– Eight out of 10 people read your headline, but only two out of 10 will click through and read the rest of your article. It’s all about the headline. Hey everyone, I’m Neil Patel, and today I’m going to teach you how to write headlines that people can’t help but to click. And powerful headline formulas are included in this video. (lighthearted music) Before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel, and if you’re on YouTube, click the alert notification, that way when I go live, you’ll get notified.
The first tip I have for you when it comes to headline generation, is to write at least five different headlines. You may not know what works best, what people love, versus what you love. When you write five different headlines, you can go from there and A/B test them. When you do this, you’ll figure out what headlines perform the best and which doesn’t.
This will give you ideas in the future when you’re writing more headlines of what your readers like, versus what they don’t.
That way, you’re not just making decisions on your headlines based off a gut. And then now starting to use data. From there, look at things like, what has the best CTR. Once you find the ones that have the best CTR, from click through rates, from social media, from Google. Test different variations of those that are very similar and then you’ll be able to fine tune.
You’ll also want to test length too. Typically, headlines that are under 50 characters, from what we’ve tested, do better than longer ones. The second tip to writing amazing headlines is to use specific numbers and data points. Instead of having a headline like, I lost millions by doing X instead of Y, it could be, how choosing X instead of Y cost me $3,452,928. When you get very specific and granular in your headlines, and that’s a headline formula that’s worked really well for me, you can also use that and borrow it and make it your own, I have found that I tend to get way more clicks and reads.
The more specific, the more intriguing, the more honesty and transparency that you’re including, the more exact the number is versus vague, you’ll do better. Because when you give a vague number, what does that seem like? Oh, it could be dishonest, it could be that you made it up, there’s nothing that really backs that up. The third tip, use words that drive action by giving readers rationales. Tips, reasons, lessons, tricks, hats, ideas, facts, lessons, wins.
All those words help with clicks. These will pique the interest of potential readers and your click through rates should go up because they’re like, oh cool, this is actionable content versus non-actionable content. Next tip I have for you, be creative with your adjectives. Now, what sounds better? Nine interesting lessons I’ve learned from A, B, and C?
Or, nine game changing lessons I learned from A, B, and C? You’re going to go with the second one of game changing lessons.
You want to inspire people to click by showing them that they’re going to get something beyond the ordinary. Of course you need to make sure your content delivers on that. If you’re telling people like, there’s 12 effortless ways they can double their search traffic, and all your tips are really hard to do, you’re going to let people down, and the next time, even if you have an amazing article with an amazing headline, no one’s going to click and believe you because you just lost trust with your audience.
So make sure you’re not duping people, as well. The next tip I have for you is use fresh timely information and make sure you’re leveraging the fear of missing out. You don’t want people to scroll by your content and be like, oh, there’s no urgency, I can get to that later, because chances are, they’re not going to come back and get to that later. But in letting people know it’s fresh, by letting them know that it’s immediate, it’s just hot off the press, you’re likely to get more clicks and more reads.
Creating a sense of urgency is a great way to get more clicks and more shares.
For example, I once wrote an article that talked about an SEO strategy that less than 1% of SEO’s are using. The headline could be, A dead simple SEO strategy that less than .1% of SEO’s are using. People are like, wait what is this? I better latch on and read it before other SEO’s catch wind so that way I get the leg up and start ranking higher than them.
If you need help with your headlines, your content marketing, your click through rates, check out my ad agency, Neil Patel Digital.
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