How to Write a Viral Blog Title: 14 Tricks I Learned After 31h of Research
Headline Writing Formulas That Experts Use Every Day
Did you know that the headline is the most important part of an article?
It’s the most important part of your article because if it’s not interesting, people won’t read your article. People judge your article by its headline. Even if your article is an award-winning one, people won’t click if it has a dull headline.
So, it’s crucial that you nail your headline. The following 14 tips will equip you with the tools to make your headlines click-worthy.
Table of Contents1. Perfect Headline Length
2. Skimmablity
3. Best Headline Analyzer
4. Add Numbers in Headlines
5. Words You Must add
6. Headline Should Look Fresh
7. Write Headline First
8. Add Emotion Words?
9. Readability
10. Avoid Puns or Clichés
11. Make a Swipe File
12. How to Practice
13. How to Google
14. Write “You” in Headlines
Conclusion
1. The Perfect Headline Length
There are viral headlines with just four words, and there are viral headlines with 15+ words.
The most viewed TEDx Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? Only has 4 words.
And David Ogilvy’s most successful ad At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock has 17 words.
The length won’t bother you much. But still, if you don’t have experience writing a ton of headlines, you should write headlines that are between 6–10 words. Shorter sentences convey very little, and longer sentences bore the reader. It’s better to stay in the middle as long as you are in the learning phase.
And if you’re writing for SEO purposes, you should know that Google allows titles to be maximum of 600px. That’s roughly around 50–80 characters depending on the width of your headline. If you write in all caps, for example, fewer characters show up on Google’s search engine results page compared to if you write in lowercase.
2. Make Your Headline Skimmable
“The first words of every sentence should make a friendly first impression to encourage the reader to keep going,” wrote Ann Handley in her book, Everybody Writes.
People have short attention spans. Putting the main topic of your headline at the beginning makes the headline more skimmable.
Don’t write: Dr. Peterson gives a step-by-step guide to dealing with anxiety
Do write: Dealing with anxiety: A step-by-step guide by Dr. Peterson
Consider this by CoSchedule:
3. This Headline Analyzer is the secret
CoSchedule is a brilliant headline analyzer that rates your headlines using these metrics:
- Word Balance
- Word Count
- Character Count
- Headline Type
- Reading Grade Level
- Sentiment
- Clarity
- Skimmability
Most of the articles and videos I went through suggested using CoSchedule.
I’ve used it, and it gives near-accurate results. But it has a slight problem, it doesn’t know anything about your niche or your target audience. So, you might get bad scores on a good headline or the opposite.
It’s better not to rely on it too much and only use it for learning the fundamentals of headline writing.
4. Add Numbers to Your Headlines
We are better at comprehending numbers than we are at comprehending words. Numbers are symbols that help us measure and quantify the world around us.
Mike Hamers, in his blog post, 5 Reasons Why Using Numbers in Your Headlines Works states that:
All you need to find the validity of number-effectiveness is to visit BuzzFeed. They’re generating hundreds of millions of views on their articles every month. And most of them have numbers in them.
So, add numbers to your headlines. Also, using a numeral is better than using a word. The numeral 9 is better than the word nine.
5. Add Strong Words to Your Headline
Don’t add words that don’t have a solid definition, like thing, really, and got. Words like these can be used to convey multiple meanings. Your strongest words are nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
You’d find plenty of strong words here: 350+ Powerful Words For Unbelievably Effective Headlines
6. Make Your Headline Look Fresh
No one likes reading 10-year-old blog posts. But the thing is, no one knows how old your article is. Unless you mention it. Do a quick Google search, and you’d see articles with (2022) in their headline pop-up on the first page.
There’s a reason top-ranking pages on Google include dates in their headline.
Adding the year or date to your headline makes your article look fresh.
You can also add fresh, new, latest, and current on your headline to make it seem, well, up to date.
7. Write Your Headline First
Your headline has two other purposes besides getting clicks:
- Telling your readers what your article is about
- Giving you direction while you write
Writing your headline first gives you the opportunity to fulfill those two purposes.
If you write your headline first, you can tailor your article according to your headline. This way, you’ll be able to write precisely what you wrote in your headline.
“Whenever I’m in idea generation mode, I make a list of potential headlines rather than a list of topics” — Shannon Ashley
And writing your headline first will give you a roadmap for your writing.
“The headline is always on screen when I write an article. It keeps my eyes on the point of the articles, so I don’t go off track.” — Tim Denning
8. Add Emotion Words to Your Headline
When we’re scrolling online, we often don’t think very hard to analyze every headline we come across. Our cognitive basis takes over, and we judge headlines based on the words they use.
And hence, some of the most successful headlines consist of emotional words.
So, make sure your headlines convey emotions. Particularly the following:
- Joy
- Fear
- Disgust
- Rage
- Hope
9. Your Headline Should be Easy to Read
Every mental task takes a significant amount of energy. Our brains spend 20% of our body’s energy even while we rest.
Tasks like reading, writing, and solving math take up a lot of energy.
And our brains don’t like spending energy. They make us procrastinate on daunting tasks.
Reading is a hard task too. When we’re on the internet, we don’t stop to consider an article. We just have one look and shift our focus to another headline. If your headline takes even a bit of effort to understand, it won’t get clicks.
So, keeping your titles concise and easy to read is better.
10. Avoid Puns or Clichés
You only have a limited number of words to write in your headline. So, you can’t afford to add anything that won’t help you get clicks or summarize your blog post.
It’s okay to use humor in your article. But don’t use it in your headline unless it helps. Usually, they don’t because it’s extremely difficult to understand what your target audience will find funny. And the more words you add to make your headline funny, the more words you reduce from making your headline clear.
11. Make a Swipe File
A swipe file is a collection of marketing or advertising material used for generating ad ideas.
You can make a swipe file for headlines too. Find successful articles with a lot of views and copy-paste those headlines on your swipe file.
I’ve compiled a list of 120 viral headlines👇. You can add some headlines from there too.
A swipe file will act as your dictionary when you’re writing a headline. Grab any headline similar to yours and make little tweaks to it to make it match your topic. And you’ve got yourself a winning headline.
Headlines aren’t copyrighted; as long as you’re not copying a headline word-for-word, you won’t even be doing something unethical.
And over time, as you emulate successful headlines, you’ll learn to make your own viral headlines easily.
12. Improve Your Headlines Every Time
“On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” — David Ogilvy.
And most Copywriters treat it that way, spending 50% of their time writing headlines.
But you don’t need to spend that much time writing headlines. Though you do need to write a lot of headlines. A good rule of thumb is to write 10 headlines for each of your blog posts.
13. Use Google to Your Advantage
Write a normal version of your article’s headline (let’s say it’s how to write). Now, go to Google and type it up. Google will show you the best headline variations for your article.
How do I know? I know because the articles that show up on the first page of Google’s search engine results page have great headlines.
Now, look at the top five headlines and make a list of the words they use. You can now use those words in your own headline.
14. Write “You” in Your Headlines
“Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.” ― Dale Carnegie.
Addressing people by you/your will make them more attentive and receptive n to your headline than if you write us or them.
This is from Dan Kennedy’s flagging technique.
This technique is also advocated by Neil Patel, who gets millions of visitors to his blog every month.
You’ll also see this technique in use in a lot of viral blog posts.
So, why not use it yourself?
Summary
- Write your headline first
- Add numbers to your headlines
- Practice on CoSchedule
- Make a swipe file of great headlines
