Your headline is what gets us clicking. So no matter how good your article or blog is, if your headline is not interesting enough, nobody will even click to read. What makes a good headline and what’s one simple edit you can do today to increase your website traffic? Well, read on! Cause in this blog I'm sharing with you which FREE tools can help you write blogs that rank higher on Google and how to write headlines that get you more clicks in 2024.
Copywriting 101: how to write headlines?
No matter what anyone tells you, it's all about testing what works best on your target audience. That said, the general rule is that a clear headline is what works best.
Not a clever one. A clear one. Unless you want to win awards I suppose. Or you can think of a headline that's clear AND clever. Then, kudos to you.
A clear headline is one that tells the reader what they can expect from clicking and reading your article or blog. This means that you have to get their attention with something they want or need to know. And for that, you need to do research first.
What kind of research are we talking about?
A couple tools I love to use to understand my target audience are:
Semrush
AnswerThePublic
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
I’ll only discuss the first two in this blog. But make sure you check out Google Search Console and Google Analytics to understand how your website is performing and which areas you need to work on.
Let’s start with Semrush.
This tool has a feature called “Keyword Magic Tool” which helps you find keyword suggestions for your SEO. It looks like this:
You can start with a keyword as simple as the name of your product. So if you’re selling copywriting courses, put "copywriting courses" as a keyword and select the country you’re interested in. After hitting Enter, you’ll see a long list of keywords along with their volume search and the keyword difficulty.
The volume search is how many people enter that keyword in Google each month. And the keyword difficulty is basically how hard it would be for your website to rank for that specific keyword.
So select the keywords with a high enough search volume and low enough keyword difficulty (it should have a green color) to actually start ranking.
Let’s move on to AnswerThePublic.com
With this tool you can get hundreds of potential topics you can write about.
So after you went on Semrush and selected the relevant keyword you want to focus on, you can put that keyword in the free tool AnswerThePublic and get a bunch of topics.
So in this case, you'll enter either a relevant keyword from Semrush or again "copywriting courses" and select the country and language. I selected USA and English for this example. You should then get this:
These topics are all based on actual phrases people use on Google. It’s a great way to find out what kind of questions your target audience has and start answering those questions in the form of blogs.
Oooookay. We’re getting close to the end of this blog. In the intro I had mentioned a simple edit you can do today that will help you increase your website traffic.
One simple edit that helps you increase website clicks.
Assuming you are already ranking for a keyword, now you need those clicks to keep coming so you stay ranking.
If people lose interest in your content, you’ll starting ranker lower and lower. So the one simple tip you can easily implement today is the use of numbers in your headlines.
We've talked about this before in a previous blog: numbers work well in headlines. But not just any number. Check out the blog to learn more. Here's a summary:
Odd numbers perform better than even numbers.
Specific numbers perform better and look more trustworthy.
High numbers can overwhelm your readers, so avoid them.
What else is there when it comes to numbers? Well, adding the current year to your headlines certainly helps increase clicks.
So go through your old blogs and see which ones you can update with this tip to get them not only ranking higher but also start getting more clicks.
I’m adding an example below.
Imagine this headline...
"10 ways to increase website traffic."
It's not bad, is it?
It's clear.
It tells us what to expect if we click.
And it is using a number, though it's an even number.
But what if we make the following simple edits:
Replace the "10" with a "7" in the headline.
Add a power word, such as "proven ways".
Add "in 2024" at the end of the headline, to show the info they're about to read is up to date.
So now the headline is:
"7 proven ways to increase website traffic in 2024."
Isn't that better? Warning: never use a power word just for clicks. You better deliver. So if you're saying these are "proven" ways, you better show they've been tested and indeed have proven to work with some stats.
Do you feel confident about your headlines? If not, send me a message and let's have a look together.
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