When you write a blog post, the last thing you should do is create your headline. This is because there’s no way of knowing the exact direction that your article is going to take as you write it, and therefore it makes the most sense to craft your headline once you have finished writing your piece.
You should spend a good amount of time deciding on a headline, as headlines possess a great deal of power when it comes to persuading (or dissuading) a reader to click through and read on.
This is your first opportunity to attract the attention of potential readers, and sets expectations for readers. If your content appropriately reflects your headline, readers will view you as a trustworthy and valuable source that they will refer back to in future.
3 Goals of content marketers
The 3 primary goals that content marketers possess are to:
1. Attract traffic to your website
Successful content marketing has the power to boost brand awareness, increase traffic to your website, bring unique visitors to your website and enhance page views. As such, it’s essential that all content is well-written with engaging headlines.
2. Engage with readers
High-quality content marketing also has the power to build brand loyalty and increase your audience reach. Metrics to measure include page views per visit, social media shares, bounce rates, repeated visitors and the amount of time visitors spend on a site.
3. Convert readers into paying customers
Despite the fact that the overall goal of content marketing should be to generate conversions, this should be done in a subtle way that is not too heavily promotional, otherwise you risk putting off your readers. By including the word ‘amazing’ in your headline, you boost your chances of increasing conversions by an impressive 262%. On the other hand, if you use the word ‘trick’ in your headline, you reduce conversion rates by 69%.
As you can see the wording of your headline is incredibly important. It’s best to keep it below 65 characters if you want it to display fully in search engine results, and make sure you include keywords towards the front of the headline.
If you are gearing your headlines towards social media, keep them to 117 characters or less to make it tweetable with a link. For the best possible post-click engagement, stick to between 21 and 40 characters. Finally, for the highest possible click through rates, craft your headlines with between 81 and 100 characters.
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