Sensationalized Headlines or Lack Thereof Will Make Or Break Your Website – Blog

“Lion Kills Baby Deer as D.C. Zoo Visitors Watch” or “Headless Man in Topless Bar.”

While sensationalized headlines in print advertising have a purpose to get you to pick up the paper and buy it, on the net the sensationalized headlines don’t work quite like that.

It is easy to write sensationalized titles, but most of the time these types of titles do not contain keywords that your potential customers are looking for.

In most cases, sensationalized headlines only serve to humor the author and the reader who happens to find it through luck and serendipity.

When can you use sensationalized titles?

You can use theses types of titles under three circumstances:

• You already have a flow of organic search traffic to your website,
• You have built up a following in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites, and
• You already have a subscriber list that you send updates of your website’s content to (a newsletter) on a regular basis.

If you try to use non keyword optimized titles for your blog posts and website pages, it is probable that you will not see the organic search traffic that you want or expect which could lead to a much longer cycle for development and heighten your frustration about the effectiveness of your efforts.

What Kind of Headlines Should You Write?

Headlines on your website pages and blog posts need to satisfy two things:

• First they must serve a purpose – the purpose is to get that page found in the search engines for what you want it to get found for, and
• to engage the reader – generally engaging the reader happens by answering or asking some question related to what information the reader is looking for.

First let’s address the purpose of your headline. Why is it that the purpose of your headline has to do with getting found in the search engines? This has to do with SEO. One of the key areas on a web page to optimize is your Headline. Thus, your headlines should have the essential keywords associated with the content contained on their respective page. In other words, every page should be about a unique topic with its own keyword or keyword phrase.

Now let’s address engaging your reader. One way to engage your reader – a preferable and effective way – is when your title contains keywords that your users are actually using to find information related to the information found on your website pages. Before you post information on your website, you could consider that all the other people out there doing searches have been looking for some variation of the information you are intending to publish. With this as the case, you should be targeting keywords in your title that are derived from what people are already searching for versus you as the website owner thinking that you know what people are searching for.

If you put these two things together on your titles your website will likely get more traffic than ever before. Nothing is for sure in the Internet business, but what we’re suggesting here has produced results for millions of pages online they can produce results for you too.