It has been said that a book is judged by its cover and the proverb completely fits when it comes to choosing a heading for a post in blogging. I researched on this topic myself when I started off as a blogger, as from the very first day in this niche; I had been facing a lot of trouble in deciding how to choose effective Headings for my posts. It was soon that I realized that no matter how great content you produce, you still need to learn the art of writing headlines for it. Headlines play a real important role in bringing readers to your blog by selecting your blog out of many others that the search engines display.
Here are 15 Must follow tips to make your headings fruitful for your blog and make your blog a hit.
1. Headlines are FUN to write- Do Not Panic!
It is a pity that the thing which works the most in attracting traffic to a blog is given the least time to be framed by most of the bloggers. You need to understand that writing catchy headlines is the basic requirement of your business, therefore do not consider it a hassle and keep your spirits high and enjoy your work. Once you change your views about it, you will see how easy things will become.
2. Do Not limit yourself
It happens sometime that mind gets completely blank where no idea clicks other than only one. No matter how much you try to make it better, it hardly works. It’s natural. Take some time, Go through the content idea again and come up with something else. Sticking to one wrong headline and not letting your brain to find an better alternate can seriously ruin the entire post. Always try to come up with at least two headings and pick the best.
3. Decide Your Post title FIRST!
It is a good practice to choose your post title first, before starting off with the actual content. The reason why professional bloggers frame their headlines first is that deciding the title in beginning, maintains the entire flow of the content in one direction. The author relates every part of the post with the headline making it easy to avoid writing useless content.
4. Develop Reader’s interest
The better the headline, the more the readers would like to read about the story behind it. you need to be creative here in constructing your headlines and giving it an attractive look.
5. Persuade readers to follow you
Your headlines are the first thing that your readers notice. Try to pass a hidden persuasive message to your readers via your post title with catchy lines, encouraging them to read your article.
6. Capitalization of the words
Another effective tip that really works in dragging your potential readers’ attention towards your existence is to capitalize the First Alphabet of every word of your Headline. This gives an equal importance to not only the sentence itself , but also to every single word of it.
7. Avoid a cliché in Headlines
Although most of bloggers take care of this, but its still important to mention that adding clichés in your headlines make them boring, giving a reason to the readers t switch to some other blog.
8. Follow standard tenses
Important of all, you should always take care of using right tenses in your headings. When talking about present or immediate past, use Present tense, similarly use past tense and Future tense for respective scenarios.
9. Write in Active voice
Your headline should be as concise as possible, consisting of not more than 7 words. Adopting an active voice to frame a sentence makes it shorter. This way you can add more key words in your headlines, which further increases your post’s weightage.
10. Do not Add Unnecessary Breaks
It’s important to differentiate between a headline of an article and its content. Even I use breaks and pauses in the content which is an added feature increasing the charm of the post-if-used, keeping in mind the fair use policy. However, giving unnecessary pauses in the headlines leave adverse affect on the entire post.
11. Be Simple yet effective
There is no point of using difficult words in your headings. In fact, use simple words that can be easily understood by your potential readers while they search about the topic. Phrase your heading in a direct way, avoiding vague sentences.
12. Write SEO Friendly Headline
As stated above, construct your heading in such a way that it only consists of important keywords that users will likely to search for. Writing a SEO friendly heading drives huge traffic to your blog.
13. Use ‘How to’ and Let people Explore
Think like common users of internet with no expertise in the field, they usually search about ‘How’ they can solve their problems. Using this ‘How to’ in your headings increase the chances that your post appears in the search, persuading people to know more about t the solution you are offering to the problem they were looking for.
14) Meet Your Readers’ expectations
The readers whom the search engine redirects to your page on their click, start expecting from your blog to offer the information that has been told or referred in the headline. Always try to keep your readers satisfied by meeting their expectations. Always judge your post correctly in order to choose the most appropriate headline for it.
15. Preview Before Publishing
It often happens that either the heading doesn’t suit the entire post after publishing or there are some grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors in it. Make it a practice to re-check your headings, that is, the most sensitive element of your entire post, before publishing it.
If you have been thinking why your blog is still not attracting readers though you did try all other tips to give your blog’s traffic a boost, then This is what you must try now. An Effective post title will not only increase your popularity but will also generate a good revenue for you.
