Yesterday I talked about why it’s still worth it to continue article marketing. Today kicks off the first in a 3 part series called “Article Writing Tips”. First and foremost, we’ll address how to write a great title for the web which will get your reader’s attention and convince them to click through.
How to Write a Great Title
On the internet especially, your title is the most important part of whatever it is that you are writing. You can have the best written article/body and resource box/call to action at the end which will convert 100 times out of 100, but it won’t help you at all unless you have a title to attract the attention of your reader.
No matter where your article is set to appear, your title is extremely important because it’s oftentimes all they’ll see at first with the exception of a possible summary paragraph. If your reader is browsing an article directory, you need that title to first grab their attention. The same goes for search engine listings as this is what’s going to show up whether the article appears on your own website or someone else’s.
A great title will grab their attention, but it also has to convince them to click through to read the rest of the article. Here are some good title examples and templates to consider.
5 Tips for Clearing Acne
“Number” articles ALWAYS perform well for a number of reasons. First off, it clearly sets up an expectation for the reader. They know that there will be 5 things to read, no more, no less. This makes for an easy read but at the same time it sets off a kind of curiosity in the brain as you’re curious either what the tips are or even how many of the tips you already knew. The keyword “tips” doesn’t hurt either as everyone loves tips.
How To Lose 50 lb In 6 Months
“How to” articles also perform very well because people love to learn new things, and how to implies that by the end of the article, you’ll know how to do whatever the subject is. In this title I also gave a finite period of time, another device to set up an expectation. You see this kind of title on fitness websites and magazines all the time because they know it works, encourages click throughs, and sells.
Why Google Hates Content Farms
This ones a bit random, but it certainly peaks your curiosity. To think that something as huge as Google could actually hate something is interesting and probably worth your time to read, even if you’ve never heard of a content farm before. If you can shock your audience even just a bit, then you have their attention.
You’ll also note that all of these titles are short. Using an exorbitantly long title is a good way to lose your audience’s attention very quickly and dissuade people from clicking through. The assumption is that if the title is complicated, the article will likely be, as well, and it doesn’t take much to turn someone off and discourage them from clicking on a link.
Another key in writing a great title is to make it as to the point as possible. You can get away with an adjective/adverb if it helps sell your point (think 5 Tips for Clearing Acne Quickly), but make sure there are no words in your title which do not belong there; this is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.
Lastly, there are some tips for finding out if you have a good title before you publish it. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience, would they be searching for that title word for word? Using titles which people are actively searching for will increase the likelihood that both your article will come up in the SERPs as well as that person actually clicking on your article, because it was exactly what they were looking for.
Do a search for your title after you write it. Did it come up in the Google search bar before you finished typing it? This suggests several other people have searched for it before. Check the advertisements which appear in the search results after you enter your title search phrase. If someone has used that exact phrase in their ad, that’s support that it’s worth using and very relevant to that niche.
Try this in the other major search engines to broaden the experiment. The more support you get, the better that title is beginning to look.
Here’s the links to part 2 (How to Write a Great Article) and Part 3 (How to Write a Great Article Resource Box).