We’ve now seen how writing for online is different to writing for print, and the importance of choosing the right words to use. Next we’ll see how a good headline or intro can make all the difference to whether your article will be read or not.
1) Headlines on many editorial sites get turned into title tags (the blue bar at the top of your browser) – search engines assume that this will tell them all about a story, so if it doesn’t, they won’t be able to work out what it’s about
2) The title tag is what’s displayed as the link in search results – research in the US showed that it accounted for 30% of a user’s decision of which result to click on
3) So if you don’t put the most important bits of information towards the front of your headline, they may get cut off – as engines only display around 60 characters, including spaces.
4) Search engines don’t understand metaphors, puns, or other forms of wordplay, and people don’t use them when searching for information – use plain English.
5) So, a print headline like “Mourning crowds converge on Vatican” would work better online as “Pope John Paul II dies in Vatican.”
6) When writing headlines and body copy, you should use full names of people, places, companies, & products – avoid acronyms, abbreviations & jargon.
7) Just using Jamie Oliver’s full name in a headline and the intro of an article got an article on RBI’s hospitality website CatererSearch ranked top on Google News during the school dinners series (something they had never managed previously).
8) Having an introduction or standfirst that uses the right keywords and summarises a story in a clear and interesting manner can increase traffic – as it appears as the snippet of text in search results, which has a large effect on click through rates.
9) You should always write for the web with the assumption that people won’t get to the end of your article, so ‘giving the story away’ in your intro won’t negatively effect readership – it actually gives it a better chance of getting read in the first place.
10) Writing headlines and articles that use Top 10s and other attention grabbing methods tend to do much better on social media sites like digg and reddit – which can drive huge traffic (13,000 visits to a single New Scientist story for one post on digg!).
Note: This article was originally written as part of a training programme for the journalists at UK B2B publisher Reed Business Information.
Ciarán Norris is now the SEO Director at UK search marketing agency eyefall.
