A Headline That Is Not Clickbait

What a headline is actually for

Not to attract the maximum number of readers.

To tell a particular reader, quickly and accurately, that this page is for them, and to tell everybody else that it is not.

Both halves matter. A headline that brings in people who leave immediately has cost you their time and told the search engine that your page disappoints, which is worse than not having been clicked.

Why clickbait fails for a business

The technique works by opening a gap: promising something and withholding enough that the only way to resolve it is to click.

For a site funded by advertising, that is rational, since the click is the product and what happens afterwards matters less.

For a business, the click is worth nothing on its own. The value is in the small number of readers who needed exactly this and now trust you slightly more.

A headline optimised for volume attracts mostly people who did not need it, and irritates the ones who did by making them work out whether the page is relevant.

Specific is the alternative

Not dull, which is how the alternative is usually characterised. Specific.

The interest comes from the detail rather than from mystery. A concrete claim, a number, a named situation, or an unexpected position is more compelling than a tease, because it demonstrates the page contains something rather than hinting.

Consider a page about heat pump costs. What you need to know about heating your home is vague and could be anything.

What a heat pump actually costs to run in an older house tells a reader precisely whether to click, and the person who clicks it wanted that page.

Use the words they use

• Their term, not the trade term.
• The question form where people ask it that way.
• The problem, not your service name.
• Plain words over the impressive synonym.
• No internal names, acronyms, or invented labels.

This matters twice: it is what people search for, and it is what they recognise in a list of results.

The title and the heading can differ

A distinction worth knowing, because it removes a common compromise.

The title shown in search results and browser tabs is a separate field from the heading at the top of the page.

The first can be written for somebody scanning a list of ten results, which usually means leading with the most searched phrasing.

The second can be written for somebody who has already arrived and can be slightly more natural or more pointed.

They should not contradict each other, and they do not have to be identical, which frees you from cramming every purpose into one line.

Length, practically

Search results truncate titles at somewhere around sixty characters depending on the width of the letters.

That is a display constraint rather than a rule, and the practical implication is simply to put the important words first.

A title that reads correctly when cut off after eight words is fine. A title whose meaning depends on the last three words is not, because many people will never see them.

Front-load the specific part and leave the qualifications for the end.

A worked example

A garden design firm had a post titled Making the Most of Your Outdoor Space.

It covered designing a garden on a steep slope, which was their specialism and a genuinely difficult problem people search for.

Nothing in the title said so.

Retitled to what to do with a garden that slopes steeply, it began receiving search traffic within two months and became their main source of enquiries from outside their immediate area.

The content had not changed at all.

The original headline had described the category the page belonged to. The replacement described what was in it, which is the entire difference.

Honest headlines about difficult things

The hardest case is a page whose subject is uncomfortable: a price that is higher than people expect, a limitation, or a service you are declining to offer.

The temptation is to soften the headline, which produces a mismatch between the title and the content and annoys the reader who came for the softened version.

Naming the difficult thing directly attracts fewer people and attracts the right ones, and it earns credibility in a way a softened version cannot.

Why this costs more than you expected is a better headline than understanding our pricing, and the reader who clicks it has already accepted the premise.

Testing a headline

Two checks, both quick.

Show the headline alone, without the page, to somebody who has not read it, and ask what they think the page contains. If they cannot say, the headline is not doing its job.

Then ask whether the page delivers what they described. A headline that promises more than the page contains is the actual definition of the problem, independent of how clever the wording is.

The failure is a gap between promise and delivery. A plain headline over a page that does not deliver is just as bad as a sensational one.

The counter-case

Purely descriptive headlines are not always right either.

A page competing against fifty similar ones needs something that distinguishes it, and complete plainness can be indistinguishable from every other result.

An unexpected position, a specific number, or a clearly stated opinion all draw attention legitimately, because they are accurate descriptions of a page that contains an unexpected position, a number, or an opinion.

That is the line. Interest generated by what is genuinely in the page is fine, however striking. Interest generated by withholding is not, however mild.

Writing one

1. Say what the page covers, specifically.
2. Use the reader's words, not the trade term.
3. Put the important part first.
4. Include the number or detail if there is one.
5. Name the difficult thing rather than softening it.
6. Check somebody can predict the content from it.
7. Check the page delivers what they predicted.

The last two take a minute and catch nearly every bad headline.

Finding the right vocabulary is covered in words your customers use.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.