An Easy-to-Follow Format for Writing Captivating Headlines

Blog headlines are the things that compel the readers to spend their precious time reading the content of your blog. It has an art into it which everyone can learn.

6 min readJan 13, 2014

Everyone can spend their time on several activities everyday. The thing is, if we spend 20 minutes on a particular endeavor, we trade other worthwhile stuffs for it. One such activity is reading blogs. People like me want to read blogs in order to learn a skill or get a particular information. Now, since we don’t want to waste our times reading useless articles or blogs, we try to select only those which we find interesting and on first glance, informative.

How do we do that? We look at their headlines (or titles). Headlines are what readers like us use to judge the contents before we ever get to read at them. There’s a saying, “Do not judge a book by its cover”. But we can’t help but judge a book by its cover. If the title or even the picture doesn’t catch your attention, we won’t be motivated to read or buy it. The same goes with blogs. We judge them by their headlines.

So as writers ourselves, we want to get our readers to our content by writing alluring headlines. It’s actually a simple art. You can learn the principles right away. But the thing is, it’s also a skill. And as we all know, all skills need practice for us to master them. How to practice writing alluring headlines will be the subject of my next blog. Right now, let’ s start with the principles.

What Headlines Are Not

Before we learn how to write headlines that are irresistibly clickable, let’s learn what a headline is not. Here are the following:

A headline is not a summary of the blog
It’s not a place to be creative
It’s not written for yourself

Parts of a Great Headline

We all love patterns. We can understand things more quickly by observing patterns. It’s also quicker and easier to do things when we follow a certain pattern. In programming, architecture, UI/UX Design, tailoring there are design patterns. In writing headlines, we can also follow a pattern. We shouldn’t limit ourselves to patterns but when starting out, they would definitely help. Here are the common elements of a headline pattern.

1. Use Numbers

Ever wonder why so many blogs have numbers on their titles? Let’s take these examples:

Numbers are precise. The number 10 is already 10 and cannot be 2. Math is a precise study because it deals with numbers. So, we can use the precision of numbers to our advantage when writing headlines.

The reason why using numbers are advantageous is that they give precision to the number of ways, steps, or reasons to accomplish whatever the blog promises. Take the first example, “10 Tips on How to Stop Procrastinating”. It can be made “How to Stop Procrastinating”, but having the number of tips written on the headline makes our minds say, “Oh ok! There are only 10 tips. If I’ll follow these 10 tips, I’ll be able to fight procrastination”.

Have a look at the second example. It uses two numbers, 3 and 7. The reason it’s effective is that it indicates the number of steps to achieve a goal, which in this case is losing weight fast and naturally, and specifies the exact number of days it can be done, which is 7 days. Wow! That’s simply awesome.

2. Use the words how, why, what, when, and where

How and why are the most common of the five but i’ve seen what used sometimes. You can use them together with a number or in exchange of using a number.

10 Tips on How to Stop Procrastinating is an example of using a number together with the word how.

How to Throw a Punch Correctly is an example of the word how used instead of a number.

What You Should Know About Your Brain is an example of how to use the word what in a headline.

3. Use Catchy Adjectives

Use adjectives that emphasize belong to the following:

Ease, simplicity, and comfortable
Controversial
Makes you happy

Here are some examples of adjectives:

Easy
Simple
Comfortable
Effortless
Fun
Enjoyable
Unbeatable
Best
Most Effective
Mindblowing
Killer
Kickass
Smart
Powerful

These adjectives work because who doesn’t want to do something easy, comfortable, smart, powerful, and the most effect?

4. Use Appropriate Words that Describe the List

When you’re blog is about a list (e.g. list of tips, tricks, methods), use those words after the number or the adjective. Here are some examples:

Notice that the examples above use the words reasons, ways, and tips respectively. These are common words you can use if your blog is a list blog. Other word you can use are the following:

Advantages
Methods
Ideas
Practices
Lessons
Tricks

The important thing here is to use word that describes the list. If the list is about the boxers, use the word boxers. If it’s about beaches, use the word beaches. Obvious enough but it’s nice to point out. Here are two examples.

5. Write The Benefits

There are usually 5 reasons why we read blogs/articles. Either we want:

A solution to a problem we have
To know the reasons why something is true
To Achieve a goal
To be guided in making a decision
To do things better

As writers, let’s keep in mind to emphasize on these things on our blog headlines. If you’re writing about how to lose weight quickly, never forget to write that down in your headline in beautiful fashion. The principle is the same when it comes to selling a product. You don’t sell features but benefits. Write the benefits that your readers will get after reading your blog post and the chances of them clicking on the title link is bigger.

Here are examples I like and how they belong to the 5 reasons mentioned above:

A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Out of Debt
People who are interested in reading this have a debt problem and this article promises to help them solve that through a step-by-step guide.
An Irrefutable Argument for the Existence of God
This article is about proving something as true and in this case, it’s the existence of God. It uses the adjective irrefutable to add force to the headline which makes it very interesting to click.
The First 1,000 Users Are Easier Than You Think: 6 Simple Tricks
This blog teaches startup founders to achieve their goal of having their first 1,000 users. And the headline makes a bold claim that it’s easy using only 6 simple tricks.
Five Really Good Reasons To Quit Your Job
Quitting a job is not an easy decision for most people. They need to think about it before doing it. They need to gather reasons on why they should quit their job and the reasons must be good. A blog headline like this is very catchy.
12 Useful Techniques For Good User Interface Design
For User Interface Designers, this title is very catchy.

An Exercise

I’ve outlined and discussed the 5 important parts of a great headline. It’s important to understand that the pattern I’ve outlined isn’t the only pattern but applying them is a great start. Remember you’re not limited to them. When you master the whole craft of writing headlines, you will soon find your own patterns. The important thing now is to start somewhere.

Here’s an exercise you can do. Look at all the links I’ve used as examples of this article. Try identifying the parts that each is using.