How to Create a Winning Headline

By Peter B. Giblett

If you wish to make your blog a market leader, or a power player, then having powerful headlines is one key element to use. Powerful ones attract and retain an audience. This is the step by step guide to creating powerful headlines.

How meaningful are your headlines? Be honest with yourself. Most bloggers do not think sufficiently about their headlines. How much time do you spend crafting them? Too many bloggers use the draft headline that inspired them to write the piece in the first place. Some work very well, but others are a recipe for disaster. A good headline needs crafting. It needs thinking. It needs time.

Understand this: the headline makes or breaks your article. How are you going to improve yours?

This book was devised to guide writers step by step through a path of improvement. The result: you will write better headlines. The first step is to consider the value of the headline, what it means to the blog and how you should use it to attract and retain readers. Develop a critical attitude when looking at headlines. Being self-critical will help you improve the headlines you use.

The best headlines historically come from newspapers, it is likely those are the ones you will remember the most. Especially those associated with powerful events in your lifetime. Wars, earthquakes, disasters, famine, plane crashes, have all moved people to read the news. The blogger has to develop the same type of skill when defining their own headlines. They will be seen by search results, on Facebook, and other pages. Think about the impression that headlines give.

How can you move your audience? Get them to read your work? It is all about the headline and excerpts you present. Search engines influence what items people read (assuming your SEO strategy has ranked your page high enough). Headlines and excerpts in search results catch the prospective reader’s attention first. This e-book introduces many different strategies to help you improve your headline writing skills.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter B. Giblett
• Release date: Aug 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463189672

Peter B. Giblett

⸙⸙⸙ Freelance Editor and Writer (always seeking new projects). ⸙⸙⸙ (Fraternal Branch Councillor at Foresters Financial) ⸙⸙⸙ Helping people how to turn their Blog into a powerful resource. Helping them communicate more effectively, using the power of the written and spoken word. I discuss social media, because of how it can help bloggers and small businesses grow. ⸙⸙⸙ Has a history as a Senior Business and IT Executive who has over 25 years experience delivering successful solutions.

Book preview

The Step by Step Guide to Creating Powerful Headlines

Introduction

Do you need to reach the oasis of sanity? Well here you are. This is the step by step guide to creating powerful headlines. It is intended as a guide to help you create better headlines for your blog. Having moderated thousands of blog articles over a period of more than 5 years the authors have brilliant, stunning, witty, humorous, sad, desperate, and ugly headlines. They can all steer readers but many force them to examine other pieces.

The Gobbledegoox blog has helped many people improve their blogging skills. This book is part of helping writers become better bloggers. It is a process that involves writing and learning. Through this e-book, you should learn all the nuances of putting a headline together.

The structure of this book has been devised to guide writers step by step through a path of improvement. The first step is to consider the value of the headline, what it means to the blog and how you should use it to attract and retain readers.

The step by step guide to creating powerful headlines is brought to you by GobbledeGoox.com. It is an educational guide that is a learning guide for bloggers.

Copyright Notice

Publisher: Gobbledegoox.com and Peter B. Giblett

First published: 2018

First Edition

ISBN: 978 – 0463189672

COPYRIGHT

All material is copyright Peter B. Giblett and gobbledegoox.com (2018).

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment and education only. All rights are reserved.

It may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit your favourite eBook retailer to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the demanding work of this author.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my clients and loyal followers, without whom life would be very hard indeed.

Contents

Introduction

The Power of a Headline

Headline Magic: Secrets to Gain Readers

Sub-headings within the Post

SEO Strategy

The Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Quick Wins

Step 2: Colon or Hyphen

Step 3: Craft your Headline

Step 4: First or Last Three

Step 5: Adjectives

Step 6: Announce Alliteratively

Step 7: Use Numbers

Step 8: Make it Rhythmic

Step 9: Question Wisely

Step 10: Provide a Unique Rationale

Step 11: Appropriate Capitalisation

Step 12: Tense Matters

Step 13: Google it!

Step 14: Match the Content

Step 15: Beware any Ambiguity

Step 16: Abbreviate with Care

Step 17: Attribute when Appropriate

Step 18: Use Active Voice

Step 19: Avoid Slogans

Step 20: Use a Formula

Step 21: Using Persuasive Words

Step 22: Negative Words

Step 23: Uncommon Words

Step 24: Hyphenation and Special Characters

Other Formula for Headlines

Summarising the Components of a Great Headline

Headline Words

About the Author

Links and Endnotes

The Power of a Headline

H

istorically newspapers have understood the power of a headline. This headline produced by a British newspaper, The Sun, during the Falklands war in 1982. It was a very patriotic, jingoistic, and propagandist headline. Celebrating the sinking of an enemy ship.

At the same time, it adopts and celebrates the bravery of the soldiers involved. The use of our lads praises the heroes. The gunboat and cruiser are clearly enemy protagonists, thus to be hated.

This is the type of headline that used to sell newspapers in what was, arguably, the golden era of the tabloid newspaper. Few blog headlines need to this powerful, but they must capture the imagination and cause the prospect to read the post.

How good are your headlines?

You are reading this because you believe you need to learn something and have scope for improvement. Excellent. There is much to learn about the power of a good headline. The rules on headlines have purportedly changed with the advent of the Internet and the development of the blog.

Newspaper headlines, like Gotcha don’t work in the world of the Internet, blog and social media. That is not to say there