How To Come Up With An Article Title: Why Headlines Matter To Gain Organic Clicks

By Josh Koop •  Updated: 12/10/20 •  9 min read

Many people begin their blogs focused on creating quality content but then they pair this with poor quality headlines, not because they want to but most bloggers start without an ounce of copywriting experience so how do you come up with an article title?

You need to know your intended audience and build a reason into your headline on how you are helping them to resolve a current pain point or issue. To do this well you must understand the search intent behind your keyword and target that resolution trying to appeal to the searcher.

So now that you understand how you can make a catchy title we can dig more into why you care for catchy headlines and how to craft them or if you need tools we go into detail on Headlime who offer amazing options for creating catchy headlines.

What Makes an Effective Headline?

So for people who haven’t had to write headlines before there is probably a great deal of concern on how you can write an actual effective headline that pulls the searcher into a visitor, lets jump into that now!

For an effective headline you are looking to want them to convert a searcher into a visitor, you want to do this through being specific to topic, being easy to understand, cause a reaction, and not try to be overly clever or confusing.

Since we now understand what makes an effective headline, lets dig into the best way they can be used effectively to increase your SERP ranking click through rate (CTR) with the 5 most common clickable headlines.

5 Types of Headlines That Get Clicks

There are a few key types of headlines that have been shown over time to continually work well to get the readers attention and gain read time from them on the content:

Lets explain each of these in a little more detail to help you decide which are good fits within your websites, not all will work perfectly for each content type but many will cross boundaries without issue.

Number + Adjective + Keyword + Promise Headline

This has been listed all over as a creation by best-selling author Jeff Goins, it is one of the most commonly used headline tactics used in the affiliate marketing world today.

They are built up of fundamental parts of your attempt to sell to your searcher why you are the right match for their needs, this typically includes the full keyword when using a shorter tailed option making it SEO friendly.

Example Promissory Headlines:

“Best Of” Headline

Honestly if you have done an ounce of affiliate marketing you will know these are a powerhouse, they are extensively used for product reviews beyond belief, why you may wonder, cause hands down it works.

The thing to learn is that you can stretch these types of titles out from the product only range and into normal blog posts also, they aren’t just for money focused posting only.

Example “Best Of” Headlines:

Listicle Headline

Long a favorite for affiliate marketers the listicle is a way to get content in front of users in a way that also favors being re-shared to their friends.

The listicle pulls in clicks because it compresses information on a subject into bite size packets, typically in steps or bullet points that your reader can easily absorb and enact.

Many of these won’t specifically be to sell an item but to help get links built and to get the traffic flow into your site from places other than the search engines, these are perfect to share on Pinterest and Facebook.

One of their main benefits lays in the ability to easily share information including tips, advice, and much more in an interesting, fun and conversational way.

Example Listicle Headlines:

“Proven by Science” headline

These posts make use of science and typically will lean heavily on medical literature to back the argument or points being made.

Science and headlines similar to these can actually enact behavior changes by the reader once they have the scientific proof shown to them. 

Example “Proven by Science” Headlines:

“Why X People Do X” headline

This headline drives a response based on a type of social influence or pressure, since people are doing this does this mean I should do this.

This can be leveraged well when you know a specific company, person, or similar that your visitors would want to hear about which helps draw them into a click through.

Example “Why X People Do X” Headlines:

What is a Catchy Headline?

The term catchy in these times can mean “clickbaity” something that hits the reader and makes them feel the absolute need to see what the contents are of the title.

A catchy headline is one that stands out from the crowd and specifically hits on a point of emphasis for the searcher. This would require understanding the searchers intent and building a matching title that hits the point home.

So if you understand this intent what would you want to write and how do you make sure it is the right one for the searchers? This is where you learn to write and then learn how to A/B test, which I do through Ezoic Tag Tester to swap out headlines automatically.

How Do You Write a Catchy Headline?

Personally, when I am trying to find catchy headlines I look at the SERP to see what other people have been using and try to see where I could better them and then I will try to write down multiple options.

You craft a catchy headline by using a promise or use some emotional pull on the visitor with the intention of getting them to click through as they feel it. Normally will focus on a number and or a key takeaway they will get from your content.

The next part after you learn to write the attention grabber you want to start learning to write them faster and with more efficiency, this is where you can then work on testing each to find out what increases conversion and creates the most value.

How To Write Catchy Headlines and Blog Titles Fast

This will come with time and experience but there are a few focus points that when you keep them in mind can help you learn how to crank out optional titles.

The fastest way to write a catchy headline is to know your audience and to target a problem or lack of knowledge on their part while leveraging the keyword. Many times these can include numbers and words that pull emotion from the reader.

Barring this time and effort version and learning how and what works you will need to augment with technology, this is why I choose to use Headlime personally.

I don’t always take what they offer but it gives me the spark of ideas to grow out from and add them as my personal templates for use down the road again.

Title A/B Testing to Find Highest CTR Option

One thing many publishers on digital platforms get the benefit of is that they can swap out their titles and test multiple variations with much more ease than traditional print.

An A/B test at its core is a way to try one title versus another title to see which gets more user clicks and more traffic to your website. After this test is completed you typically know a better version of the two and then you can repeat with another headline or move onto the next topic.

Currently this can be difficult as Google has removed the manual indexing tool from the Google Search Console, this is one of the big reasons why I am a large proponent to using Ezoic as an ad platform along with a data analytics tool.

Ezoic has a tool called the “Tag Tester” which is aimed at helping ease swapping out the title between two options which it will run a test on and provide you the results. This is very powerful when looking to climb up to spot one in the SERPs as this can give you the highest clicks possible.

Best Catchy Headlines Generator

Look, I get it that sometimes you just don’t have it in you and it just is something that may not be where you choose to focus your efforts, this is why software exists that can provide you variations on headlines for any use.

For help in generating catchy headlines there is no software that helps you build them, Headlime is a software that can help you build them based on their pre-built templates or other templates you create yourself.

It doesn’t stop there though as they provide you catchy headlines for Landing pages, email marketing, and so much more. I have been using them to start building more clicky titles on my affiliate blogging websites.

Final Thoughts on How Do You Come Up With An Article Title

Finding that perfect magic title can be hard to accomplish for bloggers, I would suggest writing down a number of titles prior to making the choice of which one you want to use.

If you have over 10k pageviews or sessions you could look at signing up for Ezoic who offers a “Tag Tester” which will do A/B tests on your Title for you with a 50/50 traffic split so you can measure better which title performs and then set it permanently.

Otherwise I would say find a method to do A/B splits as you may believe you chose the best title for the post but you may find that you have a better one that will perform for your searchers and that’s who you are targeting.

I hope this helps you understand the overall value of building a good high quality title for your blog posts and that you should really sink more time into them and not look at them as a field to “fill in” as this can rocket your success.

Josh Koop