How to Craft Captivating Headlines for Your Articles

The headline is the first and most crucial sentence of your entire article. It has to entice people to click on the article and read more. How can you craft headlines that capture attention? Here are some key tips to keep in mind.

Pick a Fascinating Topic

The first thing you need for a captivating headline is a fascinating topic. The headline’s role is to present the topic in the most appealing way possible. But the topic itself has to be relevant and interesting to the reader.

Understand what your reader needs. Understand what they are curious about and what they want to learn. Choose your topics based on that.

Having a fascinating topic and a great article makes crafting a captivating headline much easier.

Use Emotive Words

Use words that stimulate the senses, that evoke emotions and that create images in the mind. In other words, use emotive words rather than descriptive words.

One well-chosen, well-positioned emotive word can transform the tone of the whole headline.

For example, instead of: Tips for Making a Speech

Try: Secrets for Making a Mesmerizing Speech

These two emotive words – “Secrets” and “Mesmerizing” – completely change how the whole headline is perceived.

Use Numbers & Details

Details and numbers tend to perform very well. Use specific places, number of tips, names of people, etc.

Again, taking our previous example:

Instead of: Secrets for Making a Mesmerizing Speech

Try: 7 Secrets for Making a Mesmerizing Speech

Or: Secrets for Making a Mesmerizing Speech from a TEDx Speaker

The difference between the first sentence and the latter two sentences are details. Details give headlines more credibility and make them seem more compelling.

How to Learn from Other Writers’ Headlines

If you ever get stuck on writing a headline, just search for your main keyword on Google.

What kind of headlines are other writers using? What kind of topics are they covering?

What techniques are they applying to their headlines? Are they using details? Trends? Names? Emotive words?

Don’t copy a headline. It’ll damage your search engine rankings and can be considered as plagiarism. However, there’s nothing wrong with using other writers’ headlines as a source of ideas.

Have variety

Lastly, switch your strategies around. Don’t use an emotive word in every headline. Don’t use specific numbers in every headline.

You’ll want your article headlines to be distinct from each other to avoid them sounding too repetitive and boring readers.

These are some tested methods to boost your click-through rates and open rates. Begin with a fascinating topic. Add an emotive word or two to make your headline captivating. Use a detail or two, if relevant. Get ideas if you need help. And finally, remember to always mix things up.