How Headlines Can Increase Your CTR

A headline is your number one tool for reaching out to an audience and bypassers. The goal is to have as many of your audience read through an article and on to more, while catching bypassers eyes and drawing them in. The more shares and browsing your headline gets, the more your click through rate (CTR) will increase; the more CTR you have, the more traffic your site has–and there’s nothing wrong with an increase in viewership.

The majority of articles do not get shared and that is because many of them are small blogs or companies without an employee that (literally) sits and optimizes headlines and titles; larger corporations and press companies keep someone on staff to do this. While you may not be a Fortune 500, there are some basic steps you can use to increase your CTR with headlines.

How to Write Effective Headlines and Subheadings

When you’re browsing through social media feeds, a news site, or see a shared post – what titles intrigue you? This blog is obviously geared toward people in the market, but if you didn’t know what CTR was or didn’t have a website you probably wouldn’t care to read this. That’s because people are geared toward certain types of titles.

For instance, list posts are some of the most shared types of content. People enjoy reading something that is numbered and tightly packaged, even if in reality there is more to it. They also like deliberate and concise titles, or those that make them eager to learn more. However, having someone click your link is not enough. Ideally, your audience will read or skim an entire article and move on through any links or additional site content.

So on that note, it is important to keep in mind how many people actually skim articles, browsing subheadings and headlines to get the gist of a story. Use your subheadings as an outline, paraphrasing what the content between will entail.

Basic Rules for Your Headline or Titles

• People want to take the easy route. If your article can offer an easier method for doing anything, let them know. Ex: How to [do something] Without [doing something]
• Useful information is intriguing. Use your title as a tease when the content is something like this-everyone wants to walk away being a little smarter.
• Use a sense of mystery – the general population often wonders about the same type of questions. Play on the fact that you have the answers to life’s most asked questions.
• Use emotional appeal. Ex: Why This [something cute] Was Abandoned and Here’s What You Can Do (call the action)
• Use questions when appropriate. A person’s automatic, hardwired response to a question is to answer it for themselves or become curious as well.
• Make sure titles are short and get to the point, all while keeping the former in mind.

Tools That Make All of This Easier

WordPress comes complete with plugins that check the CTR of titles and alternate titles you can enter, while you’re debating on one. More handy tools include:

• Advanced Marketing Institute’s Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer
• Optimizely for headlines in addition to images
• Qualaroo for analytics driven and audience-tested headlines
• A seamless, one-step tool: CoSchedule

While there are many more plugins and free or paid tools out there, the best tool you can use is common sense. If your title isn’t something you would click, and the subheadings do not paraphrase enough – keep trying alternate word pairings.