts! People are attracted to list posts. They are easy to read and skim through. They can flick through the article to find the item in the list that is relevant to them. DID YOU KNOW? List posts typically generate twice as many shares as normal posts and therefore drive more traffic

6 How to Posts When you see how to in a title you want to read the rest to find out if this is relevant to you! know it s going to teach you something so immediately it is appealing to you. When I checked Buzzsumo for my site it shows that List and How To posts are the most shared content.

7 Negative Headlines HIGHER AVERAGE CLICK THROUGH RATE 63% Study by Outbrain (an advertisement network) found that negative words in headlines perform better than positive words Negative headlines capture your attention. Instead of How to try out How not to do something. 7 Things You Must Avoid if You Want To Succeed 10 Disturbing Secrets Every Waiter MUST Lie About to Keep Their Job 7 Things Your Doctor Will NEVER Tell You (Unless You Know How to Ask!) It s often a good idea to find a popular piece of content from a competitor that is a how to post and change that around and create a post about how not to do something quite similar. That doesn t mean to say you use negative keywords all the time but using this tactic every so often works

8 Be Provocative Questions in headlines spark curiosity This entices people to read your post. It also works great on social media channels. For example, on Twitter if you see a question you might want to click on the links to find out the answer.

9 Case Study Highlights What is Possible: People love case studies because it showcases what other companies have achieved and that you can achieve it too. Case Study Example Author: Brian Dean from Backlinko Brian is a master of this. Here s an example of a case study title from him.

10 NEWS Headline This is a news announcement, for example, Launching Our Course To-morrow. On our site I avoid any news headlines because people don t come to our site for news. They come to find out how to do stuff! If your site is a news site then that s different.

11 Other Types of Headlines DIRECT & SPECIFIC You tell it as it is. I released a post recently: 26 Social Media Monitoring Tools [Reference Guide] It s a list post but it also specifically outlines that it s a reference guide. WHY? This generally works well e.g. Why You Need to Stop Exercising Today. Why sparks some curiosity. COMMAND This is where you are telling people what they will Get e.g. Get the 7 Secrets of Success We have Never Shared Before. Images courtesy of Shutterstock

12 Emotional & Power Words These are words that add a punch to your headline. They appeal to the emotional side of a person and really capture their attention. Why it s compelling 17 Killer Facebook Post Ideas for Small Business Owners How to Speak in Public Even If You Hate Public Speaking The Secret of Successful Podcasting It s a list post Killer is going to capture the audiences attention It s benefit driven it contains post ideas It s targeted suitable for a small business owner It s a how to post It s a little bit quirky so it will capture attention e.g. Even if you. Hate is an emotional keyword Who doesn t want to know secrets

13 Emotional & Power Words Still unsure? CoSchedule have an editorial calendar plugin with access to over 1,000,000 titles. They did a study with a grouping of the posts and found the higher the emotional score the more shares the content gets! See if your most shared posts have a high emotional score! Check out the Headline Analyzer Tool on the next page Here are 180 power words to help write emotional headlines coschedule.com/blog/emotional-headlines/

14 Headline Analyzer Tool A useful tool for testing out your headlines is the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer! All you do is paste in your blog post title and select the category of post. You will then be given a rating out of 100%. This title will appeal to the emotional side of the reader which is generally good. I have found that my most shared posts achieve a reasonably high score. The higher the score the better. Anything above 20% is good and higher than 50% is extremely difficult to get. It s FREE

15 Formula for Headlines NUMBER or Trigger word adjective keyword promise I found this formula on goinswriter.com and it s quite good EXAMPLE: How you can Easily Double Your Online Revenue in 31 Days Trigger How Adjective Double Keyword Online Revenue Promise Double Your Online Revenue in 31 days There s a very clear benefit in this title and it s also very specific 31 days. I did a post recently about increasing social shares by 97%. Of course I can t say for definite that you ll increase shares by 97% but it s possible you could! Just having 97% in the title certainly increased the shares.

16 Research on Headlines CoSchedule (provider of editorial calendar plugin) and Okdork (personal site from Noah Kagan, founder of Appsumo) recently researched over 1 million headlines. Here s a table of the most popular word/phrases in the post headline. Interesting to note: Even though list posts are the most popular type of posts they are only used in 5% of all posts (i.e. room for more list posts) Using You/Your in your headlines is very popular. You want to appeal to your audience. It s all about them, not about you!!! Free/Giveaway is also quite popular. Your blog post could be just about running a competition.

17 Split Testing Headlines HubSpot published an article which showed the results from testing 2 different titles for the same blog post. It s amazing to see the difference in click through rates based on the article. Here are some examples: Question or No Question Variation A: What does Google s Hummingbird Update Mean for E-Commerce Business? Variation B: What the new Hummingbird SEO Algorithm Means for Ecommerce Business 123 Number or No Number My goal for this guide is Variation A: that you start creating better The Simple Template for a Thorough Content Style Guide headlines and generate more traffic as a result of this. Variation B: 7 Steps to Creating a Thorough Style Guide Winner: B 200% more clicks!!! Winner: The question won with 700% more clicks!!!

18 Other Tools & Resources Portent Tool for generating a good title. You paste in your keywords and then you portent.com/tools/title-maker can cycle through some ideas for blog post titles. Content research tool. If you enter in a keywords or domain name it will show you the most shared content based on these. This is very useful to see what titles have worked well before for either you or your competitors Buzzsumo

19 Invest time in creating a great headline and you will reap the rewards. If you action only one thing in this document just test out your blog post title with the Emotional Value Analyzer and this will immediately help with increasing attention and shares of your blog content. Our Summary