Killer quality content is now critical to link building and link earning success and some of the most shared and valuable content on the web comes from newspapers. So what can link builders learn from newspapers and the headlines they use?
Make your blog post / article title stand out
Above all else, the most important part of writing an article is the headline. You should begin and end every article with the question: “Would this make me want to read on?” The best titles are either something funny, sexual innuendo, interesting, controversial - maybe not sexual or controversial if it's for a client! Here's are just a few of my favourites tabloid headlines over the years:
Ok none these will probably be relevant to an article you are about to write on car insurance, but you get the idea - you need to take your SEO and link building hat off for a moment and think of a title that will get clicked on rather than a boring title that includes keywords within. If you can get a keyword or two in the title whilst making it stand out, bonus. Put your SEO hat back on as you need to get your title within 70 characters ideally :)
I like reading writers blogs like Jeff Goins who's written some great articles on writing article headlines including the article 5 Easy Tricks to Help You Write Catchy Headlines which I recommend you read.
These are some more great articles on this subject of writing engaging attention grabbing article tiles:
Think local
This is especially important if you have a client that targets a specific area. For example I work with a few holiday companies in Cornwall and so i'm always incorporating Cornwall related articles that target the audience of those holidaying in Cornwall - so titles such as 'Surfing is top thing to do on holiday in Cornwall, rain or shine'
Using any research or PR that can be used within the article works extremely effectively.
Target your audience
You need to tailor the content of the article to your audience - so you need to know firstly, where this article you are writing is going to be published. Then look at other successful articles on hat site - do they share anything in common? Try to emulate certain characteristics of these articles in your own to give it the best chance of success.
