There are undoubtedly many things that contribute to increasing your visibility online, however, one key factor of any search engine optimization strategy is formulating an interesting and effective SEO headline. You can have great content or your online business may offer superb products and services, but if your headlines are not SEO-friendly, then you won’t get any clicks or views. Statistics show that good SEO headlines greatly influence the number of persons who visit a website, so we want to ensure that our titles have a few key components to help drive up traffic.
Do Headlines Matter For SEO?
The simple answer to this question is yes. Headlines do matter, and writing attractive SEO headlines can make or break the possibility of acquiring viewers and customers for your website. It is the first thing that people see when they search online and we all know that first impressions are very important. Your headlines should also be favorable to the Google algorithm, which is where the SEO aspect comes in.
How To Write Perfect SEO Headlines
- Keep Your Audience In Mind
- Include Keywords
- Use Emotive And Intellectual Language
- Keep It Short And Simple
- Include Numbers
- Talk With An Expert
Keep Your Audience In Mind
Many times, we get caught up in trying to appease Google’s algorithm, and we sometimes forget to keep our target audiences in mind. Even though we need to follow guidelines to ensure that our content ranks on SERPs, we must remember that the purpose of producing content is for the people. Therefore, it is crucial to know and understand your audience. Always keep them in mind when writing your SEO headline. In all honesty, the Google algorithm could care less about fluent language; you could simply throw a bunch of keywords together and you’d possibly rank well. Despite this, you can’t throw a bunch of unintelligible keywords together and expect to get clicks from people.
Include Keywords
Keywords are important for the algorithm to rank your content higher on Google search engine result pages (SERPs). You want to make sure that your SEO headlines contain words and phrases that people are likely to search for. It can be impossible to come up with these keywords on your own, so it’s great that tools such as Google Ads Keyword Planner and SEM Rush offer keyword search tools to help you with this.
Use Emotive And Intellectual Language
This ties in with keeping your audience in mind. A great SEO headline should be written in a way that captures the audience’s attention. The best way to do this is by using emotive and/or intellectual language. Emotions compel us to take action, which is why many advertisements appeal to emotion. You’ll see it all the time in many different types of ads. For example, cosmetic companies target the insecurities of consumers. Their advertisements will normally display seemingly perfect models using their products, which compels the audience to seek out the product in hopes of achieving perfection. Include attention-grabbing words such as
- Boost
- Easy
- Best
- Free
Keep It Short And Simple
You want to ensure that your SEO headline is concise and straight to the point. In most cases, the best SEO headlines have an average of 8 words. Keep it as short and as simple as possible.
Include Numbers
I don’t know about you, but numbers get my attention. Let’s say I am interested in finding the best tips for optimizing my search results on Google. I will choose an article that gives me a specific number of tips that I can use. If I am looking for a concise list, then an SEO headline giving 4 tips will catch my attention. If I want something more extensive, then a headline giving 12 tips will draw me in. This may seem unimportant, but it has been proven that including numbers in your SEO headline will result in higher website traffic.
Talk With An Expert
I know you probably don’t want to hear what I am about to say. Talking to an SEO Expert is a guaranteed way of ensuring that you have effective SEO headlines and that your content is fully optimized to drive traffic to your website. Instead of browsing Google and scouring through tons of articles trying to learn SEO best practices, it would be much easier for you to pay someone with more experience in SEO. In the long run, you will benefit from that relatively small investment of outsourcing the SEO job to someone with in-depth knowledge. Use the time you would take trying to learn these SEO strategies, to focus on other aspects of your business.
What Should Be Avoided In SEO Headlines?
In addition to considering the many factors that contribute to a good SEO headline, you must also consider those factors that can negatively impact your headline. Luckily for you, I have done all the research so that you can avoid making these simple mistakes when writing your headlines.
Common Google SEO Headline Mistakes:
- Unspecific or Vague Language
- Excessive or Wordy Language
- No Sense of Urgency
- Unrelated To Content
- Keyword Stuffing
What Is A Good SEO Headline? (SEO Headline Examples)
A good SEO headline will incorporate most of the tips given above. Even though there are a few others that I did not mention, these tips should be enough to get your foot in the door of successful search engine optimization. Below, you will find a few examples of great SEO headlines that rank well on Google’s SERPs. I challenge you to figure out why these are considered to be effective headlines.
- THE TOP 10 Jamaica Tours & Excursions in 2023 – Viator
- Bob Marley | Biography, Songs, Albums, Death, & Facts
- 44 Irresistible Food & Drinks to try in Jamaica | BEACHES
- Top 10 foods to try in the Caribbean | BBC Good Food
- The 12 best natural hair products, according to experts
SEO Headlines: A Simple Way To Guarantee You’ll Rank On SERPs
In conclusion, search engine optimization can be very time-consuming to figure out for someone who lacks expertise. It is a necessary part of growing your business online or increasing content visibility, but it takes a lot of effort to fully optimize your content. Having effective SEO headlines is only one aspect of it all, so it would be best to seek out a professional who can assist you with getting your website out there in the public’s virtual field of vision. Jomo Barnett is an SEO expert, with a diverse portfolio. You can reach out to him for further assistance with growing your business online.
Building your website on WordPress? Try the All In One SEO plugin to ensure your blogs and articles have SEO-optimized headlines and copy.
I hope this article helped.
