Headlines That Describe Rather Than Tease

Where the headline is actually read

Rarely on the page itself, which is the mistake behind most business headlines.

It appears in a search result beside nine others, in a link somebody shared, in a browser tab, and in a link preview. In every one of those the reader is deciding whether to open it, and the decision is made on whether the headline promises what they were looking for.

That context rewards precision. A reader searching how much a panel upgrade costs will open a headline saying what a panel upgrade costs, and will scroll past one asking whether they are making a costly electrical mistake.

Why curiosity headlines fail here

They work for publishers, whose readers arrive with time and no specific objective, and who are competing for attention rather than answering a question.

Someone searching a service problem is not browsing. They have a question, limited patience, and several alternatives. A headline that withholds the subject is asking them to gamble a click, and most will not.

There is also a credibility cost. Withholding reads as a technique, and a trades business is generally better served by sounding like a tradesperson than like a content operation.

What a good business headline does

• Names the subject in the reader's words, rather than the trade's.
• Says what the reader gets, whether that is an answer, a comparison, or a cost.
• Is specific enough to be checkable. A vague headline cannot be judged, so it is not chosen.
• Fits the space, which for a search result is roughly sixty characters before truncation.
• Matches what the page delivers, since a mismatch produces an immediate exit.

The rewrite pattern

Each rewrite is longer and each tells the reader whether it is for them, which is the only judgement they are making.

Length and truncation

Search results truncate at roughly sixty characters, sometimes less on a phone.

That does not mean every headline must be under sixty. It means the part that decides the click has to be in the first sixty, with anything after it as a bonus. A headline whose meaning depends on its last three words will lose that meaning where it matters most.

The practical check is to cut your headline at sixty characters and see whether it still says what the page is about.

The words worth including

Not stuffed, but present, because the reader is scanning for a match with what they typed.

The service, the place where relevant, and the qualifier that makes it specific. Cost, versus, how long, what to check, when to. Those framings match how questions are actually searched and they signal the format of the answer.

What does not help: your business name in the headline of every page, which spends the visible characters on something the reader already sees in the result.

The page heading and the search title

Worth knowing that these can differ, and frequently should.

The title shown in search results is set separately from the heading at the top of the page. The first is competing in a list and benefits from being explicit and complete. The second is read by someone who has already arrived and can be shorter, since the context is established.

Most small business sites use the same text for both, which is acceptable. Where a headline is long enough to truncate badly, setting them separately is worth the two minutes.

Testing yours

Search for something one of your pages should answer, and look at your headline in the results alongside the others.

Ask which one you would open if you had the reader's question and no knowledge of any of the businesses. That comparison is the actual test, and it is more informative than reading your headline in isolation where it always seems fine.

If yours is the vaguest in the list, that is a rewrite worth doing regardless of how the page reads once someone arrives, since the page only gets read by people who chose it first. The same principle governs how the page itself is structured once they do, as set out in writing for people who skim.

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.