The Bloggers Guide to Creating Targeted Headlines
If you are reading this article, the chances are you were attracted by the title. Creating an eye catching title is an art form and there are a huge number of formats to choose from.
Linkbait style articles are losing credibility fast while boring titles will never give your content the audience it deserves. Luckily there is another format being put to good use that I call the “targeted headline”.
Let look at some recent examples:
- The Bloggers Guide to Indirect Selling
- The Advanced Webmasters Guide to Google News
- The Blogger’s Guide to SEO
All these headlines have two very important elements. The target for example “Bloggers” or “Advanced Webmasters” and the subject, for example “SEO”. Creating a guide to SEO isn’t going to get links from anywhere, the field is just too saturated. However if you can create a Bloggers guide to SEO or a “Small business owners guide to SEO” you stand a good chance of gaining traction. People see the title and if they are a Blogger or “Small business owner” they will read it.
To make use of this title simply make a list of the possible guides you can make, figure out what you are an expert in and what you can write about. Next make a list of the areas you would like to target. Maybe small businesses, Digg users, bloggers, writers, students etc. Now put the two lists together and start writing.
If, for example, you operate a cooking website. You might be able to produce guides on:
- Smoothies
- Sandwiches
- Quick Meals
You might want to target bloggers and students, good headlines would be:
- The Bloggers Guide to Stimulating Smoothies
- The Students Guide to Great Sandwiches
- The Late Night Bloggers Guide to Quick Meals
Post category: Blogging, Marketing Tweet
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 4 comments below, or add your own!
Targeted headlines are very crucial things to rise click ratio for ads, articles, blog posts etc. Its really important to tihnk first what headtitle can attract most surfers.
Head lines are your first line of contact with most visitors and subscribers whether it be through a search engine listing or rss feed, and having a captivating headline is your best chance of capturing the most about of visitors to read your articles.
Well a simple tip for writing targeted headlines is to use the target market term in the headline. This is the primary thing and that will make it more targeted.
Headlines are the first thing to attract our readers and gets even more attention if its target headlines. Give you an upper hand that your reader wont look the other way. An eye catching headlines can go a long way with quality content that goes along with it and also some high punching Google Adwords you might make use.