How to Write Headlines That Get More Traffic and Shares

Blog headlines are the gateway to getting people to click your content in search or social media.

If your blog title sucks, the chances are that people won’t click it to read further. Imagine being on the first page of Google search results without any clicks at all?

That would be a disaster and you would not get traffic to your site.

That’s not all.

Google would eventually lower your search results position due to lack of interest in your content.

It’s easy to see that your blog titles can increase or decrease traffic to your website. Which one is up to you!

Copyblogger posted an interesting statistic:

What? Just 20% of people will actually click and read your blog post?

That’s right.

It’s not a great statistic, which is exactly why you need to take the time to write attention grabbing headlines to get more clicks!

And today I have tips and tools that will make you feel like you possess headline creating superpowers!

Why Headlines Are Important for Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about getting more conversions through the information you put out to the world.

But … you need people to actually read your content before a single conversion can occur.

Do you want your blog post to get clicked in search results or social media? When you make your headlines compelling, more people are apt to share your content because it looks interesting on first glance.

Writing great headlines is your first steps towards growing your traffic and improving your content marketing.

If you ever wondered why no one is clicking or reading your blog post, titles is the first place to look.

Even if your content is great, you’ve got to get people past the headline first.

If your headline are vague or don’t tell the reader exactly what’s in it for them, your blog might become a ghost town.

One of the most challenging things about blogging is getting people interested and engaged with your content.

What is the Best Headline Length

Writing great headlines includes knowing how many characters to include.

On average, keeping your headlines at 55 characters or less gets more click-throughs.

That’s not all.

If your blog headline is too long, the title gets cut off in search results and some social media platforms.

In the following headline example, the latter part of the title is cut off in Google search results. I’ve included the rest of the title in red.

Seems like a pretty important thing that a person might want to know! But they can’t see it due to the extreme length of the title.

On the other hand, here’s an example of a headline that uses the perfect number of characters. Nothing is cut off in the actual title and the reader knows exactly what the content is about.

Always take into consideration the number of characters in a blog title as well as the number of words.

How to Get the Best Ideas for Blog Titles

Since we are mere mortals, coming up with the best blog titles can be quite a task.

Personally, I am not too creative and need a lot of help with coming up with ideas.

Here are a number of tools and techniques to get the best ideas for your blog headlines.

Fresh Title Headline Generator

I was introduced to Fresh Title a few years ago and use it frequently. It’s software that you download to your computer.
Yes, it cost money but it’s well worth it!

It works on both Windows and Apple operating systems. You can get some fantastic headline ideas!

The minute I saw Fresh Title, I knew it was the right tool for me! I highly recommend it. Grab your title generator here.

Sumo Kickass Headline Generator

Want to have some fun? Check out the Sumo Headline Generator. You’ll get a number of variable with which to generate your titles for each of the headline types.

These title generator tools should give you some ideas to write catchy headlines for your blog posts.

Always remember your goal of getting people to click!

Why you need to analyze your Blog Headlines

Now that you came up with some catchy headlines, the next step is to analyze them.

You may have to analyze 25 headline ideas before you find one that works!

Even if you feel like you came up with a catchy idea for a title, it may still suck and not attract attention.

According to CoSchedule, “Headline analyzers claim to help you create headlines that have more emotional appeal, which leads to more “traffic, shares, and search results.”

At CoSchedule headlines are analyzed on a number of things including:

• Word balance: Common, Uncommon, Emotional and Power
• Number of characters
• Number of words
• You’ll get a headline score with a meaningful rating.

That’s not all.

You will get educated on why the elements in your title are working or not.

It’s one of the best headline analyzers I’ve used. Shoot for a score of 70 or more.

How to Write the Best Subheads to Keep your Audience Reading

That brings us to your blog subheadings.

Keep in mind that every sentence and subhead in your post has a purpose. That is: to get a person to continue reading.

The majority of people scan your posts to see if they want to read the various sections.

That’s why you need to take just as much care in creating subheadings as you do for headlines.

The same concept applies:

If your subheading sucks or is too general, a person may not be compelled to keep reading.

Subheadings have the power to drive more engagement and get people to read all the way to the end.

If people stop reading near the beginning because your subheadings are not interesting, they’ll never see your call to action.

To create a subheading in WordPress, use the Style drop down menu. Be sure to apply headlines styles according to the correct hierarchy.

For example, if your headine is a Heading 1, then your subheads would be Heading 2. A Heading 3 would only appear after a Heading 2.

The good news?

Sometimes Google uses subheadings as the title in search results if it’s a better match for a user search query.

This is How to Get Best Titles with Thrive Headline Optimizer

After you use the headline analyzers to create a compelling blog post title, it’s time to put them to the test and find out which will get your the best results.

The Thrive Headline Optimizer is a WordPress plugin that helps you to analyze multiple headlines for a blog post. Thrive Optimizer analyzes based on real metrics to find out which headline gets the best results.

This is such a cool headline tool! Here are the metrics that Thrive Headline Optimizer uses:

• Click Through Rate: How many website visitors click on your headline.
• Time on Content:  Counts the number of visitors who stayed on your site x number of seconds or longer.
• Scroll Depth:  Counts the number of visitors who scroll x% down the page.

These metrics are crucial to understand which headline gets you the best results. It’s the perfect A/B testing for your blog titles.

Here’s how it works:

Thrive Headline Optimizer Step 1: Write Multiple Headlines

Create a few different headlines that you think will work great for your content. Thrive Optimizer also has a template but you can also use the aforementioned tools to come up with some awesome titles.

You enter the headlines in the Thrive Headline Optimizer dashboard for the specific blog post title you want to test.

Write as many headlines as you can think of!

Thrive Headline Optimizer Step 2: Set It and Forget it

Start the test and let Thrive do its work. The headlines you entered are shown to different users as in an A/B test.

Thrive Headline Optimizer analyzes the results. Based on a goal of maximizing engagement, it shows you the winning headline!

You also get detailed reports about the metrics that were used to get the best results.

I love this!

Final Thoughts

Writing better blog post headlines can get you better results for clicks and shares.

Are you writing memorable headlines for your posts? If not, you can change that starting now by using some of these tools to craft the most attention grabbing headlines.

Which tools have you tried and what score did you get in CoSchedule?