How to Write Headlines that Get High CTR

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Are you worried about low CTR? If you are looking for the best ways to increase CTR, this guide will help you. Great content and high quality links can surely help you increase your traffic. Think about how many headlines you see on different websites on a regular basis. You could be reading some articles on the websites, reading emails, and watching some video on social media networks. Believe it or not, the heading of your content on websites and landing pages play an important role in SEO. It is important to have eye-catchy and SEO-friendly headings that can help to draw the users’ attention on your page.

The ratio of people reading a blog to its body is 5:1. This means if you have the headlines right, you have saved 80% of your money and retained 70% of your visitors.

You see hundreds of headlines every day, in social media, viral news sites, emails,

push notifications from apps, and so on. The viral clickbait stories that you see on your Facebook and Google feeds get their top position due to their high click-through rate or CTR that could be a like, click, or comment.

Essentially, this means that you cannot just write whatever headline first comes to your mind. Writing headlines require efforts, twice as much you put in writing your content body. It is the first thing that a searcher looks at and probably the only way your article can find legitimate readers, user activity, comments, and likes.

So what do you do?

You just simply follow our tips on how to write better headlines.

A/B/n Testing Titles

Figures and data are the best way to ascertain the effectiveness of a title. It is like voting the best title based on real data and not based on emotional effects on words. WordPress has a unique, free title tester plugin, called Title Experiments that tells you which title received the most attention, whether A or B or n.

A refers to the original title ‘reason why you fall out of love’

B refers to a variation title ‘why you fall out of love’

n refers to one or more variations ‘how to keep yourself from falling out of love’

The Title Experiment plug-in assumes you have already published the blog or article, so it is more effective than many such tools.

List Strategy

You will be interested to learn that explanation implicit words like ‘ways’ and absolute implicit words like ‘the most’ get the least chances of being shared or commented, according to

Garrett Moon’s study. The study also revealed that list posts stand a higher chance of being shared compared to the rest of the choices.

The study also recommends other words that make list posts much more attractive and shareable, such as ‘Things’, ‘Reasons’, ‘Every’, ‘Should’, and their combinations. Example: 10 Reasons Why Your Child is a Picky Eater.

Choose the right keywords

It is important to pick the right suitable keywords and place the main keyword in the headline. Optimize the text and include relevant keywords into the content to reap the maximum benefits out of your content marketing and SEO efforts. You can choose the keywords on your own or seek help from experienced SEO professionals.

Use Questions

According to a recent study, headlines written as questions have a higher impact on the rankings. Such questions compel the users to read the content and take proper actions. Including “how to” or “why” related questions can really help to increase the CTR.

Bring Out the Emotion

Often human beings act out on their emotions. So, an ideal way to pique your readers’ interest is by playing the emotional card. Your headlines should evoke the right emotions and there are several tools that let you measure the emotion level a headline produces.

Here is a simple tool that analyses the Emotional Marketing Value of a headline. Don’t go by its unappealing nature, because that is not its USP. Since you and I do not have the luxury of hiring full-time editors to optimize headlines, like the big publications, Forbes and Huffington posts, you can use this tool to find your answers. In fact, if you use both Title Experiments plugin and Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer, you will realize that both pretty much agree to each other.

Factors that Make a Good Headline

The following information is sourced from an infographic created by Quick Sprout.

Use the formula to create the perfect headline - Number or Trigger Word/Adjective + Keyword + Promise

A headline should be short and sweet, having a perfect length of 65 characters or 6 words. Search engines cut off the rest. People usually read the first and last three words of a headline. So, lesser the words, better the impact.

Refer the reader in your headline as if you are speaking to the reader directly

Use interesting adjectives, also known as Trigger Words. There are different types of adjectives, such as assertive, negative, questions, emotions, happy, sad, etc. You have to provide the right one to attract the right reader. Essential, painstaking, incredible, effortless, unique, strange, dynamic, absolute, promising, and inspiring are few examples.

Increase curiosity by personalizing your content or adding a bit extra. Example: 10 Odd Accident-escapes in History. Number 8 is really Hair-raising.

Use negative words, such as stop, no, unless, and without. These words invariably prompt shares and boost likes. Example: Before you start your cardio exercises, Stop, and read the tips.

Use numbers to fulfill people’s need, to spread the post further, and to make your content efficient. Use digits instead of words, such as 100 Different Ideas for Taglines.

Improve your CTR as it helps you drive more traffic, ensure better rankings, and more conversions. You will be able to get higher rankings in Google when you focus on high CTR.