How to Write Interesting Headlines That Attract Readers
One of the goals of a professional writer is to have as many people as possible read and engage with your work. That means you need to write effective headlines for your articles.
An effective headline needs to do two things simultaneously; grab the reader’s attention and clearly articulate the benefit the reader will receive by reading your article.
In this article, I’ll detail my process for writing effective headlines and review the free tools I use to help me accomplish that goal.
An effective headline needs to grab the readers attention
If you want people to click on your articles, you need to give them a reason to do so, which means your articles need a great title.
You can have the best-written article in the world, but nobody will read it if your headline stinks.
This was a mistake I made when I started writing. I would spend a lot of time writing the content of my articles and spend less than 5 minutes on the headline. Once I started focusing on writing compelling headlines, my traffic began to take off.
Your headline should give your potential reader a reason to click. Before you publish an article, look at your headline and ask yourself if it would grab your attention if you weren’t the author?
Never write clickbait
Let’s get one thing out of the way; a “catchy” headline does not mean a “clickbait” headline.
It’s okay to make a bold proclamation in your headline, but you damn well better spend most of your article backing up your bold claim.
I once wrote that “Real Estate Is the Most Overrated Asset in History.” This is a bold claim, and I knew it would piss a lot of people off because many people love real estate.
I knew this headline would drive clicks, but I did not write it this way the sole purpose of driving clicks. I wrote this headline because it is a statement I have long believed to be true. I spent the entire 2,000 words of that article backing up the bold claim in my headline.
If you are aspiring to be a professional writer, your credibility is worth much more than the number of clicks you receive on a single story.
If the content of your article does not fulfill the promise in your headline, you will quickly lose credibility with your readers.
Conversely, if you build a reputation for consistently writing exciting and thoughtful articles, you will build credibility and establish a strong readership. Eventually, readers will click on your articles because you are the author, not because of your headline.
An effective headline should articulate the benefit to the reader
When you are writing your headline for your next article, step back, and ask yourself if it clearly states a promise to the reader?
As an example, consider the headline of this article, “How to Write Interesting Headlines That Attract Readers.” When a reader sees that headline, they know exactly what benefit they expect to receive from reading this article.
If I simply titled this article “How to write interesting headlines,” the benefit would be less clear. The reader might be left wondering why they should care about writing “interesting” headlines.
By adding the second part “that attract readers,” it becomes clear that this is an article that is intended to help writers get more people to read their work.
Which, if you’re a writer, has obvious benefits.
Free tools to help you write better headlines
There are two free online tools that I use to write effective headlines.
- Co-Schedule’s headline analyzer.
- Titltecase.
These tools can be handy to help you write effective headlines that are well-formatted.
Co-Schedule’s headline analyzer
I use Coschedule’s headline analyzer tool to write all of my headlines. Once you sign up for a free account using your email address, you get unlimited access to the headline analyzer tool.
All you need to do is enter a potential headline, and you’ll receive a score from 0–100 for that headline.
Let’s say I was thinking of using the headline “How to write a good headline.” I would enter it into the headline analyzer.
Then I receive a score for this headline score and a breakdown of how that score was calculated.
This headline received a score of 75, which is on the lower end of what I would consider an acceptable score for your headline. I try and have most of my headlines receive a score of 80 or more. That takes a lot of work and sometimes 50 or more headline variations.
Getting the right mix of words
The score is calculated by your use of “common,” “uncommon,” “emotional,” and “power” words in your headline and the length of your headline.
If your headline is too long, it will get truncated in Google search, which means fewer people will click on your headline and read your work. The Coschedule tool simultaneously optimizes the type and number of words in your headline.
Examples of “power” words and phrases
- Attract
- Love
- Interesting
- Hate
- Will make you
- Pain
- You need to know
Examples of “emotional” words and phrases
- How to
- Money
- Dollar
- Danger
- Worry
- Wonderful
- Bravery
I would caution not to simply cram in power and emotional words into your headline. These words and phrases should come organically and should pass the “eye test.”
Look what happens if I enter the following nonsensical headline: “How to Money Power exciting love.”
According to this tool, this is a great headline because it contains only power and emotional words. However, we know just from looking at it that this headline makes no sense.
The lesson here is that you should not simply chase a high score with this tool.
You need to balance the analytics with the human element. The only way to do that is through experience and writing literally hundreds of headlines. It takes a lot of work, but it gets easier over time.
Write a ton of headlines
A very useful aspect of this tool is that it keeps a running tally of all of the headline variations you have entered, including the score each one received.
I’ll typically write out at least 20 different variations of a headline I am considering and pick the best one. Being able to see them all lined up next to each other makes it easier for me to choose the best one.
Titlecase
Another headline tool I use for every single headline is Titlecase. This tool helps your format your headline in the proper format. After I have confirmed my headline, I enter it into Titlecase to get the correct capitalizations for the words in my title.
It may seem like a small detail, but proper capitalization makes your work appear more professional.
Grab attention, promise a clear benefit and follow through on that promise
The first goal of an effective headline should be to grab the attention of the reader without falling into clickbait territory. It can be a fine line, but with experience, you will be able to better thread that needle.
Second, your headline should clearly articulate why the reader should click. What is in it for them by taking the time to read your work? Obviously, the content of your article better back up the promise in your headline.
Don’t forget to use free tools to help write effective headlines and format them properly.
If you like what you read, sign up for my weekly newsletter where I provide more tips for creating a successful writing business.