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Are Your Titles Irresistibly Click Worthy & Viral?! |
| 2012-02-02 19:00 |
Posted by evolvingSEO This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. The 80/20 Value of TitlesRecently, Rand did one of the best Whiteboard Fridays I've seen in a while (I do watch all of them) about increasing the likelihood of your content going viral. He touches briefly upon the importance of your title for click through rate and sharability, but in this post I'd like to take a more in depth look at titles and how they help spread your content. (By the way, this is my first YouMoz - woohoo!) In my opinion, the elements of writing click worthy titles deserve more attention. In the wonderful marketing book "Made To Stick", the Heath brothers note that any good news or editorial writer may spend 80% of their time crafting the title (or "lead") and then whatever time they have left on the body of the content. For those familiar with 80/20, what this means is, the size of the title compared to the actual content (and time spent crafting it) disproportionately affects the success of that content. It's one small piece of text with a lot power! Note: to clarify, I am not necessarily referring to the title tag exclusively. I'm referring to simply the title of a page, post, article... which as you will see below can be the same as your title tag, but doesn't have to be. A Quick Analogy: The Internet As a HighwayIf your webpage was a store on the side of a busy highway, the title's job would be to capture attention and get people in the door. As many of the right people as possible. If you've ever driven on Route 1 heading into Boston, MA, you know what I mean (see photo). Lots of people may pass by your links, tweets and shares, but few may actually stop to come in and check things out.
I hope this little analogy illustrates the extreme importance of crafting a clickable title - and that you will join me as I suggest some ideas for making your titles more clickable. Let's go!!! 7 Ingredients of a Click Worthy TitleAssuming all other factors neutral for the moment, let's look at what I think are 7 most important ingredients of your titles;
Ingredient 1: CuriosityYour title should be clear enough that people know what they're going to get when they click, but also leave an element of curiosity - so you almost can't help but to click. You just have to find out what's on the other side. Some examples of elements that can entice curiosity; Curiosity A: Unexpected How do you make something unexpected? Combine two things that usually do not go together, like this;
"Diet Coke" is not something you usually expect to see in a post about SEO. 77 thumbs up. Curiosity B: Incomplete Thought or Question
Pete's title here makes me curious, because he asks an open question, which I wonder how/if it will be answered within the post. Curiosity C: Present A Conflict (Plot)
Rand does a great job here of introducing curiosity because there is an inherent conflict; a choice requiring resolution. Which one will he choose and why? Which do I choose and can I offer an alternative opinion? Will I agree with him? Curiosity D: State What Something Isn't
I'm left thinking; It isn't? What Is? Do I know them? What's John going to say? Ingredient 2: Highlight The Benefit Benefit is congruent to differentiation. On the whole, people will visit a page because there is some sort of benefit to them. Useful content, entertainment, or even content that will make them look good if they share it. Why should someone click and visit your page? What are they going to get out of it? Some examples that imply benefit;
These are all common elements of a title that hint at benefit. Like this;
Providing a clear benefit is also a way to differentiate your content from others, in that you're implying it holds unique value that can't be found elsewhere. I also like "face-off" - there's a lot of meaning (visual, emotion, tension, etc) packed into those two words. Ingredient 3: Elicit Excitement/EmotionPeople also act on emotion - excitement, fear, hope. Your title should conjure the right emotion in viewers. I don't think people always click purely on emotion, but emotion can certainly support the other ingredients. Things like;
Thanks for the tweet Tom :-) I think the emotional aspect (as in this case) can apply more to social media - the title you might craft in a tweet of something, such as Tom's "ridiculously awesome" text here. Some other emotional words are;
You get the idea :-) Note that adverbs (ending in "ly") are quite popular. Honestly, I'm just using the thesaurus for a lot of those :-) But if you're fine with describing your own work in such glamorous words, go for it! I typically reserve this for something I'm really confident about, or if I'm referring to something else, like a product review. Also;
Just remember that not all special type characters work well across different platforms (social, blog themes etc) so use carefully. And they can also get annoying quickly, so use sparingly. Ingredient 4: Make It TangibleThe Health Brother's book "Made To Stick" talks a lot about making your ideas concrete or tangible. I highly recommend going to this page of resources and downloading the free PDF "Made To Stick Success Model" (and read their book!) Great example here though by Mike King;
I'm sure we all get an instant clear picture in mind of the "Cat In The Hat", as it's a |
