Why your blog’s headline is so important

Did you know that there are actually two headlines in a blog post?

I will explain why a bit later…

Meanwhile, before I confuse you too much, I want concentrate on the most obvious one we all know, recognise and love.

Yes, that’s right, the one we type into the headline field at the top of our posts.

This is, of course the post’s main title. It is the first thing that people see.

And not only for your post, but elsewhere too. If you, or some other kind person, were to share your post on social media, what would pop up would be the post’s headline followed by a shortened link.

Here’s an example of this post ready to be shared in a tweet. Clever readers will notice the URL is weird – that is because this post isn’t published yet! I wanted to show you how the headline takes priority.

Now I know I haven’t written the most wonderful example of a headline, but I want you to stop and think about this: if that headline wasn’t convincing, exciting or informative enough, would anybody click on it?

If that headline was confusing, cryptic, unclear, bewildering, or humdrum, dull, boring, run-of-the-mill, would anybody click on it?

Thought so.

What kind of headlines do you react to?

I bet they would be ones that promise something fabulous, offer a multitude of relevant tips, answer your prayers, understand exactly what your problems are.

That is because they have been carefully constructed especially for you. Their authors have taken their time to try and think like you, their reader, in order to convince, persuade, induce you to click on it.

A good headline has many facets, but the most important one is that it offers something to you, it promises to make your life better, it tweaks your interested buttons and it has been constructed with trigger words that have the desired effect – you are compelled to find out more, to read what the rest of the post says, to find out that solution to your problem.

Look at your most recent post’s headline, and put yourself in your reader’s shoes. How much does it grab you? Would you be attracted enough to want to read more? Does your headline say exactly what’s in the tin?

Headlines should not be set in stone

Now you may decide to change your headline during or after you’ve written your post, and I suggest that this is a very good thing to do. Your first idea for a headline should not necessarily be the one you go with. Sometimes the ideas you’ve created within your post don’t match any more, so changing your headline becomes inevitable.

Some copywriters spend more time writing their headlines than they do on the rest of the content! This is because they understand the value of the headline and its power of drawing readers in. They spend a lot of time brainstorming headlines, creating lots of different versions before deciding on the one they prefer. They know that the correct headline could make or break their post, and have a big impact on the numbers of readers and share results.

But whenever you change your headline, you need to change your permalink to suit. For those who don’t know what this is, it’s the automatically generated URL that appears a few seconds after you’ve first filled in your headline, and is created from the words you initially put into the headline field.

Every time you write a headline in your post edit page, this action indicates to the blog you are going to write a post. This means it needs to generate a separate page for that post, which results in that post’s page requiring its own URL.

Now it’s very easy to edit the permalink if your new headline has become vastly different. You could use the exact words, or reduce it to the most important words, ideally including the main keyword you’ve selected for that post (if you are up to speed on writing for SEO, which I will post about another time).

So what about this second headline?

Now that I have touched upon SEO, I can’t avoid this mysterious second headline any longer.

If you have a WordPress.org blog, you will be able to upload plugins to help optimise it, and one you should definitely have is WP SEO by Yoast. And underneath the area you write your content, you will find where you can optimise your post for SEO.

And one of the fields provides the SEO Title. This is the headline that is shown in the post’s search listing, or snippet. It is created solely for the search engines, so it can be changed to accommodate the main keyword and to consist of less than 70 characters, so it doesn’t “fall off” the end of the snippet.

I’ve only changed this post’s SEO Title a tiny bit. I spent some time playing with it, such as trying to place the main keyword at the beginning as that would have given it more impact, but I couldn’t find a better solution. It doesn’t have to be so persuasive or attractive to my readers, only to the spiders. An SEO Title can be quite dry as long as it fulfils its purpose.

And the SEO Title can include extra information, such as the name of the blog. That’s why I’ve included “| BritMums” at the end, which is the best place for it. Don’t put your blog’s name first, as it isn’t as important as the SEO Title of the post, especially since it probably won’t include the main keyword.

Now it’s your turn

The next time you write a post, have a good think about your headline. Don’t worry about it at first, put in a temporary version and finish writing the content. Then once you’re ready, have a bit of a brainstorm and create a nice selection to choose from.

If you’re into SEO, think about how you will incorporate the main keyword you have chosen. Could you place it somewhere near the beginning? Apparently the search engines prefer this.

Write your headline for the benefit of the reader. How will it draw them in? Does it contain enough interest? Are you offering a solution or a secret? List posts are always popular, and relatively easy to write. Also drawing attention to mistakes and providing the answers is another successful ploy.

And for inspiration, take a look at other headlines in popular blogs. What can you learn from them? Do you think they got it right, or could you do better? Do some research into headlines and see what you could learn. To me this is a fascinating subject!