Article headlines made easy
One of the most important ways to get quality traffic to your site is through article syndication. Unfortunately if your articles don't get read you are completely wasting your time. In this story we'll provide 5 tips on writing strong headlines, but more importantly we'll introduce the first fully automated and free tool for headline creation and analysis.
Article clicks are based upon one thing and one thing alone, whether or not your headline is compelling. You should think of your headline as an advertisement for the article contained within.
There are a number of techniques you can employ to make your headline attractive. Here's a short list:
1. Use hot terms in your headline
If you're writing about digital music players include terms like "ipod" and "mp3" in your headline.
Bad - Digital music players that sync with your computer
Good - Upload mp3 files into your ipod
2. Use superlatives in your headline
Superlatives express excitement and can garner interest in an otherwise boring headline. Be careful though, not to overdue it or it can backfire by overselling the story.
Bad - The new ipod can now hold many more files
Good - The new ipod has a super capacity hard drive
3. Form the headline as a question
This is particularly powerful in product comparison articles. If you are already stating which product is best in the headline you take away all suspense for the reader. By posing a question you may pique the reader's curiousity.
Bad - Dell notebook performs better than HP notebook
Good - Which performs better, HP or Dell notebook?
4. Use a list
Everybody loves lists because they give important information quickly that's easy to digest. Use lists in your headline to rank items or to indicate that there is a lot of good quality information in the article.
Bad - Learn how to pick up women
Good - Top 10 tips for getting women
5. Summarize your story
This is kind of a last resort, as the other headline types are usually more sucessful. If you're really stuck, try to distill the most interesting points of the story as a summary in your headline.
Bad - Test results for HP and Dell notebooks
Good - Dell beats out HP in notebook speed test
Free headline analysis tool
Up until now there haven't been any tools available for headline analysis. You may spend a whole day writing an incredibly good article only to come up short on your headline. Luckily for you there is now an amazing tool that can analyze your headline before you go to print.
The Advanced Marketing Institute recently launched their Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer SEO tool. The free tool analyzes your headline of up to 20 words, and scores it based on its emotional marketing value (EMV). Furthermore the tool will tell you which emotion your headline evokes, whether it's Intellectual, Empathetic, Spiritual, or a combination of two or all three.
According to AMI, most professional copywriters' headlines score about 30-40% EMV, while gifted copywriters aim for between 50-75% EMV. The English language contains 20% EMV for comparison purposes.
Using the tool is easy; type in your headline and then modify it slightly for as many iterations as it takes until you're satisifed with your EMV score.
No matter what your article is about it will surely be viewed more often if you inlclude a snappy headline. Try the techniques outlined in this article and then check your headline's EMV score before publishing.
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