Writing Great Headlines to get 2x Traffic to your Blog: Social vs Search

After you’ve identified what you’re about to write (Topics), and for who all (Target audience) you’re gonna write, (Article for another day) you need to focus on the Anatomy of the article.

High Level Anatomy of an Article:
Headline
Body
Excerpt/Meta Description
Featured Image

In the competition of Social vs Search, Headline is what grabs the Audiences attention and compels them to click and keep reading. So, let’s talk about ‘Writing Great Headlines’ today.

Headline is a key optimization opportunity for content developers, and it needs to be either optmized for SEO so that you rank higher in Search Media Results or Social, to grab a users attention and get clicks. Headline is the critical element that helps readers decide if they want to click and stay on your site. In fact, 70% of readers don’t read past the headline.

What happens in Social

On Social Media you are looking for clicks and comments. You want people to engage and amplify your content. On Social media, the entire focus on making a catchy headline that is interesting to the audience and making them click on the post. Often people will not read the post but Like and Share that further makes the headline even more important.

What happens in Search

In the SEO world of writing great headlines, we want the keywords in the headline to rank well and show up higher in the search results. We also want to increase the click through rate since that also impacts the rank of the article on a Search engine. Our focus is to rank higher and have people click on our link then anyone else’s.

Conflict

• Generally Headings with SEO Keywords are boring and do not encourage engagement.
• Headlines without high ranking keywords will rank low in search results.

Solution

So how do we resolve this? Actually, its not that really hard. Search Results and Social Media engagement are very correlated, and we can have the best of both worlds with minimal efforts.

1. Determine your Primary Audience and Goal of the Article
2. Determine your Primary Referring channel – Social vs Search
3. Write the most obvious Headline first
4. Now write the catchy headline for Social Media
5. Write 3-4 High-Mid Reach Keywords
6. Merge all 3 to create a catchy headline with keywords

Example:

I want to publish about Writing Great Content headlines

1. Primary Audience:  Authors, bloggers and Marketeers, Goal: To regularly drive click to my website
2. Goal: In my case, i want regular organic traffic. Burst of traffic (high click through) when i post on Social media (occasional).
3. Obvious Choice: How to write amazing headlines to Drive organic traffic to my blog
4. Catchy headline: Writing Amazing Headlines to get 2x users to your blog
5. Keywords: Search vs Social, Great headlines, optimize, writing headlines
6. “Social vs Search: Writing Great Headlines to get 2x Traffic to your Blog”

Caution

Don’t cheat the Readers!

No matter what the source is, the audience is going to land on your website. Don’t cheat them! Write content that was promised in the headlines. Click baits do work but that disappoints the audience and prevents them from coming back to your site. Building trust after you’ve lost it takes an endless amount of time, and trust me – is not worth it!

If you need help identifying your target market and Topics that will resonate with them, Email me v@startupflux.com. You can also avail our Custom Content Services Here